After reading chapter #7 please respond to the following questions:
Of the various aspects of personality and sense of humor presented in the chapter, which did you find the most interesting? Why? Which did you find least interesting? Why? What are three things you read about in the chapter that you think will be the most useful for you in understanding the psychology of humor? Why?
Which of aspects of this chapter fit best into the Theory "Z" your group came up with (make sure you say what group it was)? Which fit least and why?
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Please use spaces between your paragraphs to make your post easier to read - thanks in advance.
Let me know if you have any questions.
The relationship between our personality and humor was very interesting to read about in chapter seven. The most appealing concept from this chapter was sense of humor as an ability. I always enjoy being around people who have the creativity and play a role of making people laugh. I was interested to read more about this concept in chapter seven because I respect those people who have the talent of being the “life of the party.” It was interesting to read about the relationship between self-monitoring and the ability to produce humor. The research conducted for this concept proved that individuals with higher scores in self-monitoring compared to lower scores produced wittier and funny humor productions. People who are able to produce humor that is almost always funny and successful are responding to social cues and reactions of others. Also, I learned that the humor ability and creativity are two distinct processes. Creativity and humor have many concepts in common such as divergent thinking, incongruity, and novelty. Prior to this reading I thought individuals need to be creative in order to produce humor however, chapter seven suggests that humor is typically creative whereas individuals do not need to be humorous in order to be creative therefore humor and creativity are two separate processes. Overall, I enjoyed each aspect of this chapter and did not have a least favorite.
Understanding individual differences in humor appreciation is a concept that I will remember from this chapter. Although this concept was briefly discussed, I thought it was very informative. It was interesting to learn how humor can tell us more about a person’s personality. Psychotherapy patients can even use humor in a form of projective tests that could help clinicians analyze and diagnose their problems, needs, and conflicts. Also, the text briefly discusses the human appreciation approach. This approach instructs participants to rate jokes, cartoons, and various funny materials on measures of funniness, enjoyment, and averseness. The ratings of individuals are grouped into different categories. The human appreciation approach defines sense of humor based on the different ratings participants gave and the categories of enjoyment they were grouped into.
Self –report measures of sense of humor was created after the human appreciation approach. I was interested in reading about this concept because it suggested the human appreciation approach was limited and therefore self-report measures of humor were developed as an alternative to the human appreciation approach. The questions in the self-report included questions that assessed the degree in which people create, enjoy, and engage in humor. The self-report measures of humor seem more valid and reliable versus the human appreciation approach.
The last idea that I enjoyed and will remember from this chapter was about professional humorists personality characteristics. It was really interesting that those people, who we find incredibly funny whether they are a professional comedian or class clown, usually are suffering from depression, isolation, or experiencing family conflicts. Also, there seems to be a relationship between a mother’s attitude and whether or not her child will be a comic. Studies show that mothers of comic children were significantly less kind, less sympathetic, and less involved with their child versus a mother of a noncomic child. This suggests that professional comics tend to develop their humor skills in childhood as a way to find acceptance and approval. Also, studies suggest that professional comics are necessarily using humor because there are depressed or psychologically unstable instead, humor serves as coping mechanism for dealing with adversity in childhood.
The concept that fits best into the Swarm “Z” theory would be humor as an ability. Our theory believes that in order for humor to be successful, there needs to be a leader who initiates the joke, cartoon, etc. As I said earlier, humor as an ability discusses those who are able to use incongruities to create jokes, funny stories, and other humorous productions. This person would be the “leader” in our theory.
Terms: incongruity, creativity and humor, projective tests of humor, human appreciation approach, self-report measures of humor, humor as a coping mechanism.
The section I thought most closely tapped into what I feel a 'sense of humor' actually is was the one that conceptualized it as "styles of humorous conduct" towards the end of the chapter (p219-221). I notice that I have attributed a sense of humor to various people who use humor in completely different ways. Sometimes it means that they make me laugh a lot, sometimes they don't make me laugh but I feel their grasp of what's funny is sophisticated and well thought out, others seem to have an overly cheerful disposition in life, and still others simply tend to enjoy any and all forms of comedy.
This section conceptualizes humor in much the same way attributing a sense of humor to any one or more of a number of different 'styles of humorous conduct.' To test this theory the researchers (namely, Craik and colleagues at the Univ. of Berkely) created a list of 100 different statements that were supposed to categorize a wide range of possible behaviors someone may emit that relate to humor. Then they used a hands on q-sort technique where people organized the cards according to how they related to famous and fictitious people, or friends, family, or themselves.
These organizational patterns were then factor analyzed in order to find broad categories which account for a majority of the variability across participants. Strong correlations where found between the five main 'styles of humorous conduct' and other important personality dimensions like extraversion and neuroticism. Basically people high in a particular personality dimension tend to use different styles of humor.
Least interesting to me, believe it or not, was the conceptualizing humor as an ability. In this way humor is seen as a skill that is developed through study and practice and is typical like comedians, clowns, and people who are routinely seen as the center of attention (in a humorous way) at parties. The problem I saw with this section was that it ran into the same problems as Intelligence research. Though there is strong evidence for a 'g' or generalized level of intelligence there are so many specialized types that it is often easy to make type 1 and type 2 errors where you count some people as smart who aren't and find that some people are not smart when they in fact are.
One research experiment involved having participants finish (i.e. provide the punch-line) a number of jokes from famous comedians, and also identify which comedian said it. Much like with Trivia questions there are SO many comedians with SO many jokes that a person could be a walking encyclopedia of comedians and their jokes yet be terribly boring and unfunny. Similarly a person could be hilarious yet hate watching comedians, or simply have a poor memory. Basically I think that humor ability may be related to specific types of intelligence or creativity but in and of itself doesn't relate to what I normally associate with a 'sense of humor' or the experience of mirth. Ability is neither necessary nor sufficient to be humorous but it may be present. Some funny people are also brilliant performers and actors (meaning they have a lot of other abilities) but I feel that humor as such is not an ability itself.
This section did discuss a trait known as 'self-monitoring' however, that was quite interesting. The idea is that people who are very good at recognizing their own behaviors, and other people's reactions to their behaviors often have a good humor ability as well. The conclusion drawn was that a trait of self-monitoring may be highly related to the ability to produce humor.
The important things I'll remember from this chapter include the Factor Analysis method of finding concepts which account for variability across a wide number of items; this was used in numerous studies and is incredibly helpful with rather complex constructs like humor that seem to come in numerous forms and have numerous applications in numerous contexts. Another thing I'll remember is the general relationship between personality characteristics and humor and jokes. Although the types of jokes and humor a person enjoys is highly correlated with their personality traits there is not always significant agreement between and amongst people. The last thing I'll remember involved the fact that people often tend to over-exaggerate their own sense of humor (probably due to social desirability biases) but that they do not do this when asked about specific humor related behaviors. This is probably due to the complexity of humor however; although people know it's good to be humorous generally, they are less clear on what humor actually involves.
This theory relates to our Z theory in a number of ways some of which support it and others which do not. Equilibrium theory was our Z theory. Many of the personality characteristics which relate to humor involve bringing equilibrium to social situations. Svebak (1974) has a theory in which people can use humor to entertain the idea of an imaginary, 'irrational', 'fantasy' world within our own reality and that this can stop the real world from going into a "state of collapse." However, while playing up the social equilibrium aspect Svebak also mentions that humor works more in this arena than "against bodily displeasure" indicating that the balance brought to the individual is less beneficial than the social aspects.
Our theory has no real way of separating the individual versus social benefits of equilibrium and it is seeming more and more clear that there is a huge difference between the two. For example, comedians ought to be the most well adjusted and balanced individuals but it seems that this is either not the case, or perhaps even the opposite is true. Janus (1975 and 1978) found that comedians were smarter but also angrier and more depressed. It could be that without humor as a coping mechanism these individuals would have had even MORE anger and depression, but this runs the risk of being unscientific and post-hoc. We'll have to find a way to explain this difference in a logical way.
