<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Generating creative ideas takes time: the first idea to come to mind is usually obvious, and people need time to shift strategies, enact executive processes, and evaluate and revise an idea. The present research explored the role of time in creative humor production tasks, which give people a prompt and ask them to create a funny response. A sample of 152 young adults completed four joke stems prompts. Their response times were recorded, and the responses were judged for humor quality (funniness) by six independent judges and by the participants themselves. Mixed-effect models found that, at the within-person level, response time’s link to humor quality diverged for judges and participants. The judges’ ratings of funniness predicted longer response times (relatively funnier responses took longer to create), but participants’ self-ratings of their own responses predicted shorter response times (relatively funnier responses were created faster). Controlling for elaboration (quantified via word count of the response) diminished the effect of judge-rated humor but not participant-rated humor. Taken together, the results suggest that the role of time in humor generation is complex: judges may be weighting elaboration more heavily when judging funniness, whereas participants may be weighting metacognitive cues like ease-of-generation when judging their own ideas.</p>
</abstract>

Generating creative ideas takes time: the first idea to come to mind is usually obvious, and people need time to shift strategies, enact executive processes, and evaluate and revise an idea. The present research explored the role of time in creative humor production tasks, which give people a prompt and ask them to create a funny response. A sample of 152 young adults completed four joke stems prompts. Their response times were recorded, and the responses were judged for humor quality (funniness) by six independent judges and by the participants themselves. Mixed-effect models found that, at the within-person level, response time’s link to humor quality diverged for judges and participants. The judges’ ratings of funniness predicted longer response times (relatively funnier responses took longer to create), but participants’ self-ratings of their own responses predicted shorter response times (relatively funnier responses were created faster). Controlling for elaboration (quantified via word count of the response) diminished the effect of judge-rated humor but not participant-rated humor. Taken together, the results suggest that the role of time in humor generation is complex: judges may be weighting elaboration more heavily when judging funniness, whereas participants may be weighting metacognitive cues like ease-of-generation when judging their own ideas.

Time is a Funny Thing: Response Times and Humor Quality in a Creative Joke Production Task

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Department of Psychology and Human Development

Creativity. Theories – Research - Applications

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Generating creative ideas takes time: the first idea to come to mind is usually obvious, and people need time to shift strategies, enact executive processes,...

Time is a Funny Thing: Response Times and Humor Quality in a Creative Joke Production Task

Published Online: Feb 10, 2024

Page range: 1 - 17

Received: Oct 10, 2023

Accepted: Dec 22, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ctra-2024-0001

Keywords
humor production, creativity, response time, openness to experience, intelligence

© 2024 Paul J. Silvia et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Time is a Funny Thing: Response Times and Humor Quality in a Creative Joke Production Task

Published Online: Feb 10, 2024

Page range: 1 - 17

Received: Oct 10, 2023

Accepted: Dec 22, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ctra-2024-0001

Keywordshumor production, creativity, response time, openness to experience, intelligence

© 2024 Paul J. Silvia et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
humor production, creativity, response time, openness to experience, intelligence