How humor styles affect humor comprehension and appreciation: A typological approach

Abstract

There have been many empirical studies on humor styles and humor comprehension and appreciation, but relatively few have directly addressed the relationship between these two topics of humor research, especially studies using a typological approach for humor styles. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine how humor styles are associated with humor comprehension and appreciation using a typological approach. The present study collected the responses of humor styles questionnaires that included ratings of comprehension and funniness of humorous pictures for 962 high school students in Taiwan. The cluster analysis result indicated that there were four humor types of participants: general humor endorsers, humor deniers, positive humor endorsers, and negative humor endorsers. The positive humor endorsers could understand the content of humor pictures better than other types of participants. The general humor endorsers found the humor pictures much funnier than the humor deniers. These findings indicate that humor styles have different associations with humor comprehension and humor appreciation.