While reading chapter seven in our textbook, I found Ruch’s Factor-Analytic Investigations to be the most interesting. Ruch’s factor-analytic studies developed three fundamental aspects that account for individual differences in humor appreciation. The first aspect of humor is incongruity-resolution humor (INC-RES) where a person can resolve the incongruity of a joke’s punch line by using information provided somewhere else in the joke. As stated in the textbook, this type of humor is consistent with two-stage incongruity-resolution models. Similar to the first factor, the second factor deals with the joke structure rather than the content. The second factor is titled, nonsense humor (NON). This type of humor deals with jokes that have a surprising ending where the incongruity of the joke is never fully resolved. The third type of humor is labeled sexual humor (SEX). SEX jokes are characterized as jokes containing obvious sexual themes. Ruch found SEX jokes to be the only jokes based on content rather than structure. Therefore, it was interesting to see that other than sexual themed jokes, the amount to which people enjoy humor is based mainly on whether or not the incongruity is resolved. The reason that I found this point to be so interesting is because Ruch’s 3WD (Witz-dimensionen) humor test found that people with more conservative views and authoritarian attitudes are more likely to enjoy INC-RES humor where the individual is able to “make sense” of the joke. In contrast, sensation seeking personality types that are more adventurous enjoy NON humor more as it relates to fantasy and imagination. In regards to SEX humor, Ruch found these people to have personality traits that relate more to toughminded versus tenderminded dimensions of social attitudes. Toughminded individuals are more likely to be independent, self-sufficient, and rational. Despite the structure of the joke, Toughminded individuals are more likely to enjoy the content of sexual humor. However, only the people who appreciate the NON type of sexual humor will demonstrate positive sexual attitudes and experience. Lastly, an interesting finding from Ruch was that people who enjoy the types of jokes told in social situations are more likely to be those with conservative values and attitudes. Ruch’s research with the 3WD was interesting because it indicates that there is some truth behind the idea that what a person finds humorous is a reflection of his or her personality type.
One topic I found to be uninteresting was Svebak’s findings on the dimensions of humor using his sense of humor questionnaire. Svebak determined that an individual difference in sense of humor involves variation in three dimensions: meta-message sensitivity, personal liking, and emotional permissiveness. As stated in the text, the first dimension deals with a person’s cognition where a person is able to find the positive side of things and have a non-serious outlook on life. The second dimension involves a person with a playful attitude and who generally enjoys humor. The third and last component deals with individuals who laugh often in a variety of situations. I do not agree with these dimensions at all because they only deal with the positive aspects of humor. As stated later in the chapter, a sense of humor is not always considered to be a positive attribute. These three dimensions are too narrow to incorporate all of the components involved in the process and appreciation of humor.
One thing I found to be useful in understanding the psychology of humor was being able to distinguish between potentially beneficial and detrimental styles of humor. Being aware of the negative types of humor is important because when a person’s humor is detrimental to his or her self-esteem it may be the result in that person suffering from something more severe, such as depression or denial. Another important point from this chapter is that research has generally indicated that there is little correlation between humor production and humor appreciation. This demonstrates that although some people are capable of creating humor successfully, that does not mean that those people necessarily enjoy or find various kinds of jokes and cartoons funny. Humor production may be better thought of as a social skill or creative ability rather than a predisposition toward all types of humor. Lastly, I found the idea that people express their individual personalities through humor to be important. For example, it was found in a study that extraverts express humor in different ways and enjoy different types of humor compared to introverts. This is important to realize because it explains a reason for agreeable people having a friendlier style of humor while hostile individuals tend to demonstrate humor in more of an aggressive manner. If a person can figure out what type of personality a person has, it is easier to understand what type of humor that person will use. This realization may be useful in certain social situations where one is trying to impress someone or is meeting someone new for the first time.
An aspect that fit best into my group’s Playdoh theory is that different people are able to demonstrate different preferences for humor. This idea is the reason that my group preferred the Social and Cognitive theories for humor versus the Psychoanalytic and Incongruity theories. The ladder two theories were too narrow for defining the various aspects relating to humor appreciation. Nevertheless, one aspect that does not agree with my group’s Playdoh theory is the notion that humor may be used as a defense mechanism to cope with feelings of anger and anxiety. This idea is consistent with Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory. Freud was one of the first to demonstrate the idea that humor may be used as a defense mechanism and because my group rejected the entire idea of his theory we in a sense rejected this idea of humor. Incorporating some aspects of Freud’s theory, such as this one, would probably make our Playdoh Theory more plausible.
Personality has a lot to do with the same that one perceives and reaction their world. Thus it is possible for others to make a prediction about one’s behavior in a given situation based on their personality. Personality psychologists try to understand not only extreme personality traits but also traits that fall in-between the two extremes, sense of humor being one of these traits being a sense of humor. What having a sense of humor means is an abstract idea. With the 19th century humor has become viewed as one of the most desirable personality traits. Seen as more emotionally stable and likeable, and a need to more scientifically or more preciously define humor has been stressed. A sense of humor can relate to many of the different dimensions already studied. Like creating and responding to mental play within everyday situations like puns, wit, irony. Saying that individuals have a sense of humor can be say because of different components like to the ability to comprehend jokes and humorus stimuli, the way we express humor or mirth, ability to create humor, and understand and appreciate humor, use of humor as a coping mechanism, their memory of humorous situations, and their tendency to seek out situation in the present. Furthermore, how much these dimensions are habits of behavior within one’s life.
Similarly there are differences in the prevalence of humor within one’s life. In studying individual humor appreciation, psychologist try and understand using their favorite joke to test what their patients unresolved needs might be as well as personality traits. The most recent and comprehensive test created is the Ruch Factor-Analytic investigation, which test three different components of humor. First, incongruity-resolution humor, which is jokes and cartoons which the incongruity within the punch line can only be resolved by information from an outside source. Nonsense humor, has a incongruent element but relates to the joke structure rather than the incongruent content. Finally sexual humor, composed of jokes and cartoons that contain obvious sexual themes within is content. In response to weaknesses within the Ruch’s constructed tests, researchers created self-report measure of sense of humor is prevalent for getting at humor which cannot be measured by humor appreciated tests. Within Svebak’s sense of humor questionnaire, there were suggested that individual differences in sense of humor involve variations in three separate dimensions instead of using humor ratings on jokes and cartoons. Meta-message sensitivity, or the ability to take an “irrational mirthful perspective on sitautions or seeing the world as it might be not as it is”. Furthermore, the enjoyment of humor and humorous roles within everyday situation, and finally the emotional tolerance or an individual’s tendency to laugh frequently in a wide range of situations. Recently, more specific questionnaires have been developed. The Situation Humor Response Questionnaire, using laughter and smiling as an indictors of mirth within everyday situations, The Coping Humor Scale, rating the use of humor to cope with stress and ability to not take life as seriously. The Humor Style questionnaire, were created for research on humor mental and physical health, if humor is really beneficial to our health and well-benefit. Forcing on issues like aggressive and self-defeating humor.
The book states, which I agree with, that humor is ability. The book goes on to argue that the ability to perceive humor incongruities to create funny jokes, stories, and draw humor of situations, is like solving a math problem or creativity. However when we say that people have a sense of humor, it is because we have seen their habits of using humor in a multiplicity of situations, do aggressive humor or humor at inappropriate times count. The book and real life experiences say no, it must be linked within “positive connotations” However, humor as we have seen repeatedly seen is hard to define, both Ruch’s work and self-reported questionnaires help us understand and agree on what we call humor.
