Volume 22, Issue 4

Historical as well as contemporary writers across many disciplines have referred to humor as a virtue. However, in psychological research it is not clear in which ways humor can serve (as) a virtue, and for which virtues this holds. The current study addresses this issue from the perspective of lay people's everyday lives. The aims of the study are to investigate (1) how often people achieved each of six core virtues identified by Dahlsgaard et al. (Review of General Psychology 9: 203–213, 2005) by means of humor, also in relation to how important the respective virtue was for the participants, (2) to collect reports of situations where participants actually used humor to achieve any of the six virtues, and (3) to study the use of eight comic styles (Schmidt-Hidding, Europäische Schlüsselwörter. Band I: Humor und Witz, Huber, 1963) within the reported situations. Whereas justice and humanity were the virtues considered most important, the virtues most compatible with humor seemed to be humanity and wisdom. However, it was possible to report situations for each of the virtues. More benevolent comic styles were used more frequently to achieve virtue than more malevolent styles. But whenever malevolent styles, like sarcasm or cynicism, were used, this was disproportionally often the case in order to exert justice.

This study explored gifted children's humor media preferences, explanations of humor funniness, evaluation of their sense of humor, and ability to produce, understand, and figure out riddle “punch lines.” Seventy-four gifted-identified children (40 male; 34 female) ages 7–12 were interviewed. Most media humor exhibited conceptual incongruity or word play with multiple meanings. Children rated themselves high on sense of humor (% = 3.9 of 5). Younger and older children and boys and girls differed only on girls' rating themselves more likely to notice and laugh at funny situations (the spectator role!), F(1, 72) = 6.319, p < .01, and younger children's rating themselves as more often in a bad mood, F(1, 72) = 5.541, p < .05. Most children produced a correctly told joke or riddle and gave accurate explanations of funniness. Boys' funny media examples had more hostile qualities (TV, (χ 2 2, df 1 = 4.544, p < .05); books (χ 2 2, df 1 = 4.381, p < .05). Younger and older groups did not differ in their ability to give humorous examples and to explain humor funniness. That is, even children of age 7–9 were operating at advanced humor levels typically achieved by children of age 12. Implications for encouraging gifted children's humor are discussed.