Abstract
How strongly does humor (i.e., the construct-relevant content) in the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003) determine the responses to this measure (i.e., construct validity)? Also, how much does humor influence the relationships of the four HSQ scales, namely affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating, with personality traits and subjective well-being (i.e., criterion validity)? The present paper answers these two questions by experimentally manipulating the 32 items of the HSQ to only (or mostly) contain humor (i.e., construct-relevant content) or to substitute the humor content with non-humorous alternatives (i.e., only assessing construct-irrelevant context). Study 1 (N = 187) showed that the HSQ affiliative scale was mainly determined by humor, self-enhancing and aggressive were determined by both humor and non-humorous context, and self-defeating was primarily determined by the context. This suggests that humor is not the primary source of the variance in three of the HQS scales, thereby limiting their construct validity. Study 2 (N = 261) showed that the relationships of the HSQ scales to the Big Five personality traits and subjective well-being (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction) were consistently reduced (personality) or vanished (subjective well-being) when the non-humorous contexts in the HSQ items were controlled for. For the HSQ self-defeating scale, the pattern of relationships to personality was also altered, supporting an positive rather than a negative view of the humor in this humor style. The present findings thus call for a reevaluation of the role that humor plays in the HSQ (construct validity) and in the relationships to personality and well-being (criterion validity).
Highlights
Most questionnaire items contain both the construct they intend to measure and additional information, which should measure the relevant content in a variety of circumstances to increase its representativeness
The correlations of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) affiliative and self-enhancing scales were significantly larger with the Humor-HSQ than with the No-Humor-HSQ, indicating that the humor content was more relevant for these HSQ scales than the non-humorous elements
While this only affects the magnitude of the relationships, the consequences are more severe for the HSQ self-defeating scale: This humor style has been implied to be negative, yet both its construct and criterion validities showed that the non-humorous elements determined this humor style more than humor did, and no negative—but rather positive—effects emerged
Summary
Most questionnaire items contain both the construct they intend to measure (i.e., the constructrelevant content) and additional information, which should measure the relevant content in a variety of circumstances to increase its representativeness (see Epstein, 1983). The item contexts should vary so that summing up the items over a scale strengthens the variance due to the core content and more or less averages out the different situations. This additional information might refer to situational contexts, and to states, feelings, or evaluations that specify the core content in more detail. Mostly the variance contributed by the content should be the relevant one
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