Our “z” theory, “the swarm theory” kinda works in this as the concept. As I have always stated, I see the flying of birds and laughing of humans to be analogous. Every bird must know when they will fly, and usually birds within a flock will fly to the same stimuli. Similar, humans typically laugh at or find humor in similar situations. However, we all have different dimension for humor. The weakness here is that not everyone finds humor in a stimulus, or don’t use humor at all, and every bird is going to fly based on their perception of a stimulus.
Before reading this chapter, I was under the impression that I would know how to define a sense of humor. We all know what a sense of humor is yet have trouble describing it. Nearly 40 pages later, I am left with no answer and really no clear description of what exactly a sense of humor is. Maybe it’s because I’m tired and have a headache, but I really just did not like this chapter overall – I’m a little bitter about it, can you tell?!
Anyway, my favorite part of the chapter was probably the suggestion that sense of humor as a creative ability of aptitude. The sections goes on to say that processing incongruities, emitting humor (through stories, jokes, etc.), and eliciting laughter out of others is very much a skill. I totally agree with this because we all know those people who are extremely funny in most any context as well as those who are, for lack of a better word, boring and dry. Like the text points out not only in this chapter but in previous chapters as well as discussions we have had in class, a sense of humor is what attracts us to certain people. Because we are attracted to some people and not others, it is evident that a sense of humor is a skill and that there are various types of senses of humor.
I really did not like the section in the book where it began talking about the scales used to measure one’s sense of humor. Throughout this whole section, I felt like I was dragging my feet through a mix of molasses, honey, and caramel and couldn’t get out! Don’t get me wrong, I like research but this was just too much for me at least in this moment!
With my bitterness and distaste for this chapter aside, I did find a few things interesting and memorable:
Under the personality correlates of the 3WD Dimensions (I generally didn’t care for this either, but…) on page 203 it talks about a study where the participants were asked to rate the degree to which criminals should be punished for specific crimes. They found that individuals who prefer incongruity-resolution humor chose harsher punishments. That paragraph also states that older people who are generally more conservative enjoy incongruity-resolution humor more than their younger, more liberal counterparts do. Later on, it is explained that incongruity-resolution humor coincides with conservative attitudes/values whereas nonsense humor coincides more with liberal values and imagination.
I will also remember that people who are considered toughminded enjoy sexual humor more than those who are tenderminded. This makes perfect sense to me because typically, toughminded people are less aware of the possible consequences that sexual humor can place onto others whereas tenderminded people seem to be more aware of others’ feelings and how sexual humor may affect others.
I also found the section about comedians and their personalities interesting. Stereotypically, comedians are said to have psychological problems, particularly depression. (I have never heard of this by the way…?) However, after reviewing literature on this topic, the author points out that this stereotype has been debunked and comedians use humor more as a defense and coping mechanism.
This chapter relates to my PSSC “Z” theory because one’s sense of humor influences social interactions with others. As I stated before, as well as the book and class discussion, a sense of humor is what draws people towards you and it also helps guide us to individuals who we will form meaningful relationships with. In our theory, we suggest that humor does not exist without social contact of some sort whether it be in person, through television, from thinking of a past incident we found humorous, etc. With that in mind, it became obvious after reading this chapter that the idea of a sense of humor is very much a social construct and therefore would not exist without social beings to define it!
Terms used: incongruity-resolution, toughmindedness, tendermindedness, 3WD dimensions, nonsense humor, sexual humor, sense of humor
Personality has to with an individual’s habitual way of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and reacting to the world. Our behavior is influenced by situational factors, for example, telling jokes at a party rather than a funeral. In this chapter I found Ruch’s factor-analytic investigations the most interesting because the three factors he came up with that account for humor appreciation. The first one is incongruity-resolution humor (INC-RES) which comprises joke and cartoons in which the incongruity can be introduced by the punch line and also can be resolved by available information inside the joke. The second factor is called nonsense humor (NON) which is also related to joke structure rather than content. The jokes and cartoons have an element of incongruity, but the incongruity is not fully resolved, giving it the appearance of making sense without having to do so. Lastly, but not least the third factor is called sexual humor (SEX) and is composed of jokes and cartoons containing obvious sexual content themes, indicating that people are usually consistent in the degree to which they either like or dislike sexual humor. Moreover, people enjoy understanding jokes but find enjoyment out of incongruity as well.
Furthermore, Ruch also used people’s responses to humor and found out that there was a negative correlation between individuals who find a particular joke to be extremely funny do not necessarily rate it as low on aversiveness, for example a racist/sexist joke can be viewed as funny but also aversive. In addition, funniness and aversiveness reflect individual’s cognitive evaluations of humor stimuli, rather than their emotional response which is demonstrated by the amount of smiling and laughter displayed.
On another note, the concept I found least interesting in this chapter was that of questionnaires, because I believe that people can express their sense of humor better in self-report. In addition, it limits the person’s ability to show their sense of humor, because for the most part the SHRQ is defining sense of humor in terms of laughter frequency only. I did like the four dimensions displayed for humor style questionnaire though. The first dimension being affiliative humor which refers to the tendency to say funny things, tell jokes, and engage in spontaneous witty banter, in order to amuse others, to form relationships and decrease tension. Second is self-enhancing humor which refers to the tendency to maintain a humorous outlook on life even when alone, and to be frequently amused by incongruous situations in life, to maintain a humorous perspective even when faced with stress and being able to use humor as a way of coping during stressful times. The third dimension is called aggressive humor which is the tendency to use humor merely for the purpose of criticizing/manipulating others using sarcasm, teaing, ridicule or other forms of humor that can be potentially offensive. Lastly, self-defeating humor which involves the use of excessively self-disparaging humor, which attempts to amuse others by doing or saying funny things at one’s own expense and laughing with the crowd when being ridiculed.
One thing I will remember is Svebak’s sense of humor questionnaire because it is comprised of three separate dimensions that are said to show individual differences in a person’s sense of humor. The first one is meta-message sensitivity or the ability to take an irrational, mirthful perspective on situations, seeking the social world as it might be rather than what it is. The second dimension is called personal liking of humor which deals with the humorous role. Lastly, there is emotional permissiveness, or the tendency to laugh frequently in a wide range of situations. Although I don’t agree with how it only measure positive aspects I do think it is a valid measure to understanding the majority of individual’s sense of humor.
The second thing I will remember according to the state-trait cheerfulness is that individual differences are based on innate, habitual differences in cheerfulness, seriousness and bad mood according to each person’s sense of humor. Trait cheerfulness is an affective trait or temperament involving a prevalence of mirth and mood, and a tendency to smile and laugh easily. On the other hand, trait seriousness is a habitual frame of mind or mental attitude toward the world, comprising of a tendency to perceive even everyday events as important, a tendency to plan ahead and set long term goals, a preference for activities that have a rational purpose, and a sober, straightforward communication style that avoids exaggeration and irony (pg. 214). In addition, trait bad mood is an affective disposition involving a prevalence of sad, desponent, and distressed moods, generally ill-humored interaction style such as grumpy or gouchy and a negative response to cheerfulness-evoking situations and people.
Finally I will remember the concept of the three dimensions of humor under early factor analytic studies. The three consist of: sexual versus nonsexual, simple versus complex, and personal versus impersonal. Results showed that extraverted people generally like sexual and simple jokes more, while complex and nonsexual jokes were preferred by introverts.
My theory is the “Z” theory which best fits with Svebak’s sense of humor because according to his three dimensions te first of these (meta-message sensitivity) is related to the cognitive component, having to do with non-serious outlook and an ability to shift perspective in a creative manner. The second dimension personal liking involves playful attitudes and a lack of defensiveness toward humor, and lastly but no least the third dimension emotional permissiveness relates to the positive emotion of mirth and its expression through laughter.
