A meta-analysis of individual differences in humor production and personality

One main area of focus in humor production research is exploring individual differences in humor production ability (i.e., the ability to produce something funny on the spot), particularly via its relationship with personality. The last 40 years of research, however, has reported conflicting results. Earlier work on individual differences in humor production and personality suggests that extraversion is the most closely related trait to humor production of the Big 5 personality traits. More recent work, however, suggests that openness to experience has the strongest relationship with humor production, and that extraversion has little to no relationship with the ability to produce something funny. The reason for this inconsistency is unclear, but one factor that may contribute to the issue is the between-study variation in assessment of humor production ability and experiment design. One way to resolve this inconsistency is to conduct a research synthesis using meta-analysis, which has two advantages for clarifying the humor production and personality literature: first, it statistically aggregates the findings of completed research in a way that increases statistical power beyond that of the individual studies included in the analysis, and second, it allows for comparison across studies, meaning that random error included in an individual study can be modeled as meaningful variation due to systematic between-study differences. Therefore, the present research meta-analyzed 15 different studies (totaling 56 reported effect sizes) to explore how individual differences in humor production ability relate to personality. Of the Big 5 traits, only openness to experience significantly correlated with humor production ability. Moderation analyses revealed that while the number of tasks and number of response raters did not have an impact on the size of the openness and humor production effect, the way that humor production ability was modeled did significantly affect the size of the study-level correlation. Finally, moderation analyses revealed that newer assessments of humor production ability did not significantly differ from more traditional assessments. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings for future research are discussed

Listening between the notes: personality, listening context, and aesthetic chills in everyday music listening

Why do people get chills in response to music? Most people report feeling chills — experienced as goose bumps, shivers down the spine, or hair standing on end — at least sometimes when listening to music, but a small minority of people say they've never had this experience. Past work indicates that personality, experience, and engagement in music are partially responsible for individual differences in the experience of chills in response to music, but there is still significant variance in chills that is unexplained. In the present study, experience sampling methods were used to better understand the within-person variability in the experience of chills. Eighty-nine undergraduates completed surveys of Big Five personality traits and music preferences, habits, and experience. For one week, participants responded to multiple daily surveys asking about activities, emotions, and environment, with an emphasis on music listening and chills. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to estimate several models of the variability in chills. Several factors of music listening were examined as potential predictors of chills, including the location, involvement of friends, music choice, structural components of the music, purpose of music listening, and concurrent activities. Of these, music that had special meaning and music that was instrumental had significant main effects on the occurrence of chills, as did taking more music classes and scoring high in facets of neuroticism and openness to experience. In addition, neuroticism and openness facets significantly interacted with contextual aspects of music listening, such as music familiarity, paying close attention to the music, and listening on headphones. Directions for future theorizing are discussed

What’s Your Major? College Majors as Markers of Creativity

The present research explored the value of students’ college majors as indicators of creativity, particularly creative traits, accomplishments, and interests. Two samples of undergraduate students indicated all of their majors, minors, and degree concentrations; each person was then simply classified as having a major in the arts or a conventional major. Consistent with past work on individual differences in creativity, students with arts majors scored significantly higher in openness to experience, knowledge about the fine arts, creative accomplishments, everyday creative actions, and creative self-concepts; they also described their major as affording more opportunities to develop and express their creativity. Taken together, the findings suggest that students’ majors offer interesting information about individual differences related to creativity

Are openness and intellect distinct aspects of openness to experience? A test of the O/I model.

The Openness/Intellect (O/I) model proposes that Openness to Experience has two major facets—Openness and Intellect—that can be measured with the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS). Thus far, however, research has not shown distinct, unique relationships between the Openness and Intellect aspects and other outcomes. The present research evaluated the relationships between Openness and Intellect with two outcomes: creative behavior and achievement (conceptually closer to Openness) and fluid intelligence (conceptually closer to Intellect). Young adults completed the BFAS, several measures of fluid intelligence, and several measures of creative achievement. Latent variable models indicated that the Openness aspect significantly predicted creativity but not fluid intelligence; the Intellect aspect, in contrast, significantly predicted fluid intelligence but not creativity. The findings thus offer support for the validity of the O/I model

Review of the book Undergraduate writing in psychology: Learning to tell the scientific story.

