Humor Preferences Research Articles

Parental humors importance in supporting families with disabled children

There is a lack of research on the humor preferences and family dynamics of parents of disabled children. To address this gap, this book adopts an unbiased approach to examining these topics. The participants in this study are parents of children with disabilities, aiming to shed light on the connections between humor preferences and family functioning. A total of 77 parents participated in the research. They were asked to complete two surveys: the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) and the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales IV (FACES IV), which assess various aspects of family dynamics. This investigation yielded several interesting findings. Notably, there were significant correlations between positive humor preferences and beneficial family interactions and satisfaction. This research underscores the need for further studies on the relationships between humor preferences and family dynamics among parents of children with disabilities.

Exploring the Influence of Emotional Competence on Humor Styles and Personality Traits

This research aims to uncover the complexities of the dynamics that regulate human behavior and connection with others by investigating the relationships between humor styles, emotional competence, and personality factors. Using a wide range of literature review and empirical research, this study examines how individuals' humor styles, defined by their tendency to affiliate, self-enhance, be aggressive, or dislike themselves, interact with emotional competence and personality characteristics. As a transdisciplinary construct, humor provides various psychological functions and shapes people's emotional experiences and social relationships. The affiliative style, which uses humor to strengthen social ties and relieve tension, has been linked to increased emotional intelligence and extraversion. Conversely, aggressive humor, which includes sarcasm and derision, is associated with weaker emotional competence and greater degrees of neuroticism. Emotional competence, which provides for emotional awareness, management, and expression, is critical in balancing the impacts of various humor styles on psychological well-being and interpersonal interactions. Individuals with greater emotional competence prefer to use adaptive humor styles, which promote good emotions and social cohesiveness. In contrast, individuals with lower emotional competence may use maladaptive methods, such as self-defeating humor, as a coping strategy. Furthermore, psychological qualities like extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience influence people's humor preferences and usage habits. Extraverts, for example, are likelier to engage in affiliative humor, whereas neurotic persons may use self-defeating humor as a defense strategy. This study adds to a better understanding of human behavior by illuminating the interaction between humor styles, emotional competence, and personality factors. It also gives insights into how to promote psychological well-being and efficient interpersonal communication.”

Prospective Patient Preferences for Humor in Urologists Treating Erectile Dysfunction: A Survey Study.

Men seeking treatment for sexual dysfunction can experience embarrassment as a result of stigma. This research manuscript presents the findings of a survey conducted to investigate the influence of humor on prospective patients' preferences when selecting a specialist to address erectile dysfunction (ED). The respondents were presented with five pairs of mock urology business cards: one professional and one humorous. A questionnaire was designed and distributed via an online survey platform. Descriptive statistics and Fisher's exact test were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)softwareversion 29 (IBM SPSS Statistics, Armonk, NY) to evaluate age and race associations with card preference. Among the 997 participants, an average of 66.1% (a median of 71.2%) preferred professional cards. Humorous card selection rates ranged from 5.2% to 38.4% compared to 54.0% to 78.1% for professional cards. A statistically significant relationship between age and professional card choice existed in all except the fifth set of cards (p = 0.001, 0.001, 0.001, 0.001, and 0.054). The relationship between race or ethnicity and business card preference was not reported due to an imbalance in demographics, with most participants identifying as Caucasian. A humor-centric approach may not resonate with all individuals seeking treatment for sensitive conditions such as ED. Limitations include the subjectivity of humor, the use of an online survey platform, and the hypothetical nature of this study. Real patients experiencing ED may face stigma and respond to humor differently. This study provides insights into patient preference for professionalism over humor from their urologist but leaves room for the exploration of humor in medical contexts. Future studies could examine the impacts of humor on patient choices in real-world healthcare settings.

PROMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND HUMOR - PERSPECTIVE OF POTENTIAL CONSUMERS

In today’s age, the average consumer is too exposed to marketing materials to pay attention to each one, and billboards can be an expensive investment for companies and can easily go unnoticed. The average consumer uses tools that would reduce his exposure to advertising materials, but the results of this research indicate that even though consumers are overexposed to advertisements, they still believe that humor on billboards is not present enough and that they would like to see it more precisely for the reason that research has shown that the use of humor is rated as likable by consumers. Starting from the basic definition that humor is a form of communication whose goal is to make the interlocutors laugh and cheer up, the aim of this paper was to investigate the opinion of different publics about humorous billboard advertising solutions and to determine the connection between the use of humor as a tool in billboard advertising, the intention to purchase the advertised product /services and raising awareness about the organization and the advertised product/service. The chosen research method is a survey, and it was conducted with an online survey questionnaire, which enabled the quick and easy collection of a larger number of respondents needed for the implementation of the research task. A wide and heterogeneous sample enabled an insight into the opinions of different members of the population, given that they are all exposed to the advertising (humorous) appeal that is the subject of this research. The obtained results indicated a positive effect of using humor in advertising through billboards, more precisely in increasing the visibility of the brand, i.e. the memory of the advertised product, as well as a generally positive opinion about the use of humor in advertising. Most of the respondents confirmed that humor is a good method of attracting their attention and that they like the humorous approach to advertising through billboards. What are the humor preferences of different groups of people, what is the correlation between humorous advertising and brand building, what type of humor attracts the most attention for a certain brand or economic niche, are just some of the possible research topics and directions. Considering the few and scarce literature in this area, the results of this and similar research can bring useful and practical guidelines to professionals in practice for more precise and effective management of advertising campaigns in the future, and to the scientific community a better understanding of the phenomenon of consumer thinking, i.e. a clearer insight into the connection messages and consumer behaviors of the product or service. This work was created as part of the research for the diploma thesis at the university graduate study of Communication Studies, student Ivona Marenić at the Catholic University of Croatia, 2023.

Motivated Social Affordance Judgments of Humor Styles.

Despite the ingratiating function of humor, not all humor is created equal. Individual differences in humor styles may inform perceptions of whether prospective group members afford affiliative opportunities, with affiliative humor being regarded as especially beneficial. In this research, we tasked participants with evaluating social targets espousing different humor styles to identify these targets' abilities satisfy and impede both affiliative and social goals (Study 1) while determining if individual differences in these motives foster heightened preferences (Study 2). Affiliative and self-enhancing humor afforded the most affiliative and self-protection opportunities, whereas aggressive humor afforded more threats. Additionally, higher need to belong heightened preferences for affiliative humor. Results provide evidence for assortative sociality in the identification of optimum group members based on humor displays.

ПСИХОЛОГІЧНІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ СПРИЙМАННЯ РІЗНИХ ВИДІВ ГУМОРУ В УМОВАХ ВІЙНИ

The article addresses the issue of functions and specifics of humorous content during wartime, presenting the results of a study on the psychological features of humor perceiving in wartime conditions depending on humor types. The significance of humor during wartime and the functions that humorous content can perform for groups and communities with different war experience (military, civilians, residents of occupied territories, prisoners of war) are analyzed. The article also presents the results of recent research on the specificity of humor in Ukraine after the start of full-scale invasion. The results of the study on the psychological features of humor perceiving in wartime conditions depending on humor types were presented. The problematic issues that were most often subject to comic reinterpretation and humorous content that left a positive impression and were the best remembered by Ukrainians were analyzed. The article examines how different types of humor (irony, satire, sarcasm, black humor) and humor of different orientations (self-directed or directed at enemies) were perceived. The study reveals a greater inclination toward harsh types of humor, especially humor mocking the enemy. Perceiving of different types of humor by respondents with different experiences of war events and different individual humor styles was analyzed. There was a tendency to perceive positively harsh types of humor (sarcasm, black humor) among respondents with deeper trauma due to wartime events. The study also determined a connection between personal preference for such humor and the dominance of an aggressive individual humor style.

Who does not Find Metaphors Funny? Humor Preferences in Geriatric Patients

Objectives: Humor plays an important role throughout life, including old age. However, appreciating and understanding humor may be hindered due to dementia and late-life depression, two common old age-related diseases. Still little is known about humor preferences among the elderly diagnosed with dementia, depression or both disorders. This study aims to explore humor preferences in elderly participants with those disorders and their influence on the perceived funniness of more and less cognitively challenging verbal jokes.Methods: A total of 36 elderly participants and 39 students (representing a control group) rated 20 humorous and 20 non-humorous examples. To test the differences in the funniness rating between the elderly participants and the control group, both Welch’s <i>t</i>-test and <i>U</i> Mann-Whitney test were used, accompanied with bootstrapped confidence intervals.Results: The study reveals that the elderly participants found both humorous and non-humorous examples funnier than the control group. Elderly participants rated two types higher than the control group: the visual error-based jokes and non-visual metaphor-based jokes. The patients with a single disorder (cognitive disorder or depression) rated the funniness of the examples highest. Out of all participants with a single disorder, those with cognitive disorder rated the examples slightly higher than those with depression.Conclusion: Elderly participants are able to enjoy simple and familiar humor. While the perceived funniness of those with a single disorder may be a result of them using humor as a coping mechanism, such a mechanism no longer works in the case of coexisting dementia and depression.

