We have all heard that laughter is the best medicine.

But it turns out that if you want to be more creative and come up with highly original ideas, then laughter might also help you.

In two sets of research studies, participants were either shown humorous film clips or were allowed to listen to humorous records before doing a creativity test.

In both cases, compared to participants in a control group, those who were exposed to something funny and humorous performed better on the creativity test.

Additional studies have also suggested that increasing the exposure to humour can help children enhance their creativity as well.

While it is not clear exactly what the reason is why humour appears to make you more creative, it is likely to have something to do with putting you in a positive mood.

Other previous research has shown that there is a link between people being happy or in a positive mood and their creative performance. In another study, people were shown 10 memes which were either humorous, positive or neutral to induce them to be in one of those mental states, before doing a creativity test. While those shown the neutral state performed the worst, those shown positive or humorous memes performed similarily, indicating that the general positive feelings of both may be contributing to their higher creative performance.

So the next time you feel stuck and need to come up with something creative, perhaps take a few minutes to do, listen to or watch something that you know will make you laugh.

Did you know that scientific evidence shows your creativity decreases over time

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Nick Skillicorn

Chief Editor, Founder & CEO at Improvides Innovation Consulting
Creativity & Innovation expert: I help individuals and companies build their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next breakthrough idea which customers love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.