Differentiation of dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at in their relationships to self-reported eye contact aversion
-
Jorge Torres-Marín
Jorge Torres-Marín is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Research Methods in Behavioral Sciences of the University of Granada (Spain) and at the Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology of the University of Barcelona (Spain). His current research interests are humor and laughter, dark personality traits, psychological assessment, and data analysis.
,
Rocío Vizcaíno-Cuenca
Rocío Vizcaíno-Cuenca is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Research Methods in Behavioral Sciences at the University of Granada (Spain). Her current research interests are humor, cyber-sexual violence, psychological assessment, and data analysis.
und
Hugo Carretero-Dios
Hugo Carretero-Dios is a senior lecturer in Research Methods in Psychology at the University of Granada (Spain). His research interests include the test construction/adaptation, and examining the role of humor as a social and individual difference variable.
Abstract
This investigation examines the associations of three dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at with individuals’ self-reported aversion to making eye contact (EC) across different interpersonal scenarios. Data were obtained in a sample of 226 adults (53.5% women). Our results showed that the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) and the joy in laughing at others (katagelasticism) were positively associated with the presence of subjective experiences of EC aversion in both routine (RS) and socially threatening situations (STS). By contrast, the joy in being laughed at (gelotophilia) was unrelated to these mutual gaze-related behaviors. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that gelotophobia gave the best prediction of EC aversion regardless of the type of interpersonal situation (9–23% explained variance) after controlling for the influence of sociodemographics (effect sizes for STS > RS). Katagelasticism did not yield incremental variance in the prediction of any of these EC-related dimensions (<1%), which suggests that its prior correlations emerged due to overlapping variance with gelotophobia. Complementary further analyses revealed a significant interaction between gelotophobia (as a group factor) and the type of interpersonal situation on EC aversion. This revealed that whereas EC aversion in STS would increase as gelotophobia increases, solely gelotophobes—but not medium or lower scorers in gelotophobia—showed difficulties in maintaining EC effectively in RS. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the previous literature on EC, social behaviors, and laughter-related dispositions.
About the authors
Jorge Torres-Marín is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Research Methods in Behavioral Sciences of the University of Granada (Spain) and at the Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology of the University of Barcelona (Spain). His current research interests are humor and laughter, dark personality traits, psychological assessment, and data analysis.
Rocío Vizcaíno-Cuenca is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Research Methods in Behavioral Sciences at the University of Granada (Spain). Her current research interests are humor, cyber-sexual violence, psychological assessment, and data analysis.
Hugo Carretero-Dios is a senior lecturer in Research Methods in Psychology at the University of Granada (Spain). His research interests include the test construction/adaptation, and examining the role of humor as a social and individual difference variable.
Acknowledgment
We thank Raúl Medina-Rico for assistance with data collection.
-
Research funding: This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [Project PSI2016-79812-P].
-
Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
References
Carretero-Dios, Hugo, Willibald Ruch, Diana Agudelo, Tracey Platt & René T. Proyer. 2010. Fear of being laughed at and social anxiety: A preliminary psychometric study. Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 52. 108–124.Suche in Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, Simon. 1995. Mindblindness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4635.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Bindemann, Markus A., Mike Burton & Stephen R. H. Langton. 2008. How do eye gaze and facial expression interact? Visual Cognition 16(6). 708–733. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506280701269318.Suche in Google Scholar
Brauer, Kay & René T. Proyer. 2018. To love and laugh: Testing actor-partner-and similarity effects of dispositions towards ridicule and being laughed at on relationship satisfaction. Journal of Research in Personality 76. 165–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2018.08.008.Suche in Google Scholar
Chen, Hsueh-Chih, Yu-Chen Chan, Willibald Ruch & René T. Proyer. 2011. Evaluating the reliability and validity of a traditional Chinese version of the PhoPhiKat-45. Psychological Testing in Taiwan 58. 119–145.Suche in Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob. 1988. Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Suche in Google Scholar
Domes, Gregor, Lisa Marx, Ines Spenthof & Markus Heinrichs. 2016. The German version of the Gaze Anxiety Rating Scale (GARS): Reliability and validity. PLoS One 11(3). e0150807. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150807.Suche in Google Scholar
