Volume 25, Issue 1

Speakers signal sarcastic intent in a variety of ways, including the words they use and the tone of voice they employ. In this paper, we investigate whether facial cues are also used to indicate sarcastic intent. Participants were audio- and videotaped as they engaged in tasks designed to elicit sarcasm. In order to assess how facial cues differed in terms of common ground, participant pairs were divided into pairs of friends and strangers. We provide evidence that sarcasm is also signaled by a variety of facial cues, such as movement of the head, eyes, and mouth, and these cues are more commonly employed by friends than by strangers.

The fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) was examined in its relations to concepts from positive psychology in Austria, China, and Switzerland. It was related to satisfaction with life and Peterson et al.'s (2005) three orientations to happiness; the life of pleasure (hedonism), life of engagement (related to flow-experiences), and life of meaning (eudaimonia). Participants ( N  = 744) completed self-report measures of gelotophobia, satisfaction with life, and orientations to happiness. The results revealed that gelotophobia could be found in all three countries. The participants exceeded cut-off points indicating gelotophobia in Austria (5.80%), China (7.31%), and Switzerland (7.23%). The fear of being laughed at was negatively related to life-satisfaction in all three countries. Gelotophobes described themselves with lower overall estimations of their lives. Gelotophobia was negatively correlated with life engagement (i.e., flow experiences). In China, gelotophobia was also related to a lower life of pleasure and life of meaning. Overall, the results show that gelotophobes do not pursue any of the three orientations to happiness. Interventions from positive psychology (e.g., enhancing satisfaction with life, strengthening the routes to happiness) are discussed as possible treatments of gelotophobia.

Two studies were conducted to examine sex differences in enjoyment of hostile jokes targeting men and women with a focus on examining mediation effects of masculinity and femininity and moderation effects of the jokes' offensiveness. These studies continued to support men and women enjoying jokes targeting the opposite sex more so than jokes targeting the same sex. However, in Study 1, masculinity and femininity mediated these differences for men with higher masculinity related to greater enjoyment of the female hostile jokes and higher femininity related to greater enjoyment of the male hostile jokes. Masculinity alone mediated the differences for women with higher masculinity related to greater enjoyment of the female-targeted jokes and yet, no relationship existed with femininity. In Study 2, both men and women rated the female-targeted jokes as more offensive than the male-targeted jokes. A moderation effect for the jokes' offensiveness occurred for women who rated highly offensive male-targeted jokes funnier than highly offensive female-targeted jokes. No effect for offensiveness occurred for men; men rated both offensive female-targeted and male-targeted jokes equally funny even though they rated the female jokes as more offensive.

An experiment tested the hypothesis that exposure to humorous material prior to taking a difficult math test can inhibit the amount of anxiety associated with the test, and thus enhance performance. In keeping with our hypothesis, participants performed better on a math test after first being exposed to funny cartoons versus non-humorous poems or nothing at all. Mediation analyses suggest that state anxiety mediated the relationship between exposure to humorous cartoons and math performance. Participants who were first exposed to cartoons performed better on the math test because they felt less anxiety while taking the test.

This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective humor processing in two studies. Three cartoon types differing in their logical mechanisms (LMs) and cognitive requirements were presented to participants with high scores on one scale and low scores on the other (empathizers and systemizers): visual puns, semantic cartoons and Theory of Mind cartoons. Empathizers and systemizers were expected to process these cartoon types differently. While empathizers and systemizers did not differ in recognition time and comprehensibility in study one ( N  = 33), empathizers did portray higher funniness scores in study two ( N  = 55). Furthermore, empathizers more often gave emotional/motivational explanations as well as more mentalistic explanations as to why they think a cartoon is funny. In addition, Theory of Mind cartoons provoked the highest number of mentalistic explanations. This shows that stimulus characteristics (such as LMs) as well as inter-individual differences influence whether mentalizing is required and applied to processing humor, and that empathizing and systemizing influence humor appreciation.