Reviews the book, Undergraduate writing in psychology: Learning to tell the scientific story by R. Eric Landrum (see record 2008-03689-000). This review is written from the perspective of a student who enrolled in a course on academic writing and a professor who taught the course. From the student's perspective, Landrum covers all the bases, from the reason psychologists write scientifically to the proper way to write a notecard. However, she feels that the book is too basic, and that students will not feel that they learned anything new from it. From the professor's perspective, the book covers the basics of writing empirical papers and review papers in APA style. However, the book's difficulty level is very low, which may say a lot about the audience for psychology textbooks. The dilemma for Landrum is to decide which audience to write for: The best students don't need the book's basic points, and the worst students won't read it. Landrum's book may be the best of the APA Paper books: It's more original and more effective than its competitors. Storytelling is a good model for research articles, and Landrum nicely develops the model throughout the book. Despite its storytelling theme, however, the book recommends hiding the storyteller: students should sound objective, formal, and detached--in a word, boring

Are intelligence and creativity really so different? Fluid intelligence, executive processes, and strategy use in divergent thinking.

Contemporary creativity research views intelligence and creativity as essentially unrelated abilities, and many studies have found only modest correlations between them. The present research, based on improved approaches to creativity assessment and latent variable modeling, proposes that fluid and executive cognition is in fact central to creative thought. In Study 1, the substantial effect of fluid intelligence (Gf) on creativity was mediated by executive switching, the number of times people switched idea categories during the divergent thinking tasks. In Study 2, half the sample was given an effective strategy for an unusual uses task. The strategy condition interacted with Gf: people high in Gf did better when given the strategy, consistent with their higher ability to maintain access to it and use it despite interference. Taken together, the findings suggest that divergent thinking is more convergent than modern creativity theories presume

Shivers and Timbres: Personality and the Experience of Chills From Music

Most people report that listening to music sometimes creates chills—feeling goose bumps and shivers on the neck, scalp, and spine—but some people seem to never experience them. The present research examined who tends to experience music-induced chills and why. A sample of young adults completed measures of chills, the Big Five domains, and their music preferences, habits, and experiences. Latent variable models found that openness to experience was the strongest predictor of the typical experience of chills during music. Several mediation models considered likely mediators of this effect. Openness to experience predicted music preferences, particularly for reflective-and-complex genres, but genre preferences didn’t in turn predict chills. In contrast, several markers of people’s experience and engagement with music in everyday life, such as listening to music more often and valuing music, did mediate openness’s effects. Some implications for bridging state and trait approaches to the chills experience are considered

On personality and piloerection: Individual differences in aesthetic chills and other unusual aesthetic experiences

Relatively little is known about aesthetic chills, the experience of goose bumps and shivers in response to the arts. The present study explored how often people report such experiences and what people who often experience them are like. After noting which domain of the arts they encountered most often in daily life, young adults (n = 188) rated how often they experienced aesthetic chills and related states. Latent variable models suggested three latent factors—aesthetic chills, feeling touched, and absorption—that shared a higher-order factor. As expected, people high in openness to experience and expertise in the arts consistently reported experiencing aesthetic chills more often. The Big Five personality factors accounted for about half of the variance, whereas cognitive and demographic variables were relatively unimportant. The individual-differences approach thus seems like a promising complement to experimental work on aesthetic chills

A snapshot of creativity: Evaluating a quick and simple method for assessing divergent thinking.

Creativity assessment commonly uses open-ended divergent thinking tasks. The typical methods for scoring these tasks (uniqueness scoring and subjective ratings) are time-intensive, however, so it is impractical for researchers to include divergent thinking as an ancillary construct. The present research evaluated snapshot scoring of divergent thinking tasks, in which the set of responses receives a single holistic rating. We compared snapshot scoring to top-two scoring, a time-intensive, detailed scoring method. A sample of college students (n = 226) completed divergent thinking tasks and measures of personality and art expertise. Top-two scoring had larger effect sizes, but snapshot scoring performed well overall. Snapshot scoring thus appears promising as a quick and simple approach to assessing creativity