Temperamental basis of sense of humor: validating the state-trait-cheerfulness-inventory in Mainland China

1 Introduction

Sense of humor is conceptualized as a fairly stable personality trait or individual-difference variable, involving a general tendency to engage in humor-related behaviors across a range of situations (Martin 1996). Researchers have been measuring sense of humor as a personality trait for a long time (Andrews 1941; Eysenck 1942; Cattell and Luborsky 1947) and it has proved to be multidimensional (Kuiper and Martin 1996) and related to people’s psychological health (Martin and Lefcourt 1983; Martin et al. 2003; Thorson et al. 1997). In particular, it is perceived as a helpful stress-coping strategy and an important personality characteristic that significantly predicts quality of life (Hampes 1992; Korotkov and Hannah 1994; Martin and Lefcourt 1983).

Various approaches have been developed to locate and measure different constructs of sense of humor, including ability tests, behavioral observation techniques, self-report scales, and humor appreciation measures (see Ruch 1998 for a list of humor measures). However, which humor-related traits should be evaluated as individual-difference variables and which humor measure should be adopted is yet to be determined. Based on the state-trait model of exhilaratability, the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory (STCI) was introduced by Ruch et al. (1996; see also Ruch and Hofmann 2012) to assess the inter-individual and intra-individual differences in the temperamental basis of the sense of humor. It was postulated that cheerfulness, seriousness and bad mood represent actual (state) and habitual (trait) dispositions for lowered (cheerful) and enhanced (seriousness, bad mood) thresholds for the induction of exhilaration or other forms of humor behaviors. In other words, the STCI (Ruch et al. 1996, 1997) incorporates cheerfulness (CH), seriousness (SE), and bad mood (BM) as both traits (STCI-T) and states (STCI-S), which form the affective and attitudinal basis of the sense of humor. There were 5, 6, and 5 trait facets for cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood, respectively. The affective concept of trait cheerfulness (CH) comprised the following 5 facets: a prevalence of cheerful mood (CH1), a low threshold for smiling and laughter (CH2), a composed view of adverse life circumstances (CH3), a broad range of active elicitors of cheerfulness and smiling/laughter (CH4), and a generally cheerful interaction style (CH5). The concept of trait seriousness (SE), as an attitude towards the world and habitual frame of mind, is composed of the six facets of the prevalence of serious states (SE1), a perception of even everyday happenings as important and considering them thoroughly and intensively (rather than treating them superficially) (SE2), the tendency to plan ahead and set long-range goals (and attaining the closest possible harmony with these goals in every action and decision) (SE3), the tendency to prefer activities for which concrete, rational reasons can be produced (thereby considering activities which do not have a specific goal as a waste of time and nonsense) (SE4), the preference for a sober, object-oriented communication style (i. e., saying exactly what one means without exaggeration or ironic/sarcastic undertones) (SE5), and a “humorless” attitude about cheerfulness-related behavior, roles, persons, stimuli, situations, and actions (SE6). The affective concept of trait bad mood (BM) is basically composed of the predominance of three mood states and their respective behaviors. These components are a generally bad mood (BM1), sadness (i. e., despondent and distressed mood) (BM2), and ill-humoredness (i. e., sullen and grumpy or grouchy feelings) (BM4). The other two facets are specifically related to the sad (BM3) and ill-humored (BM5) individual’s behavior in cheerfulness evoking situations, their attitudes towards such situations and the objects, persons, and roles involved. For state dimensions of cheerfulness, seriousness and bad mood (Ruch et al. 1997), a shallower and outwardly directed aspect of hilarity (which merges felt action tendencies, such as being ready to laugh or to have some fun, with states of feeling merry and chipper) is separated from cheerful mood. Similarly, state seriousness is realized by the three facets of earnestness, pensiveness, and soberness. State bad mood consists of the two facets of sadness/melancholy and ill-humouredness. It is assumed that the STCI trait components form dispositions for the correspondent states (Ruch 1997a).

There are several forms of the STCI available for use (see Ruch and Hofmann 2012). The long trait form of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI-T; Ruch et al. 1996) is a 106-item questionnaire (STCI-T<106>) in a 4-point answer format providing scores for the three traits of cheerfulness (STCI–T CH; 38 items), seriousness (STCI–T SE; 37 items), and bad mood (STCI–T BM; 31 items) and their 5, 6, and 5 definitional facets, respectively. The standard trait form (STCI-T<60>) uses 60 items to assess trait cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood with 20 items for each scale. These measures showed good reliability with high Cronbach alpha coefficients (0.86 to 0.96 for the STCI-T<106>; 0.80 to 0.94 for the STCI-T<60>; Ruch et al. 1996) and retest reliability (0.77 to 0.86 for STCI-T<106>, interval of 4 weeks, N=103; 0.73 to 0.86 for STCI-T<60>, interval of 3 weeks, N=68; Ruch et al. 1996) and have been validated in a variety of settings (see Ruch and Köhler 1999, 2007), while there were no gender differences in any of the trait scales, seriousness increased steadily after age 40. No interaction was found between sex and age. The correlations between self- and peer-evaluation also turned out to be sufficiently high (Carretero-Dios et al. 2011; Ruch et al. 1996).