Federated Learning for Personalized Humor Recognition

Computational understanding of humor is an important topic under creative language understanding and modeling. It can play a key role in complex human-AI interactions. The challenge here is that human perception of humorous content is highly subjective. The same joke may receive different funniness ratings from different readers. This makes it highly challenging for humor recognition models to achieve personalization in practical scenarios. Existing approaches are generally designed based on the assumption that users have a consensus on whether a given text is humorous or not. Thus, they cannot handle diverse humor preferences well. In this article, we propose the FedHumor approach for the recognition of humorous content in a personalized manner through Federated Learning (FL). Extending a pre-trained language model, FedHumor guides the fine-tuning process by considering diverse distributions of humor preferences from individuals. It incorporates a diversity adaptation strategy into the FL paradigm to train a personalized humor recognition model. To the best of our knowledge, FedHumor is the first text-based personalized humor recognition model through federated learning. Extensive experiments demonstrate the advantage of FedHumor in recognizing humorous texts compared to nine state-of-the-art humor recognition approaches with superior capability for handling the diversity in humor labels produced by users with diverse preferences.

Exploring EFL Teachers' and Learners' Perception of L2 Humor: A Case Study of Iranian English Language Institutes

The present paper deals with the perception of Iranian EFL teachers and learners in using humor in language classrooms. To this end, 10 English classes with a population of 70 female and male students and 5 male and female teachers in English language institutes in Esfahan were observed during spring and summer 2019. Using an ethnographic approach, the data were collected through observation and interview. The results showed that both teachers and learners had a positive attitude towards the use of L2 humor in the classroom. Language learners reasoned that having a sense of humor is one of the important qualities a language teacher should possess. The teachers and language learners acknowledged the positive effects of humor such as reducing the distance between teachers and learners, lowering learners' anxiety, boosting learners' retention of the lesson, as well as increasing their concentration and motivation. Moreover, language learners showed a preference for the use L2 humor, course-related humor, and L1 norm-oriented types of humor in their classroom.

Attachment as a predictor of attraction to humor styles

A sense of humor is highly valued in potential mates, although not all types of humor positively impact romantic relationships. In a preregistered study (N = 788), we examined whether adult attachment predicted attraction to humor styles using both frequentist and Bayesian analyses. We found an overall strong preference for positive humor styles that foster emotional closeness and relationship satisfaction (affiliative and self-enhancing) over negative humor styles that reduce emotional closeness and relationship satisfaction (aggressive and self-defeating). As expected, avoidant attachment was associated with relatively more attraction to negative humor styles and less attraction to positive humor styles. Though not consistent with our preregistered hypotheses, anxious attachment was also associated with relatively more attraction to negative humor styles and less attraction to an affiliative humor style, and these associations strengthened as avoidant attachment increased. Thus, insecure attachment was generally associated with greater attraction to humor styles that harm relationships and less attraction to humor styles that foster strong relationships.

Young consumers' views on humorous BELFcommunication

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to gain understanding of how young consumers with varying cultural and linguistic backgrounds experience and perceive humorous Business English lingua franca (BELF) mediated communication used in transit contexts.Design/methodology/approachFor the collection of qualitative data, the present study relies on focus group discussions in three European countries. The data were analyzed by the authors by applying the phenomenographic approach as a method.FindingsYoung European consumers expressed a preference for humor and playfulness in BELF-mediated communication, yet they can be a challenging group to be informed and entertained with humorous BELF communication, as they differ in their taste of humor due to varying language- and culture-based identities. However, BELF as a communication tool was seen as functional and unproblematic by the informants. These informants perceive the role of resonant – wit type of humor in BELF – messages with noncultural references as fulfilling some of the aims of the messages. Yet, the role of comic – wit humor in BELF – messages with cultural references is more challenging to interpret.Originality/valueThe present results bring original viewpoints on the use of humor in cross-cultural corporate communication via a unique perspective of how young consumers' perceive and value humor in BELF-mediated communication.