To be honest, I really enjoyed reading this chapter. I have always wondered how people might define a sense of humor, or what makes a sense of humor. I found the Ruch’s Factor Analytic Investigations to be the most interesting. I think that this study explains the types of senses of humor the best because it studies the humorous stimuli and populations across the board, rather than just one group being studied. I also liked that Ruch also took into account the incongruity theories and Freud’s theories into his SEX and INC-RES sections of his study. After doing a factor analysis of these studies, Ruch constructed the 3WD, which assesses the individual’s ratings of funniness and assertiveness of jokes. After doing so, Ruch discovered that the type of people that are telling the jokes in social situations seem to be more conservative. I also liked how the chapter represented humor as an ability. I think that there is a distinct difference between people who have a sense of humor, and those that do not. For example, extraverts favor sexual based themes rather over jokes based on construct, which are what introverts favor.
One section that I found to be uninteresting was the Svebak’s sense of humor questionnaire. I think that out of all the studies, this would be the easiest to fake because the individual is self-reporting, therefore they might try to make themselves funnier than what they actually are. Since a Likert-type scale is being used, the individual can rate themselves to the highest degree, which doesn’t help in the study of humor. I also agree with Jennawes when she stated that the 3 dimensions used in Sveback’s questionnaire are too narrow to incorporate into all of the dimensions of the psychology of humor.
One of the things that I will remember after reading this chapter are the Eysenck meanings for sense of humor. Qualitative meaning is described as when saying someone has a sense of humor because he or she laughs at the same thing we do. Quantitative meaning is when a person laughs a lot and is easily amused. Productive meaning is when a person tells a joke in order to be the life of the party. Though these three senses of humor are not highly correlated with each other, I think they are a simple way of describing a sense of humor.
Another thing that I will remember is the personality characteristics of professional humorists. I think that this takes a different approach to why people have a sense of humor, because it looks at a person’s background, such as their education, family life, and personality structure. For example, many comics indicated that they were the “class clowns” earlier in school, which would coincide with the educational and personality background. In addition, gaining approval from others would fit into the social aspect of humor.
Lastly, I will remember the overall concept of sense of humor. Having a sense of humor is accompanied by having desirable qualities and characteristics, which is seen as a positive trait to possess. Additionally, humor is viewed a form of mental play which takes many forms by using sarcasm and canned jokes, which a person with a sense of humor will most likely possess.
This chapter relates to my Z-Theory, which is the anti-Freud theory because it uses questionnaires in some sections. By using a questionnaire, the individual is able to self-report their feelings of humor, rather than taking into account the underlying sexual themes in humor. I believe that most people don’t want to come off as being an overly sexual person, therefore they may not rate themselves as high on the questions dealing with sex and sexual jokes. This chapter does not relate to my Z-theory because a large part of it deals with Eysenck, who according to him Freud’s theory combined elements of all three of the components used in Eysenck’s theoretical model of humor.
I found the section “How Many Different Senses of Humor Exist?” very interesting. This was interesting to me because I have thought about this previous to taking this class. This topic is something I’ve always wondered about. Can we really put everyone’s individual sense of humor into a certain category? In Kohler and Ruch’s factor analysis of 23 self-report scales, they found two factors relating to sense of humor. One was cheerfulness and the other was seriousness. Cheerfulness has to do with extroversion and seriousness has to do with psychoticism (greater psychoticism = lower seriousness/greater playfulness). This study also showed that humor production is not necessarily related to humor appreciation. Back to my question, sense of humor can be seen as humor appreciation, humor production, and/or a result from cheerfulness and seriousness.
The least interesting section of the chapter, to me, is “Self-Report Measures of Sense of Humor Dimensions.” Although this section is important, it just seems like it could be shortened to just the point of each measure. This section is long and drags on. There are good and important explanations in this section but it was not that interesting. It was just hard for me to read because I didn’t really see a point. It’s good to know the measures to refer to them or as an easy explanation for a certain perspective of sense of humor.
I think one of the most useful parts of this chapter will be “Sense of Humor as Styles of Humorous Conduct.” I think this will be useful in describing someone’s humor. Up until now we have been able to say someone is sarcastic or uses incongruity but now we can add that they are socially warm or competent and get a sense of what that means. The bipolar factors define each other for example, to say someone’s humor is boorish means that it is not reflective and vice versa.
Another useful section is “Sense of Humor as an Ability.” I think this section is helpful to realize that some people may be able to develop humor better than others due to factors of their personality. One part of this section even says that “humor creativity should be viewed as a type of social skill” (218). A main example used was self-monitoring. People who are high in self-monitoring find it easier to develop humor.
I also think “Personality Correlates of the 3WD Dimensions” will be useful. This section provides us with more ways of describing a type of humor. INC-RES (incongruity-resolution humor) and NON (nonsense humor) are discussed. INC-RES was found to be better liked by more conservative and authoritarian people and NON was found to be better liked by sensation-seeking people.
I think this chapter fits into my Z theory, PSSC, in a social aspect. A main part of the PSSC theory is social interaction and personality has a great deal to do with who you choose to interact or associate with. Also, who chooses to interact with you. Extraversion was a recurring personality trait in this chapter having to do with humor. Extraversion is also important in social interactions. Just as it may be easier for extraverted people to make friends, many people are attracted to a “good” sense of humor which is related to extraversion.
Of the entire chapter, I thought that the section about Hans Eysenck was the most interesting. I like to be able to categorize things, and he had three dimensions of humor that I thought were broad enough to encompass everything, these three dimensions were Sexual vs Nonsexual, Simple vs Complex, and Personal Vs Impersonal. Studies done by Eyesenck showed that extroverted people were more likely to prefer sexual and simple jokes, while introverts were more likely to prefer complex and nonsexual jokes. I thought this was really interesting because I think it says something about people with those personality traits. I found myself wondering why these distinctions would occur. Perhaps extroverts prefer simple sexual jokes because they are more likely to hear them in social situations? It is not that extraverts are less intelligent than introverts, so perhaps introverts just do a lot more private thinking, and so enjoy a more complicated form of entertainment, simply because they do not always have the distractions that an extravert would in social situations.
What I found the least interesting were the various different tests and measures. I just felt like there were a lot in the book and in looking at them, not all of them are even legitimate ways to test and look at humor, so I felt a little bit like talking about these measures was unnecessary.
I do think that some of the tests were useful, such as Ruch’s Factor Analytic Investigations. This actually yielded results that can be looked at. He had three stable factors and they were: Incongruity Resolution Humor, which is when the punch line can be resolved by facts presented earlier in the joke and is abbreviated INC-RES. The next is nonsense humor (NON-RES) which is more based on structures and less on content, and is a joke that is not fully resolved, in that it makes sense in the joke, but would not make sense in a different situation. The last is Sexual humor (SEX) this has obvious sexual content, and it was found that people were fairly consistent in what they enjoyed or did not enjoy about sexual jokes. This goes back to my earlier question, about introverts and extroverts, because this implies that an extrovert would enjoy a simple, more sexual joke both in social situations and by themselves, which puts a dent in the ideas I had earlier. In addition to the three stable factors, there are two response factors to humor that Ruch came up with. They are Positive enjoyment or aversiveness.
A test that I think was legitimate was the Personality Correlates of 3WD. This also relates to Ruch’s Factor Analytic Investigations. This found that people who are high on sensation seeking enjoy nonsense humor more than incongruity resolution humor. It also found that incongruity resolution humor about sex correlated positively with conservatism and tough-mindedness. Which was a bit of a surprise because I would have thought that those who are conservative would be have a negative correlation with sexual humor. It also found that nonsense sexual related humor correlated positively with disinhibition and sensation seeking which was not surprising to me.
