An examination of the convergence between the conceptualization and the measurement of humor styles: A study of the construct validity of the Humor Styles Questionnaire
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Sonja Heintz
Sonja Heintz received her master’s degree in Psychology at the Saarland University in 2012, and she has since worked in the Section of Personality and Assessment at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She works as a research, administration, and teaching assistant and pursues her PhD. Her main research interests are humor behaviors, individual differences in humor and positive psychological variables, methodology, and measurement.
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Willibald Ruch
Willibald Ruch is a Full Professor of Psychology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests are in the field of humor and laughter, cheerfulness, and smiling. In his doctoral dissertation at the University of Graz (Austria) in 1980, he developed a taxonomy of jokes and cartoons and studied their relation to personality. His more recent work, together with his research team at the University of Zurich, includes humor from a positive psychology perspective, the effectiveness of humor training programs and clown interventions, the ability to laugh at oneself, the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia), and the measurement of humor.
Abstract
The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al. 2003) was developed using a construct-based scale construction approach to measure four humor styles, namely affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating. The present study investigates to what extent the HSQ scales converge with and represent the conceptualizations (i.e., the definitions and construct descriptions) of the four humor styles as outlined by Martin et al. (2003). To this end, 340 participants provided self-reports on the definitions, construct descriptions, and the 32 items of the HSQ. Two multitrait-multimethod analyses yielded a good convergence of the self-defeating humor style, yet for the affiliative, self-enhancing, and aggressive humor styles convergence was lower and they were partly mismatched. The discrimination between the humor styles was mostly supported with the exception of affiliative and self-enhancing. Further, the HSQ scales predicted about two-thirds of the reliable variance in the conceptualizations in multiple regression analyses, so they represented several conceptual elements. Overall, these findings do only lend partial support for the convergence of the HSQ with the original conceptualization of the humor styles. If replicable, this implicates that either the constructs and model of the humor styles need to be adjusted or newly developed, or the HSQ does.
About the authors
Sonja Heintz received her master’s degree in Psychology at the Saarland University in 2012, and she has since worked in the Section of Personality and Assessment at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She works as a research, administration, and teaching assistant and pursues her PhD. Her main research interests are humor behaviors, individual differences in humor and positive psychological variables, methodology, and measurement.
Willibald Ruch is a Full Professor of Psychology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests are in the field of humor and laughter, cheerfulness, and smiling. In his doctoral dissertation at the University of Graz (Austria) in 1980, he developed a taxonomy of jokes and cartoons and studied their relation to personality. His more recent work, together with his research team at the University of Zurich, includes humor from a positive psychology perspective, the effectiveness of humor training programs and clown interventions, the ability to laugh at oneself, the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia), and the measurement of humor.
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©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Laughter in times of uncertainty: Negotiating gender and social distance in Bahraini women’s humorous talk
- A dual-processing approach to the effects of viewing political comedy
- Satire as uncertain territory: Uncertainty expression in discussion about political satire, opinion, and news
- The only thing not known how to be dealt with: Political humor as a weapon during Gezi Park Protests
- An examination of the convergence between the conceptualization and the measurement of humor styles: A study of the construct validity of the Humor Styles Questionnaire
- On the challenges of measuring humor styles: Response to Heintz and Ruch
- Book Reviews
- Salvatore Attardo: Encyclopedia of Humor Studies
- Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey: Humor in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times
- Klaus Vieweg, James Vigus, and Kathleen M. Wheele: Shandean Humour in English and German Literature and Philosophy
- John Rutherford: The Power of the Smile: Humor in Spanish Culture
- Scott Weems: Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Laughter in times of uncertainty: Negotiating gender and social distance in Bahraini women’s humorous talk
- A dual-processing approach to the effects of viewing political comedy
- Satire as uncertain territory: Uncertainty expression in discussion about political satire, opinion, and news
- The only thing not known how to be dealt with: Political humor as a weapon during Gezi Park Protests
- An examination of the convergence between the conceptualization and the measurement of humor styles: A study of the construct validity of the Humor Styles Questionnaire
- On the challenges of measuring humor styles: Response to Heintz and Ruch
- Book Reviews
- Salvatore Attardo: Encyclopedia of Humor Studies
- Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey: Humor in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times
- Klaus Vieweg, James Vigus, and Kathleen M. Wheele: Shandean Humour in English and German Literature and Philosophy
- John Rutherford: The Power of the Smile: Humor in Spanish Culture
- Scott Weems: Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why