Ďurka, Robert & Willibald Ruch. 2015. The location of three dispositions towards ridicule in the five-factor personality model in the population of Slovak adults. Personality and Individual Differences 72. 177–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.08.045.Suche in Google Scholar
Dursun, Pınar, İlker Dalğar, Kay Brauer, Ercüment Yerlikaya & Réne T Proyer. 2020. Assessing dispositions towards ridicule and being laughed at: Development and initial validation of the Turkish PhoPhiKat-45. Current Psychology 39. 101–114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9725-2.Suche in Google Scholar
Gillespie-Lynch, Kristen, Rebecca Elias, Paola Escudero, Ted Hutman & Scott P. Johnson. 2013. Atypical gaze following in autism: A comparison of three potential mechanisms. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 43(12). 2779–2792. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1818-7.Suche in Google Scholar
Hietanen, Jari K., Jukka M. Leppänen, Mikko J. Peltola, Kati Linna-aho & Heidi J. Ruuhiala. 2008. Seeing direct and averted gaze activates the approach–avoidance motivational brain systems. Neuropsychologia 46(9). 2423–2430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.02.029.Suche in Google Scholar
Hofmann, Jennifer, Tracey Platt, Willibald Ruch & René T. Proyer. 2015. Individual differences in gelotophobia predict responses to joy and contempt. SAGE Open 5(2). 215824401558119. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015581191.Suche in Google Scholar
Iizuka, Yuichi. 1994. Prediction of adult-onset schizophrenia from childhood home movies of the patients. American Journal of Psychiatry 147(8). 1052–1056.10.1176/ajp.147.8.1052Suche in Google Scholar
Ivanova, Alyona, Irina Makogon, Ekaterina Stefanenko, Sergey Enikolopov, René T. Proyer & Willibald Ruch. 2016. Русскоязычная адаптация опросника гелотофобии, гелотофилии и катагеластицизма PhoPhiKat [the Russian-language adaptation of the questionnaire for gelotophobia, gelotophilia and katagelasticism PhoPhiKat]. Voprosy Psikhologii 2. 162–171.Suche in Google Scholar
Kleinke, Chris L. 1986. Gaze and eye contact: A research review. Psychological Bulletin 100(1). 78–100. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.100.1.78.Suche in Google Scholar
Langer, Julia K., Thomas L. Rodebaugh, Andrew R. Menatti, Justin W. Weeks & Franklin R. Schneier. 2013. Psychometric properties of the Gaze Anxiety Rating Scale: Convergent, discriminant, and factorial validity. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy 43(1). 49–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2013.804116.Suche in Google Scholar
Larsen, Randy J. & Todd K. Shackelford. 1996. Gaze avoidance: Personality and social judgments of people who avoid direct face-to-face contact. Personality and Individual Differences 21(6). 907–917. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869(96)00148-1.Suche in Google Scholar
Lee, Yen-Lin., Hsueh-Chih Chen & Yu-Chen Chan. 2019. The attentional bias of gelotophobes towards emotion words containing the Chinese character for ‘laugh’: An eye-tracking approach. Current Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00563-9.Suche in Google Scholar
Platt, Tracey. 2008. Emotional responses to ridicule and teasing: Should gelotophobes react differently? Humor – International Journal of Humor Research 21(2). 105–128. https://doi.org/10.1515/humor.2008.005.Suche in Google Scholar
Platt, Tracey & Willibald Ruch. 2010. Gelotophobia and age: Do dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at predict coping with age-related vulnerabilities? Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 52(2). 231–244.Suche in Google Scholar
Proyer, René T. & Willibald Ruch. 2010. Enjoying and fearing humor: Personality characteristics of gelotophobes, gelotophiles, and katagelasticists. Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 52(2). 148–160.Suche in Google Scholar
Proyer, René T., Tracey Platt & Willibald Ruch. 2010. Self-conscious emotions and ridicule: Shameful gelotophobes and guilt free katagelasticists. Personality and Individual Differences 49(1). 54–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.03.007.Suche in Google Scholar
Proyer, René T., Rahel Flisch, Stefanie Tschupp, Tracey Platt & Willibald Ruch. 2012a. How does psychopathy relate to humor and laughter? Dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at, the sense of humor, and psychopathic personality traits. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 35(4). 263–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2012.04.007.Suche in Google Scholar
Proyer, René T., Monica Neukom, Tracey Platt & Willibald Ruch. 2012b. Assessing gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism in children: An initial study on how six to nine-year-olds deal with laughter and ridicule and how this relates to bullying and victimization. Child Indicators Research 5(2). 297–316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-011-9127-1.Suche in Google Scholar
Renner, Karl-Heinz & Timo Heydasch. 2010. Performing humor: On the relations between self-presentation styles, gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism. Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 52(2). 171–190.Suche in Google Scholar
Ruch, Willibald. 2009. Fearing humor? Gelotophobia: The fear of being laughed at introduction and overview. Humor – International Journal of Humor Research 22(1/2). 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2009.001.Suche in Google Scholar