The traditional sexual script and humor in courtship

AbstractTo account for sex differences in the production, receptivity, and preference for humor in potential mates during courtship, past research has often adopted an evolutionary approach. The present manuscript will attempt to integrate evolutionary explanations with proximal social and cultural influences using the traditional sexual script and ambivalent sexism theory. The results of both Study 1 (N=227) and Study 2 (N=424) suggest that trait masculinity is positively associated with humor production in courtship, while trait femininity is associated with humor receptivity. Study 1 indicated that the traditional flirting style was associated with less humor production by women, and Study 2 indicated that hostile sexism was related to a lower preference for a humor-producing potential partner by men. A sex difference in humor production in potential partners in Study 2 was no longer detectable once trait gender and hostile sexism was accounted for. Taken together, gender roles, over and above biological sex, influence one’s own humor use in courtship and preference for humor in potential partners.

How do extraverts process jokes? An event-related potential study on humor processing

Extraverts and introverts show different preferences for humor regarding different humor types. However, few studies focused on the neurological underpinnings of the connection between extraversion and the stage-wise cognitive model of humor processing. To investigate the influence of extraversion on different sub-stages of humor processing, electroencephalography (EEG) data was collected when participants read and rated jokes and non-jokes. The event-related potential (ERP) data showed a smaller N400 (300–500 ms) but a larger late positive potential (500–900 ms) for jokes than non-jokes, which may reflect lexical association and integrative interpretation in joke processing. The more extraverted group had a larger P2 (200–300 ms) and a smaller N400 than the less extraverted group in response to all the stimuli, which may indicate their different allocation of attentional and cognitive resources to external stimulation. Additionally, the regression analyses showed that the late positivity effects of jokes were positively correlated with the extraversion level. The results could imply extraverts’ controlled processes of cognitive resource allocation for jokes, and suggest the same groups’ attentiveness and motivation for reward stimuli (i.e., jokes). Importantly, our ERP data could support extraverts’ increased exploration for verbal humor from a better temporal aspect for the first time.

Assessing the Temperamental Basis of the Sense of Humor: Adaptation of the English Language Version of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory Long and Standard Form.

The State-Trait Model of Cheerfulness assesses the temperamental basis of the sense of humor with the traits and respective states of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood. Cheerfulness is a dominant factor in current measures of the sense of humor and explains both, the disposition to engaging in smiling and laughter, as well as humor behaviors, and trait seriousness and bad mood are antagonistic to the elicitation of amusement (albeit for different reasons). Several studies have shown the validity and reliability of the STCI questionnaire in German and other language versions (i.e., Spanish). In this study, the English language version with 106 items (STCI-T <106>) was translated, checked for its item and scale characteristics, and tested with a confirmatory factor analysis approach (N = 1101) to investigate the factorial validity of the STCI-T <106> scale. Results show good psychometric characteristics, good internal consistencies, and a fit to the postulated underlying structure of the STCI-T. Then, the standard form with 60 items (STCI-T <60>) was developed and the psychometric characteristics initially tested. In an independent sample (N = 169), the characteristics of the standard form were compared to the parent form and German equivalent. It showed good psychometric characteristics, internal consistencies, as well as a good self- and peer-report congruence. To conclude, the STCI-T <106> is the measure of choice for the assessment of the temperamental basis of the sense of humor and the separate facets of the traits, while the standard form (60 items) allows of an economic assessment of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood, free of context-saturated items and humor preferences.

That's what she said! Perceived mate value of clean and dirty humor displays

Humor is considered a valuable trait when evaluating potential mates, and women demonstrate a preference for men's ability to produce humor. Humor displays as a male mating strategy appear context-dependent, which suggests that women's preferences for certain humor may be contingent on their mating goals. One dimension of humor variability that could approximate men's long- (LTM) or short-term (STM) mating goals is communication of humor that is categorically clean or dirty, respectively, which could influence the humorists' desirability to women. Such displays may differentially signal sexual receptivity. Two studies tasked women with indicating interest in men who generated either clean or dirty humor. Across both studies clean humor producers were preferred when evaluating both the long- and short-term desirability of men, although this preference was larger for LTM evaluations. Study 2 also demonstrated that sociosexually unrestricted women (i.e., those with more permissive sexual attitudes) self-reported greater behavioral attraction toward dirty humorists, a preference mediated by their perceptions of dirty jokes as funnier. Dirty humor production in men and appreciation in women may facilitate respective STM goals. Results of this research provide further evidence that the specific mating context determines the appropriateness of humor use when used as a relational display.