The last thing I think will be helpful is the section on Sense of Humor. It pointed out a lot of helpful things that clarified this section for me. There were two perspectives through which we looked at sense of humor. The one that I liked better was Hehl and Ruch’s version. They had seven components to what makes up a sense of humor. They were:
1. Ability to comprehend
2. The way humor is expressed
3. Ability to create humor
4. Appreciation of jokes
5. How much they seek out jokes
6. Memory for Jokes
7. Using humor for coping
My theory was the Swarm Theory. There are a couple of different parts of humor that relate to our theory. The first one is from Hans Eyesenck and the three things that make for good sense of humor pairings. They are Qualitative, which is how much the pair laughs at the same things, the second is quantitative, which is whether or not the pair is easily amused. The last is productive, which is whether or not they are the ‘life of the party.’ This is very social which relates well to the Swarm theory, which is all about how people interact with each other in humorous situations.
The next section would be humor as an ability, this section talks about how being humorous is a talent just like singing, and sports. In our theory, the person who is the dominant person in the group would be the one with the highest ability for humor.
It is hard to say what did not fit in our theory, I would say that there is not really anything in this chapter that does not fit into our theory, because our theory is essentially about interaction between people in a group. Sense of humor is a very attractive trait found in friends and lovers, so it is a very socially important thing. The individual, as mentioned before, with the best ability for humor is the dominant one in the group. These are traits that are very key parts of my groups theory.
Of the various aspects of personality and sense of humor in chapter seven of the textbook, I found the section on humor as an ability to be the most interesting. Humor as an ability is the ability to perceive humorous incongruities, to create jokes, funny stories, and other humorous productions, and to make other people laugh is viewed as a skill. Research has shown that people with higher scores on a measure of self-monitoring as compared to those with lower scores, produced responses that were rated significantly more witty on both humor production tests. I enjoy being around people that are humorous and are often considered to be the “life of the party.”
The section that I found to be the least interesting included the section on humor styles questionnaire. I thought this was the least interesting because I feel like it would be very hard for anyone to explain and describe their humor through answering a series of questions about it. Some people have a humor that is very hard to describe and understand. Therefore, I feel like self-reports would be the best option to understand and grasp people’s humor.
The first thing I read about in the chapter that will be useful was the section on different senses of humor. The book states that there are a plethora of apparently distinct trait dimensions in regard to humor. It goes on to state that there are three factors of humor appreciation measured with the 3WD, numerous constructs measured by many different self-report humor tests, five styles of humorous conduct assessed by the HBQD and an unknown number of components of humor production ability. I was first overwhelmed by all this information, but realized that of course there are so many different styles or ways to measure them because every individual is different in their style of humor.
The second thing I will remember is that tough minded people generally enjoy sexual humor more than those who are tender minded. In my own life I can immediately think of the people that enjoy sexual humor and those are the people I would characterize as being hard headed. They are the type of people that I like to push their buttons on topics and ask them questions when they think something is funny why they think it’s funny. The hard headed people usually don’t widen their horizons to sometimes grasp why other people may be offended by certain jokes whereas myself I often think about how people could be offended or emotionally hurt by someone’s humor.
The third thing I will remember from this chapter is the section on self-report measures of sense of humor dimensions. The textbook states that self-report measures may be more valid approach for assessing certain aspects of humor that are not tapped by humor appreciation tests. We’ve learned that a sense of humor tends to be a very desirable trait and research participants might not be able to be objective enough when rating their own sense of humor. This makes sense because everyone would usually like to think that their sense of humor is great and highly desirable to those they surround themselves with.
This chapter fits into our Z theory “Playdoh” because our theory primarily focused on social and cognitive theories rather than psychoanalytic and incongruity theories. I agree that different people demonstrate different preferences towards humor.
This chapter was of interest to me because it tapped into humor with regards to aspects of personality. I found the section on the state-trait cheerfulness inventory the most engaging because it related personality traits with temperament; two aspects which are intertwined. Based on the research done by Ruch, individuals who are typically described as having a "good sense of humor" are those who are generally in a cheerful, positive mood, and tend to have a playful, non-serious attitude toward life. On the other hand, those individuals who were categorized as commonly in a bad mood showed the opposite, and were higher in neuroticism and negativity. Although this may come as common sense, (one would expect a person in a good mood to be more apt to exhibit mirth, playfulness, and smile and laugh more frequently) I liked how it related the common personality traits associated with these particular moods to personality/temperament traits. I also liked this section because it reflects just how important these traits can be when choosing friends and/or a mate. People enjoy being in the company of those who are in a positive, cheerful mood and often attribute mirth and "good sense of humor" to these individuals; this in turn will give these persons an advantage over others in this area.
I didn't find the section on the studies on comedians and personality styles particularly of interest, much less convincing. The research done does not support the view of professional comedians having a depressed or psychologically disturbed lifestyle. I would agree in some circumstances that humor might be an attempt to "mask" feelings of anxiety, depression, isolation, and deprevation (from earlier events in life) but this is not the complete story. Many comedians are humorous individuals based on a completely different measure, and by having positive life experiences, they enjoy using humor to enhance the lives of others. Although some of the research done on comedians versus actors (Fisher and Fisher) did reveal some of the comic tendencies may have originated from early family dynamics, I believe a broader range of variables in personality must be investigated to find such research conclusive.
I think three things in this chapter which will help me to better understand personality as it relates to the psychology of humor would be the research done by Ruch on the incongruity-resolution humor (INC-RES) and nonsense humor (NON). I found it interesting how personality types relate to different responses in humor. While more conservative types of individuals prefered the INC-RES, those who were more "free spirited" and high on sensation seeking enjoyed the "zany" NON types of humor. I found this to be interesting on how different personality types percieve humor. I also found Svebak's sense of humor questionnaire (SHQ) interesting because he seeks to investigate how humor emerges in a "social world" and not simply from canned jokes or cartoons. Svebak also focuses on measures of creativity, fantasies, and imagination in humor which I believe plays a crucial role. I also think I will take away information from the humor styles questionnaire because of how the different aspects relate to real life situations (for example, self defeating humor which attempts to amuse others by putting oneself down in the process - I have seen this on multiple occasions when people try to "save face" or to deny that a stressful event or weakness is bringing them down emotionally).
In regards to what area of this chapter best relates to our group's theory (the Swarm Theory), I would agree the section on INC-RES and NON (Ruch studies) because the INC-RES group focus on incongruity, aggression, and resoultion in terms of humor, and our theory is largely centered on that. I would also agree that the SEX factor in the Ruch studies plays a role because of our group's agreement on some psychoanalytic basis (and the repressed sexual undertones in humor). The section which least relates to our theory would be probably that on the tests assessing humor in terms of crystallized intelligence as compared to fluid intelligence, because these relate back to more of a cognitive process which is not a large part of our theory.
The section that I found the most interesting was Personality Characteristics of Professional Humorists. I was really surprised to find that the study done by Janus found that comedians are likely to be angry, suspicious, and depressed and that their childhoods all tended to be not very happy. I usually think of comedians being very intelligent, happy, wise-cracking people, so to read those results was kind of shocking for me. I wasn’t surprised to see, however, that Janus found comedians tend to be more intelligent. I’ve always thought that in order to be a successful comedian or comedy writer, you had to be smart. I also found it surprising that a lot of the comedians in the Janus study were described as shy among sensitive and empathetic, especially when I think about stand-up comedians. I would find it very hard to believe that comedians who do stand-up in front of crowds of people are shy. Another interesting aspect of this section was the findings of the study done by Fisher and Fisher that said comedians develop their skills from childhood because their parents were not affectionate, and humor is used as a coping or a defense mechanism for dealing with their childhood.