The standard state form (STCI-S <30>) has 30 items in a four-point answer format. The internal consistency coefficients of the STCI-S <30> were satisfactory (alpha coefficients ranging from 0.85 to 0.94; Ruch et al. 1997). No gender differences were found between the three states, while age was correlated significantly and positively with state seriousness. This relationship disappeared (r=0.03, p > 0.05) once trait seriousness was partialled out. Moreover, factor analytic studies of several humor assessment instruments revealed that cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood account for a large amount (52.8 % to 67.8 %) of the sense of humor (Köhler and Ruch 1996; Ruch et al. 1997; Ruch and Carrell 1998). In addition, confirmatory factor analyses by multilevel structural equation modeling showed that the three factors, both as states and traits, can reliably be assessed by the STCI-T (reliabilities of test parcels between 0.75 and 0.91; Carretero-Dios et al. 2011). Variations of these forms were generated for special purposes. The international and English version of the STCI (STCI-T <106i>, STCI-S <45i>; Ruch et al. 1994) was developed to serve the adaptation in different cultures.

The predictive ability of the STCI for affective experiences and behaviors was also proved in several studies. Firstly, the three dimensions (namely, cheerfulness, seriousness and bad mood) were linked to humor styles and personality traits. For example, regarding to four humor styles (two beneficial humor styles – affiliative and self-enhancing, and two potentially detrimental humor styles – aggressive and self-defeating; see Martin et al. 2003), affiliative humor was strongly positively related to cheerfulness and negatively related to both seriousness and bad mood. Self-enhancing humor was also positively related to cheerfulness and negatively related to bad mood, but not significantly related to seriousness. Aggressive humor was significantly negatively related only to seriousness, while self-defeating humor was significantly positively related only to bad mood (Martin et al. 2003). Furthermore, trait cheerfulness was correlated with the socially warm, competent and earthy humor styles (Craik et al. 1996) and with the sense of humor (McGhee 1999; Ruch et al 2011). The Emotional Quotient (EQ) was positively correlated with trait cheerfulness, and negatively correlated with trait bad mood. Trait cheerfulness was positively correlated with social competence, whereas trait bad mood was negatively correlated with social competence (Yip and Martin 2006). A pronounced enhancement of cheerfulness was accompanied by reduced feelings of stress and improved psychological well-being and subjective health. The effects were stronger in subjects with lower levels of trait seriousness (Papousek and Schulter 2008). Similarly, Hofmann and colleagues (2015) found that low trait cheerful individuals profited more from the presence of a laughing virtual companion when watching funny films, lifting their mood, self-rated mood and reported positive experience to comparable levels as individuals high in trait cheerfulness. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder scored significantly lower on trait cheerfulness and higher on trait seriousness (Samson et al. 2013). Individuals with autism spectrum disorder scored significantly lower on trait cheerfulness and higher on trait seriousness (Samson et al. 2013). Secondly, they were reported to be predictive of behaviors in experiments. For example, high cheerful mood states went along with hyper-expressivity, and low cheerful mood states went along with hypo-expressivity (Ruch 1997b). Subjects low in trait seriousness had an overall higher pain tolerance. Subjects with a high score in trait cheerfulness showed an increase in pain tolerance after producing humor while watching the film, whereas subjects low in trait cheerfulness showed a similar increase after smiling and laughter during the film (Zweyer et al. 2004). The intake of a single dose of Kava extract (300 mg; p.o.) led to an increase in state cheerfulness, while the phytopharmacon did not influence state seriousness and bad mood (Thompson et al. 2004). Helping behavior and physical activity were positively associated with cheerfulness (Sarid et al. 2010). Finally, the temperamental basis of sense of humor has been located in comprehensive models of personality, such as the Eysenckian PEN system or the five-factor model (Ruch and Köhler 2007).

Few previous studies examined the relationship between humor and life satisfaction. One Israeli study was found that humor was significantly related to life satisfaction (Littman-Ovadia and Lavy 2012). Another study involving 17,458 German speaking participants found humor to be related with life satisfaction all across the life span with the coefficients in the different age groups ranging from 0.26 to 0.34 with a median of 0.32 (Ruch et al. 2009). These two studies indicate that there is a robust correlation between humor and life satisfaction and it will be of interest to see how trait cheerfulness will stack up.