Preferred Styles of Humor across Professions in the Indian Context

Research has shown different uses for different styles of humor for various workplace environments. The present study focused on different styles of humor preferred in different professions as well as gender differences in styles of humor. The psychometric properties of the Humor Styles Questionnaire were also established in the Indian context. A sample of 210 participants (105 males & 105 females) from a range of 7 professions, chartered accountants, computer science engineers, doctors, educators, lawyers, nurses and police officers, filled the Humor Styles Questionnaire. The results reported that males use aggressive humor more than females, whereas females use self-defeating humor more than males. It was also observed that nurses had a high preference for affiliative humor and a very low preference for aggressive humor; doctors and police officers reported a high preference for self-enhancing humor; police officers had the highest preference for aggressive humor; and chartered accountants reported a high preference for self-defeating humor Police officers reported the highest total score on the questionnaire, whereas lawyers reported the lowest score. The reliability of the four components of the questionnaire was found to be high. Factor analysis reported four components with Eigen values higher than 2.

Individual Differences in Irony Use Depend on Context

We investigated individual differences in irony use depending on context. In Study 1, we manipulated contextual factors, including the speaker’s emotion and the listener’s emotion, and assessed the likelihood of irony use. In Study 2, we manipulated the relationship between the speaker and the listener and assessed the rate of irony use with free description. Correlations between participants’ responses to various measures of personality traits and differences in irony use between conditions and mean irony use across conditions were examined. Regulation of interpersonal relationships and preference for supportive humor predicted the differences in irony use between conditions, whereas expressive suppression, self-control, and preference for playful humor predicted irony use regardless of condition. These results confirmed our hypothesis that the speaker’s social abilities about management of interpersonal relationship and tendency toward emotion regulation were associated with individual differences in irony use depending on context and in general, respectively.

The Frog Test: A Tool for Measuring Humor Theories' Validity and Humor Preferences.

The Frog Test: A Tool for Measuring Humor Theories' Validity and Humor Preferences.

Sex Differences in Preferences for Humor: A Replication, Modification, and Extension

Evolutionary-minded scientists have proposed that humor is a sexually selected trait in men that signals mate quality. Indeed, women tend to prefer men who make them laugh and men tend to prefer women who laugh at their jokes. However, it is unclear how robust this pattern is. Here we report a replication of one of the first studies (Bressler, Martin, and Balshine, 2006) to examine the sex differences in preferences for humor receptivity versus humor production. We replicate Bressler et al.'s (2006) findings that men prefer women who are receptive to their humor whereas women prefer men who produce humor. These findings held even after we modified Bressler et al.'s questionnaire for better conceptual validity. Furthermore, using a separate measure designed to assess trade-offs, we found that men viewed humor receptivity as a necessity and humor production as a luxury when they were asked to create an ideal long-term partner. For women, it was just the opposite. These results bolster the claim that sexual selection has shaped sex differences regarding preferences for a prospective mate's sense of humor and that what one means by "sense of humor" can vary.

임상치과위생사의 유머감각이 직무만족과 이직의도에 미치는 영향

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of humor sense on job satisfaction and turnover intention in clinical dental hygienists. Methods: A self-reported questionnaire was filled out by 277 dental hygienists in Chungnam from May to June, 2014. The instrument for humor sense was adapted from Thorson and Powell instrument by Lee and 20 questions. Each question included humor making and preference for humor and scored by Likert 5 scale. Cronbach's alpha in the study was 0.869. Job satisfaction was adapted from Smith Job Description Index and included task requirement, collaborate support, manager support, promotion, and wages and score by Likert 5 scale. Cronbach's alpha in the study was 0.827. Turnover intention was developed by Lee and 5 questions was score by Likert 5 scale. Crobach's alpha was 0.712 in the study. Results: The average of humor sense was 3.33, average of job satisfaction was 3.20, and average of turnover intention was 3.05. The sense of humor had a positive effect on turnover intention. Conclusions: This result will provide the high productivity and high quality of life in clinical dental hygienists. Humor sense is the important factor that support the job satisfaction and decrease the turnover intention.