There wasn’t one specific section that I found uninteresting, but I did find that this chapter was harder to follow and took longer to read because of all the different tests used for self-report measures that were being thrown at me. I found it hard to keep them all straight, and I thought it was a lot of information to take in at one time. There was one piece of information that I didn’t necessarily agree with: on page 222 it says, “Overall, a sense of humor seems to be a characteristic of extraverts rather than introverts.” I can use myself and a few people that I’m close to as an example for why don’t really agree with it. It’s easy to say and easy to assume that extroverts maybe have more of a sense of humor, but I consider myself to be introverted and some of friends are too, and I consider myself and my friends to have very good sense of humor. But I can understand why there’s evidence to support that statement and why people would think that extraverts have a better sense of humor, but I don’t think it’s necessarily true.
I thought that the research that several psychologists were conducting about the association between humor and other forms of creativity was especially interesting. A conclusion was made that humor and other creative activities are dissimilar, but they do have some of the same mental processes. The production of humor does in fact take creativity, but creativity can exist without being funny. So maybe humor is a very special type of creativity.
Another important aspect of this chapter, I thought, were the 3WD Dimensions and Ruch’s Factor-Analytic Investigations. There were three main factors that were found to explain variance humor when being researched. The first is Incongruity-resolution where the punch line produces incongruity and resolution can be found in what was said before the punch line. The second is nonsense humor which is basically incongruent humor without the resolution, just enjoying the joke for its bizarreness. And the third is sexual humor where jokes have an obvious sexual content or theme. I thought it was interesting that Ruch predicted that nonsense humor is enjoyed by individuals who enjoy more unstructured stimuli while incongruity resolution humor might be found to be funnier by people who enjoy more structured humor.
One last thing that I thought was interesting was the fact that when we think of a sense of humor, we think of something fun, lighthearted, and not too serious, or at least I do. However, when the author talks about the four main dimensions, he talks about two senses of humor that are more unhealthy and detrimental. Aggressive humor which can be used to criticize and has potential to be offensive and/or inappropriate. And Self-defeating humor which is producing humor at the expense of one’s own self. I thought that it’s important to see that humor isn’t always seen as a positive or enjoyable thing, especially when it’s used in these two ways.
My Z-Theory group was the Equilibrium theory group, and we didn’t really focus on or put any thought into individual differences when it comes to humor. But the author talks about his Humor Styles Questionnaire that differentiates between “beneficial and detrimental” humor styles, and I thought that the two healthier dimensions of humor—affiliative and enhancing—could go along with our Z-theory. Affiliative is “the tendency to say funny things, to tell jokes, and to engage in spontaneous witty banter, in order to amuse others, to facilitate relationships, and to reduce interpersonal tensions.” For example, when I’m with my friends, we’re always laughing at ridiculous things or reminiscing about funny occurrences that have happened to us in the past, and that’s the relationship that I have with them. So whenever I’m with them, we make each other laugh and tell jokes to maintain our relationship that we have, and to have a fun social interaction. Enhancing humor is the other healthier dimension, which is “the tendency to maintain a humorous outlook on life even when one is not with other people, to be frequently amused by the incongruities of life, to maintain a humorous perspective even in the face of stress or adversity, and to use humor in coping.” In our Z-theory, we mostly discussed a social balance with others around us, but in this case with this dimension it’s like keeping a sort of balance for yourself personally. Also, within the category of Sense of Humor As an Ability, we create and use humor successfully by responding to certain social cues, and that humor can actually be considered a social skill. For example, those who use humor at inappropriate times in a social setting can sort of offset the social balance, and it’s an awkward situation. But those who use humor at an appropriate time and appropriate context are more successful at humor because by using it correctly, it’s not necessarily awkward and it maintains social balance.
I thought that the section on the Personality Characteristics of Professional Humorists was very interesting. A commonly held belief is the professional comics are usually depressed, unhappy people who use humor as a way of dealing with their lives and putting a front on to disguise their own unhappiness from other people. Despite one study done by Samuel Janus in the 70’s, there is little evidence for this, but other studies have shown there are similarities in many professional comedians. Usually their humor develops in their early childhood as a way to gain attention an acceptance from classmates or family members. This section was especially interesting for me because I have a friend who has been trying to pursue comedy and has even spent a semester at Second City in Chicago learning techniques of comedy and how to become a better comedian. The book said that usually the mother of these comedians is usually unkind or unsympathetic, less involved and more controlling, and wanted their children to take responsibility for their actions. Their fathers were usually more passive than fathers of children who were not comedians. For my friend, this was completely opposite. Her mother was pretty passive, while the description the book gave for the mother was pretty much spot on for my friends father. I thought this was odd that her parents were opposite of what the book said, but I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t necessarily matter which parent has which characteristics, but just that these certain characteristics were coming from her parents collectively. I wish that this study would have mentioned how many female comedians compared to male comedians were included in this study, because this might have affected the results. In the study done by Janus there were over 4 times as many males compared to females in the study, and I wasn’t sure if these were similar populations. If this was the case and there were more males than females, since my friend is a female, she might look to her parents differently than a male so this might account for the opposite roles of the parents.
Although I didn’t really enjoy reading the section on the five main self report measures (Svebak’s Sense of Humor Questionnaire, the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire, the Coping Humor Scale, the Humor Styles Questionnaire and the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory) that are used when trying to measure a sense of humor and it’s dimensions, I did learn a few important concepts from it. I learned that there are four main types of humor that people use, affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-defeating (which I will talk about more later). I also learned that a sense of humor is not just the ability to make a humorous perspective about a situation (a meta-message sensitivity) but also enjoying humor and a person’s tendency to laugh at many situations. This section also discussed how it is difficult sometimes to use self-report studies because it’s hard for people to be objective about their own sense of humor. Most people this that they’re funny, so they might overestimate their own sense of humor. There is also a positive correlation between extraversion and a high score on the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire. Also, not surprisingly, people with high cheerfulness are more likely to smile and laugh and are seen as having a good sense of humor.
I always think it’s interesting when the book mentions correlations between traits or personality characteristics and types of jokes that they enjoy. For example, the book mentions that people who have more conservative views like safe jokes, while liberals enjoy sick or sexual humor more. Although these pieces of information are interesting, the book also mentions that a lot of the time, these studies is weak and unreliable, and that more thorough research needs to be done.
Also, I thought it was interesting how the book elaborated on what exactly a sense of humor is. It is not just the ability to create jokes, but also to comprehend jokes, express mirth, appreciate jokes, seek out sources that create mirth, remembering jokes, and their ability to use it as a coping mechanism. All of these different things bring about whole new areas of research and broadens the entire field of humor psychology.
Finally, I’ll remember Ruch’s Factor-Analytic Studies and how he classified three types of jokes, incongruity-resolution (INC-RES) Nonsense (NON), and sexual jokes (SEX). Using these types of humor, Ruch found that certain people tend to like and dislike each type. For example, people who were conservative and authoritarian liked INC-RES humor and found NON humor aversive. Also, Ruch found that enjoying/not enjoying a certain type of humor might influence your thoughts or beliefs on other things. An example of this would be that people who enjoy INC-RES humor think that people need to be severely punished for crimes, and people who enjoy NON humor the most tend to have a great appreciation for abstract art. This makes sense because if a person enjoys humor that is sort of bizarre and doesn’t necessarily make sense, they might also enjoy art that is more open for interpretation than being straightforward.
