Facilitation of Creative Problem Solving: Humor (in Russian)

Abstract

One of the methods of study of covert mechanisms of the thinking process during the creative problem solving is the indirect evaluation of factors that facilitate or impede the solving. One of the most stable facilitating factors of creative problem solving and creativity is humor. The research also shows the link between productiveness of creative (insight) problem solving and humor. The processes that are at the basis of humor comprehension and production are in many characteristics alike with the processes of creative problem solving. The list of similarities includes not only affective, but also cognitive processes, which in our view are connected to the common nature of humor and insight. This paper describes and analyzes the approaches to study the influence of cognitive and affective processes on creative problem solving. The wide review and the theoretical analysis compare common and diverse mechanisms of humor comprehension and insight problem solving. On the descriptive, phenomenological level humor and insight are connected through the instantaneousness of understanding a problem and a joke. Both phenomena are essentially accompanied by positive emotions. The formal structure of verbal jokes has significant similarity with the structure of verbal insight problems through the availability of two contradictory scenarios. Substantively, humor and creative problem solving are connected with the overcoming and violation of prohibitions.Thus, the question of facilitation of creative problem solving with by humor may be studied from different positions: from the position of emotional arousal, from the position of cognitive adjustment of solving or from the position of constraint relaxation.