Hsueh-Chih Chen
Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling National Taiwan Normal University/
Center for Creativity and Innovation Studies National Chengchi University
Shu-Ling Cho
Department of Clinical Psychology Fu-Jen Catholic University
Hwei-Der Lai
Department of Research and Development National Open University
Most people regard creative and innovative behaviors as tough and difficult processes, and seldom mention them in the same breath with humorous manner. However, past research has not only found a significant positive correlation between humor and creativity（Edgar& Pryor，2003； Sun，2000）, Ziv（1976，1983） and Chen (2004) also showed that humorous atmosphere and humor training programs could improve creativity. Why could humor promote one’s creative behaviors? This article proposed a three dimensional framework, including cognition, emotion and motivation, to explain the hidden mechanisms of humorous creativity. Some helpful humor skills were also proposed to cultivate playful, humorous feelings and to develop creative habits.
Keywords: humor, play, creativity, innovation