My groups Z-theory was the Equilibrium theory, which basically proposes that humor is used to create a harmonious environment in social situations, and also to create an internal balance in the individual, similar to a defense mechanism. On page 211, the book describes affiliative humor as “the tendency to say funny things, to tell jokes, and to engage in spontaneous witty banter, in order to amuse others, to facilitate relationships and to reduce interpersonal tensions”. The book then describes a type of humor called “self-enhancing” humor which is when an individual uses humor in their entire outlook on life. This can be done in a social context or alone, and helps the individual deal with being overwhelmed by their own stress in life. I think that these two types of humor summarize the foundation of our Z-theory pretty well. Both types (affiliative and self enhancing) work to create a happy balance within the context that humor is being used, whether in a social or pseudo-social situation, or within the individual themselves. Affiliative and Self-Enhancing humor are described in the book as being two ways that are healthy and beneficial and shows how people can adapt given their situation. However, these two types are not the only two, the book also give two detrimental types of humor, aggressive and self-defeating. These types can also usually be tied into our theory, given how they are used. For example, if a person uses aggressive humor to make fun of a person in an out-group, they can enhance cohesion and positive feelings within their own in-group, as long as it is understood that the entire group agrees with certain things that the out-group doesn’t believe or have. Self-defeating humor is when a person makes fun of themselves to amuse others. With certain people, this might be okay, because although they are making themselves the “butt” of their own jokes, it often is amusing to the group (creates a positive environment) and makes the group become more accepting of the person. People may not even consciously or strategically choose the type of humor that they use, it just happens spontaneously.
Personality, as aspect of psychology that I feel very mixed about, has a profound influence on humor. There is not one thing that is universally funny, not one thing that everyone could agree is just hilarious. Everyone has a different taste in humor, finds unique things funny. Personality is interesting because it is so pervasive but so abstract. Our personality is everything about us, to be cheesy it's what makes us us. But today there are hundreds of theories arguing over how to organize the "function" of personality if you can call it that, arguing even over the words to use to describe things that we experience and interpret instantly. For example our book struggles to come up with a good word for the emotion elicited by humor, but settles on mirth. So how much analysis, how many factors are weighed and consciously or unconsciously considered when we say "Yea he was a good guy"? Who knows? Sometimes it seems to me that personality is so abstract that if psychology wants to maintain any of its integrity as a science it should not go near personality with a ten foot stick. But so many psychologists seem so eager to go down the personality road and it seems that many times their theories and models become so convoluted that is more accurate and effective to just regard personality armed with intuition alone.
Anyway enough of that...Personality may be a good way to study humor because they both seem to be so original and unique in each person. Eysenck described three analysis of the phrase "a good sense of humor," the quantitative (laughs a lot, in a good mood most of the time) the qualitative (subjective, finds similar things humorous as those making judgment) and the productive (book uses phrase "life of the party," someone who produces humor from everyone else). The tough part of research, especially in humor, is operationally defining some variables to measure. How do you measure joke appreciation? Is the volume or duration of laughter an indication of how much emotional response a person in having to stimulus, and in the area of personality, can we predict what kind of person would find a particular stimulus funny?
Factor analysis is a very common type of research done on personality to develop personality models and assess correlated behaviors. Eysenck used this technique and presented a collection of humorous stimuli to participants. Participants were asked to rank order the stimuli according to what they thought was funniest. Eysenck found that correlated items seemed to line up in 3 dimensions, sexual vs non-sexual; simple vs complex (sounds familiar); and personal vs impersonal. I guess Eysenck also correlated his findings with some of his own personality measures and found that those who liked simple and sexual related jokes were more likely to rank as "extroverted" and those who enjoyed complex non-sexual jokes seemed more likely to test as an "introvert." Interesting information but pretty useless if you ask me, and that is pretty much my opinion of personality psychology as a whole, with a few exceptions.
Feingold had an interesting concept of humor; that humor was a kind of intelligence and that some have an aptitude and some are simply without as much "talent." While I find his actual research methods bunk I am interested in the concepts of memory for humor and humor cognition. They are described as being akin to crystallized and fluid intelligences respectively. This is interesting to me, we know jokes and rehearsed comedic bits that we can perform for a laugh. This concrete pre-stored version of humor is memory for humor, while our ability to notice, and more importantly recognize as humorous and laugh at, unplanned uncued events is humor cognition. I guess my first thought about this concept was a stand up comedian. They have an act that they prepared, put a lot of work into and want to present.(memory for humor) But then half-way through the show they are being heckled or not getting laughs at all so they have to think on their feet and draw upon their environment for humorous stimuli.(humor cognition)
In reading and reviewing this chapter, I actually found a few topics that were enchanting to me. Sense of humor as an ability struck my attention due to the fact that the researchers were trying to determining if having the ability to perceive incongruities, being the creator of funny jokes and stories, and having the ability to make others die laughing was in fact a skill that a person can acquire. Usually people who develop these skills are seen as comedians or someone that partakes in some sort of script writing. There was a study done by Feingold and Mazzella that assessed verbal humor and wittiness. They tested memory for humor in which was perceived as crystallized intelligence. Also Humor cognition in which was believed to be fluid intelligence. This was tested by the participants joke comprehension and various tests of humor reasoning. The results indicated that verbal intelligence was correlated with humor cognition meaning that a person who is creative in his/her linguistics’ related to humor is seen as being funny. Now looking at this test, I ask the question how can one develop such a skill of having an outstanding sense of humor? I think that there are a lot of factors associated with actually developing this sort of skill. First, I think a person needs to be in the presence of comedic people, which is supported by Robert Turners study that examines environmental cues social aspects as well. All my life I have been around hysterical people from preachers, lawyers, doctors, and crazy family members. By being in the mere presence of them, the great spirit of humor and positive senses of mirth have no choice but to fall on you. If you want to engage in this crazy conversation humor you must be creative and quick to analyze a situation and say something that keeps that humor fire trimmed and burning. You really don’t want to say anything stupid because that will cause them to shift the focus of humor toward your stupid or nonsense comment. We refer to this as actually being the butt of the joke and they take turns making wise cracks about you. I said all that to say that al lot of the things we learn in this book actually apply in this situation such as being able to perceive ironic statements, incongruity, sarcastic comments and others are acquired just by CHILLAXIN people who do so. LOL
On the same token the other topic that intrigued me was that of personality characteristics of professional humorist. Most of the professional comedians indicated that they developed their comic thoughts and behaviors early in childhood. The common biased opinion of must people is that comedians are depressed and angry at the world and they use comedy as a coping strategy or a defense mechanism to actually hide behind how the feel. Even the psychoanalytic approach study done by Samuel Janus in a sense supported that notion. Based on his Wechsler Adult intelligence Scale professional comedians are angry, suspicious, and depressed. I think that there are actually a lot of other things to be cognizant of when looking at the results of this study. Well some comedians actually talk about funny experiences, people they may have come across, or things that people say or do. All of these don’t have to be negative, depressing, and display hatred toward the world. I don’t know if the researcher took into consideration of the various moods they are in. Everybody has a positive or negative mood depending on the situation and how the wind blows. Also I would like to know if she took at sample of a broad range of comedians because some comedians do impersonations which usually don’t show hatred, or ventriloquists typically aren’t angry individuals. This ties in to the state and trait cheerful inventory because determining personality traits involve individual differences which are trait cheerfulness, trait seriousness, and trait bad mood. Trait cheerful has the tendency to act as a good-humored interaction style, smile and laugh easily, and a composed view of life circumstances. Trait serious on the other hand has a habitual way of thinking about things in the world and also has a straight forward communication style. Finally trait bad mood usually has an affective predilection of sad and depressing moods, generally with ill-humor interaction styles, and have a negative response to cheerful evoking situations and people.
Getting of my soap box, the part I found to be of lesser interest to me was probably the Svebak Questionnaire and the situational humor response questionnaire. It’s really hard to determine how personality comes into account as it pertains to having a sense of humor because there are so many factors that need to be taken into account. First of all, it’s hard to get questions that don’t send forth some sort of bias estimator as well as focusing the questions that cover the broad topic on hand. You run the risk of having confounds and your data being bias. For example the SHRQ was criticized for focusing on laughter frequency causing this to not gain an accurate read of view on sense of humor.