Ruch, Willibald & René T. Proyer. 2008. Who is gelotophobic? Assessment criteria for the fear of being laughed at. Swiss Journal of Psychology 67(1). 19–27. https://doi.org/10.1024/1421-0185.67.1.19.Suche in Google Scholar
Ruch, Willibald & René T. Proyer. 2009a. Extending the study of gelotophobia: On gelotophiles and katagelasticists. Humor – International Journal of Humor Research 22(1/2). 183–212. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2009.009.Suche in Google Scholar
Ruch, Willibald & René T. Proyer. 2009b. Who fears being laughed at? The location of gelotophobia in the Eysenckian PEN-model. Personality and Individual Differences 46. 627–630. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2009.01.004.Suche in Google Scholar
Ruch, Willibald, Olga Altfreder & René T. Proyer. 2009. How do gelotophobes interpret laughter in ambiguous situations? An experimental validation of the concept. Humor – International Journal of Humor Research 22(1/2). 63–89. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2009.004.Suche in Google Scholar
Ruch, Willibald, Jennifer Hofmann, Tracey Platt & René T Proyer. 2014. The state-of-the art in gelotophobia research: A review and some theoretical extensions. Humor – International Journal of Humor Research 27(1). 23–45. https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2013-0046.Suche in Google Scholar
Schneier, Franklin R., Thomas L. Rodebaugh, Carlos Blanco, Hillary Lewin & Michael R. Liebowitz. 2011. Fear and avoidance of eye contact in social anxiety disorder. Comprehensive Psychiatry 52(1). 81–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2010.04.006.Suche in Google Scholar
Torres-Marín, Jorge, René T. Proyer, Raúl López-Benítez & Hugo Carretero-Dios. 2019a. Assessing individual differences in the way people deal with ridicule and being laughed at: The Spanish form of the PhoPhiKat-45. Current Psychology. Advance online publication.10.1007/s12144-019-00503-7Suche in Google Scholar
Torres-Marín, Jorge, René T. Proyer, Raúl López-Benítez, Kay Brauer & Hugo Carretero-Dios. 2019b. Beyond the Big Five as predictors of dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at: The HEXACO model and the Dark Triad. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 60. 473–483. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12563.Suche in Google Scholar
Tottenham, Nim, Margaret E. Hertzig, Kristen Gillespie-Lynch, Tara Gilhooly, Alexander J. Millner & B.J. Casey. 2014. Elevated amygdala response to faces and gaze aversion in autism spectrum disorder. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9(1). 106–117. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst050.Suche in Google Scholar
Vizcaíno-Cuenca, Rocío, Raúl Medina-Rico, Jorge Torres-Marín & Hugo Carretero-Dios. 2019. Evidencias preliminares de fiabilidad y validez de la versión española de la GARS [Preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the Spanish versión of the GARS]. Paper presented at the IV National Congress of Psychology, Official Association of Psychologists of Spain, 21–24 July.Suche in Google Scholar
Wieser, Matthias J., Pauli Paul, Georg W. Alpers & Andreas Mühlberger. 2009. Is eye to eye contact really threatening and avoided in social anxiety?—an eye-tracking and psychophysiology study. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 23(1). 93–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2008.04.004.Suche in Google Scholar
Wu, Ching-Lin, Chih-Pei An, Lei-Pin Tseng, Hsueh-Chih Chen, Yu-Chen Chan, Shu-Ling Cho & Meng-Ling Tsai. 2015. Fear of being laughed at with relation to parent attachment in individuals with autism. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 10. 116–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2014.11.004.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- Introduction to the “Festschrift for Willibald Ruch”
- Part 1: Festschrift Commentaries
- The demise of the joke
- Computational research and the case for taking humor seriously
- Differential effects of affective arousal and valence on humor appreciation in female university students
- Humor comprehension and appreciation: an analysis of Italian jokes
- The state-trait model of cheerfulness and social desirability: an investigation on psychometric properties and links with well-being
- The fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) in adults and children: testing trait-congruent false memories in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm
- Differentiation of dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at in their relationships to self-reported eye contact aversion
- The humor transaction schema: a conceptual framework for researching the nature and effects of humor
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- Introduction to the “Festschrift for Willibald Ruch”
- Part 1: Festschrift Commentaries
- The demise of the joke
- Computational research and the case for taking humor seriously
- Differential effects of affective arousal and valence on humor appreciation in female university students
- Humor comprehension and appreciation: an analysis of Italian jokes
- The state-trait model of cheerfulness and social desirability: an investigation on psychometric properties and links with well-being
- The fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) in adults and children: testing trait-congruent false memories in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm
- Differentiation of dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at in their relationships to self-reported eye contact aversion
- The humor transaction schema: a conceptual framework for researching the nature and effects of humor