Since the publication of the STCI in 1996, several empirical studies on this instrument have been conducted in various countries, such as Germany, United States (Ruch et al. 1997), Canada (Martin et al. 2003), Chile (Tapia-Villanueva et al. 2014), Israel (Sarid et al. 2010), Spain (Carretero-Dios et al. 2011) and Romania (Ruch et al. 2011), but no previous empirical studies of the STCI has been conducted and examined in the Chinese context. Thus, the first purpose of this study is to examine the reliability and validity of the STCI in Mainland China. The second purpose is to test whether the STCI can predict life satisfaction.

2 Method

3 Results

4 Discussion

This study generally confirmed the reliability and structural validity of the STCI in the Chinese language version. The psychometric characteristics of STCI-T<60> and STCI-S<30> were satisfactory as reported by Ruch et al. (1996, 1997). All reliabilities of the test parcels were rather high and within the range that is usually expected for reliable scales, with Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from 0.84 to 0.94 for STCI-T<60> and 0.67 to 0.94 for STCI-S<30>. Moreover, factor analyses showed that the trait and state factors could explain 67.5 % and 55.8 % of the total variance, respectively, and supported the three factors as both traits and states, with intercorrelations among the scales generally as expected. In addition, joint factor analyses yielded partial support for the relationship between STCI-T<60> and STCI-S<30>, which was similar to Ruch et al. (1997), i.e., cheerfulness correlated negatively with bad mood across states and traits, and negatively with state seriousness, and bad mood and seriousness correlated positively within states. Above all, the STCI is a reliable research instrument for assessing the temperamental basis of humor in Mainland China.

AS Nevertheless, three findings in this study are different from previous studies. Firstly, state seriousness was positively related to cheerfulness. This may be due to cultural differences. When people are in a serious mood, they take a “humorless” attitude towards cheerfulness-related behaviors, roles, persons, stimuli, situations and actions, thus cheerfulness is negatively correlated with state seriousness. However, in the Chinese culture, people adopt an implicit way in expressing emotions, while in the western culture, people adopt an explicit way (Feng 2007), meaning that in the Chinese culture, consistently serious people may tend to adopt an implicit way in expressing cheerfulness. For example, when they feel cheerful, their serious character may reserve them from expressing it. If they don’t feel cheerful, they may still express a cheerful emotion towards certain cheerfulness-related events or behaviors, so as to respect others’ face (Liao 2003). Secondly, trait bad mood was not significantly correlated with trait seriousness. One possible reason might be that a person with trait seriousness is not necessary one with trait bad mood in the Chinese context. Traditional Chinese people are reserved, serious and intrapersonal (Lin 1994), which does not indicate that they are in bad mood. Finally, in the Chinese context, there are no age differences in any of the trait and state scales, which is different from the results of Ruch et al. (1996). The possible reason is due to the sample chosen. Because the limited age range, the effect of age on the factors is not obvious.

The predictive validity of the STCI was supported by its relationship with life satisfaction. With differences in age and gender controlled, partial correlation revealed that life satisfaction was significantly positively related to cheerfulness and significantly negatively related to bad mood. However, life satisfaction was not significantly related to seriousness. One of the possible explanations is that cheerfulness entails a composed view of adverse life circumstances and a generally cheerful interaction style, which contribute to the positive side of life. However, bad mood consists of sadness/melancholy and ill-humoredness, which is negative side of life. Therefore, cheerful people are more likely to feel satisfied with life, while people who suffer from bad mood may feel unsatisfied with life. These results are similar to the review of Proctor et al. (2008) that positive evaluations of life satisfaction are linked with happiness and the achievement of the “good life,” whereas negative evaluations of life satisfaction are associated with depression and unhappiness. In other words, cheerfulness and bad mood are predictive of life satisfaction. But what could be the explanation for no contribution of seriousness? One possible explanation is that the questionnaire has to do with the very young sample. According to the results of Ruch et al. (1997), seriousness might not play a big role in young college students, but increases around the age of 40. Another possible explanation is that the items of the STCI-T<60> and the STCI-S<30> in this study did not completely correspond to those of Ruch’s edition.

There are four limitations in this study which require mentioning. First, the samples were selected by convenience and it consists only of university students of similar age and social status. Further research should include participants of different ages or professions. Second, the present study relies mainly on self-report measures which may have been influenced by methodological artifacts, such as common method variance. Future research may obtain other sources of data, such as behavioral observations and peer ratings to validate the self-report measures or to replace the results of these measures. Third, although two demographic variables, sex and age, in affecting the factors of STCI were examined in the present research, other potential variables, such as big-five personality traits, were not examined. It may be very interesting to examine if the factors of STCI can be predicted by the big-five personality traits. Finally, in the present study, the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale (TSWLS) was used as the criterion of STCI and the validity test of STCI was insufficient. In order to further test the validity of STCI, it is recommended that humor measures such as Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin et al. 2003) be used in future research.