If I were to pick three things in this chapter I would consider to be beneficial to me understanding psychology and humor, I would say having and actually understanding what a sense of humor is could be a start. The definition has expanded over the time to involve more behavioral traits and different types of mirthful ideas. One must maintain a positive connotation as well as display positive characteristics and have the ability to create and enjoy humor. A sense of humor is also conceptualized by various components in which are a habitual behavior pattern, ability, temperament trait, an aesthetic response, attitude, a world view, and coping strategy. Its essential to know that a sense of humor could have qualitative meaning, quantitative meaning, and productive meanings. Ruch research on personality can be beneficial as well in understanding humor. It is important to make the distinction between tough/tendermindedness because they help determine how a person appreciates and initiates different aspects of humor. Tough-mindedness is highly correlated with some INC-RES sexual humor and that it is positivity correlated with conservatism as well as authoritarian principles. Tendermindedness is associated with empathizing with others, sentimentality, tolerance and democratic views. Last but not least the various sense of humor styles are essential due to the fact they help us do what we do best in psychology by placing people in categories that would help us identify individuals. The styles basically were reflective, sarcastic, irreverent or sardonic.
Having went on a PERSONALITY RAMPAGE JACKSON!!!! This chapter enhances the PSSC theory by incorporating that little creativity aspect and being able to process all sorts of incongruities and ironic things. By being having the capability to do so this allows people to associate you with more positive personality traits as well as evoking a positive mirthful phenomenon. PHHEEEWWW!!!
I really enjoyed reading about individual differences in humor appreciation. I completely believe that a person’s personality has a huge effect on the type of humor a person enjoys. I find it very interesting that there are projective tests that clinicians use to help diagnose their patients and help identify their needs. The text says that most of the research on differences in sense of humor prior to the ‘80’s was based on this approach but it does still have some popularity today. In this section I most enjoyed reading about Ruch’s Factor Analytic Investigations. Willibald Ruch used a set of 600 jokes and cartoons to complete his study. Ruch “found 3 stable and robust factors that appear to account for most of the variance in humor appreciation and are consistently found across difference humorous stimuli and in all populations studied”. According to the text 2 of the 3 were related to the structural aspects of the humor and not the themes. The 3 categories are incongruity-resolution humor (INC-RES) which includes jokes where the incongruity can be resolved by info available elsewhere in the joke. The next is nonsense humor (NON), this is when the incongruity can not be fully resolved. These jokes do not make sense. The third is sexual humor (SEX) and these contain obvious sexual content. Ruch developed the 3WD humor test to assess ones ratings on funniness and aversiveness of jokes on the three factors. According to the text numerous studies have examined correlations between the 3WD test and a variety of personality traits. High funniness ratings across all three factors was shown to be weakly correlated with extraversion and high aversiveness scores are weekly correlated with neuroticism. This shows that people with more negative emotions such as anxiety, depression and guilt tend to like all forms of jokes less. It’s also been shown that total funniness scores on the 3WD is negatively correlated with religious fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Ruch has shown that conservative and authoritarian personality traits are positively correlated with funniness ratings of INC-RES humor and with aversiveness ratings of NON humor. It’s also been shown that people who are high on sensation seeking enjoy NON humor more that INC-RES humor. And that NO humor is found to be positively correlated with openness to experience.
I really didn’t have a least favorite part of this chapter. I found parts of each section interesting so I can not choose 1 part that I do not like.
I think one thing I’ll remember from this chapter is from sense of humor as styles of humorous conduct. I found Craik and Ware’s study using the HBQD extremely interesting. Researchers were able to get a general perception on what is means for someone to have a good sense of humor. Positively related to the concept were good natured wittiness, cheerful disposition and skillfull humor ability and negatively related were aggressiveness, inappropriate and maladroit attempts at humor.
I also really enjoyed reading about the personality characteristics of professional humorists. I found it interesting that Fisher and Fisher found significant differences between the comedians and the control subjects on themes of good and evil, unworthiness, self deprecation, duty and responsibility, concealment and smallness. They found that most of the comedians developed their sense of humor in childhood and it was theorized that they used humor as a way of receiving attention and approval of otherwise emotionally neglecting parents.
The third thing I’ll remember is a general concept but not something specific from the chapter. It’s that a person’s sense of humor is often highly correlated with their personality. Since I believe that personality is inherent I should not judge another person’s sense of humor so harshly.
As part of the play doh theory group I am looking at the social aspect of one’s sense of humor. The chapter focused on jokes, cartoons and other types of social humor and since the play doh theory believed highly in the social theory of humor this seems to fit closely in with the information in the text.
I really enjoyed reading about individual differences in humor appreciation. I completely believe that a person’s personality has a huge effect on the type of humor a person enjoys. I find it very interesting that there are projective tests that clinicians use to help diagnose their patients and help identify their needs. The text says that most of the research on differences in sense of humor prior to the ‘80’s was based on this approach but it does still have some popularity today. In this section I most enjoyed reading about Ruch’s Factor Analytic Investigations. Willibald Ruch used a set of 600 jokes and cartoons to complete his study. Ruch “found 3 stable and robust factors that appear to account for most of the variance in humor appreciation and are consistently found across difference humorous stimuli and in all populations studied”. According to the text 2 of the 3 were related to the structural aspects of the humor and not the themes. The 3 categories are incongruity-resolution humor (INC-RES) which includes jokes where the incongruity can be resolved by info available elsewhere in the joke. The next is nonsense humor (NON), this is when the incongruity can not be fully resolved. These jokes do not make sense. The third is sexual humor (SEX) and these contain obvious sexual content. Ruch developed the 3WD humor test to assess ones ratings on funniness and aversiveness of jokes on the three factors. According to the text numerous studies have examined correlations between the 3WD test and a variety of personality traits. High funniness ratings across all three factors was shown to be weakly correlated with extraversion and high aversiveness scores are weekly correlated with neuroticism. This shows that people with more negative emotions such as anxiety, depression and guilt tend to like all forms of jokes less. It’s also been shown that total funniness scores on the 3WD is negatively correlated with religious fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Ruch has shown that conservative and authoritarian personality traits are positively correlated with funniness ratings of INC-RES humor and with aversiveness ratings of NON humor. It’s also been shown that people who are high on sensation seeking enjoy NON humor more that INC-RES humor. And that NO humor is found to be positively correlated with openness to experience.
I really didn’t have a least favorite part of this chapter. I found parts of each section interesting so I can not choose 1 part that I do not like.
I think one thing I’ll remember from this chapter is from sense of humor as styles of humorous conduct. I found Craik and Ware’s study using the HBQD extremely interesting. Researchers were able to get a general perception on what is means for someone to have a good sense of humor. Positively related to the concept were good natured wittiness, cheerful disposition and skillfull humor ability and negatively related were aggressiveness, inappropriate and maladroit attempts at humor.
I also really enjoyed reading about the personality characteristics of professional humorists. I found it interesting that Fisher and Fisher found significant differences between the comedians and the control subjects on themes of good and evil, unworthiness, self deprecation, duty and responsibility, concealment and smallness. They found that most of the comedians developed their sense of humor in childhood and it was theorized that they used humor as a way of receiving attention and approval of otherwise emotionally neglecting parents.
The third thing I’ll remember is a general concept but not something specific from the chapter. It’s that a person’s sense of humor is often highly correlated with their personality. Since I believe that personality is inherent I should not judge another person’s sense of humor so harshly.
As part of the play doh theory group I am looking at the social aspect of one’s sense of humor. The chapter focused on jokes, cartoons and other types of social humor and since the play doh theory believed highly in the social theory of humor this seems to fit closely in with the information in the text.