Volume 34, Issue 4

There is increasing evidence of specific medical and psychological benefits associated with humor within diabetes populations. The benefits of maintaining good diabetes control are also well established. The more general relationship between humor and diabetes control however remains unexplored. The purpose of this study was to examine if there was a difference between people with diabetes with an A1C ≤ 6.99% versus those ≥7.0% on four disparate types of humor. The sample consisted of 284 participants, 65.5% with type 1 diabetes, 68.3% female, 89.1% Caucasian, and 68.7% college educated. Participants completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) and were divided into two groups, A1C ≤ 6.99% and A1C ≥ 7.0%. The A1C ≤ 6.99% group scored significantly higher on both types of positive humor, affiliative humor ( P <  0.01) and self-enhancing humor ( P <  0.05). There was no significant difference between participants on either type of negative humor, aggressive humor ( P  > 0.05) or self-defeating humor ( P  > 0.05). Results indicate that good control (A1C ≤ 6.99%) is associated with positive humor. These findings provide evidence that there is an association between American Diabetes Association recommended levels of control and positive humor styles. Implications regarding positive humor and good diabetes control are discussed.

Previous research highlights the potential benefits of engaging with depressive Internet memes for those experiencing symptoms of depression, a phenomenon that can be explained by the humorous interpretation of depressive stimuli and perceived social support through symptom normalization. We examined whether individuals experiencing depressive symptoms would differ from controls in their interpretation of Internet memes related to depression, whilst incorporating the mediating role of humor style. N =78 individuals with self-reported depressive symptoms (≥24 on CES-D) and 67 controls (≤23) rated the emotional valance, humor, relatability, shareability, and mood-improving potential of 32 depressive and control memes (depicting neutral/positive social commentaries). Measures of depression and humor style were also completed. Perceived humor, relatability, shareability and mood-improving potential of depressive, but not control, memes were greater amongst individuals displaying depressive symptoms. However, differential ratings of humor, shareability and relatability were mediated by the extent of ones self-defeating humor style. These outcomes further evidence benefits of interacting with depression-related Internet memes for those with depression.

Over the past two decades a significant body of research has examined the effects of individual differences in humor style or humor occurrences (e.g. specific jokes, memes) on behavior. However, research examining whether these individual differences in humor styles influence the effects of humor occurrences on work behaviors has been scant. Drawing on Conservations of Resources (COR) theory, this paper seeks to fill this gap by examining one form of humor, self-deprecating humor, and its interaction with self-defeating humor style to influence task persistence behavior. Findings from an experimental study of 124 management students show that self-deprecating humor can bolster a person’s persistence at an assigned task. Findings also show that individual differences in self-defeating humor style influence the relationship between self-deprecating humor and persistence. Individuals low in self-defeating humor style show a significant increase in persistence while those high in self-defeating humor style did not show any significant increase.

Given the relevance of humor for psychosocial assessment and promoting positive functioning, it is important to understand the relationship between humor and personality. A recent framework for describing individual differences in humor posits eight comic styles that can be measured using the Comic Style Markers (CSM). In total, 665 Portuguese adults ( M age  = 32.1 years) completed the CSM and Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory. CFAs supported modeling the CSM as a bifactor model. Bifactor indices suggested a general humor factor could be interpreted as a unidimensional construct, but that CSM items are multidimensional. A hierarchical analysis showed the styles could be represented at several levels of abstraction. A SEM analysis suggested certain styles had distinct associations with personality dimensions. These findings suggest that the use of certain styles (namely wit, sarcasm, and cynicism) was related to individual differences in temperament and character beyond a person’s overall humor potential.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between intelligence and humor ability in a Turkish sample. The sample included 217 middle-school students with a wide range of intelligence measured by a Turkish intelligence test (ASIS). Humor ability was measured using the Humor Ability Assessment Form. Students were instructed to write captions for 10 cartoons that were as funny and relevant as possible. Seven experts rated the funniness of the captions and their relevance to the cartoons, yielding a total of 30,380 ratings (217 students × 10 cartoons × two criteria × seven experts). The findings showed that both general intelligence and the second-level components (verbal ability, visual-spatial ability, and memory) had high correlations with humor ability. Intelligence explained 68% of the variance in humor ability. Among the third-level factors, verbal analogical reasoning was the primary predictor of humor ability ( β  = 0.325, p < 0.001). Humor ability scores significantly differed across intelligence clusters, implying that highly humorous children may be highly intelligent.

The variables of gender and mother tongue are usually considered independently in humor research. This article aims to explore the role of gender and its interplay with mother tongue in the production, reception, and assessment of humor among 10 bilingual, bicultural couples. It investigates whether the gender patterns commonly observed are also evident in these couples’ conversations, namely that women laugh more than men (Mehu, Marc & Robin I. M. Dunbar. 2008. Naturalistic observations of smiling and laughter in human group interactions. Behaviour 145(12). 1747–1780.), that women laugh more about men than the reverse (Jefferson, Gail. 2004. A note on laughter in ‘male-female’ interaction. Discourse Studies 6. 117–133. DOI:10.1177/1461445604039445.), and that men produce more humorous utterances than women do (Ross, Elaina M. & Jeffrey A. Hall. 2020. The traditional sexual script and humour in courtship. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 33(2). 197–218. DOI:10.1515/humor-2019-0017.). On average, the female bilinguals produced 29.6% more laughter pulses and laughed 7.4% more frequently, and their laughter episodes were consistently longer than their partners’. However, the participants’ mother tongue was found to have a stronger influence on their production and reception of laughables than their gender, and the native speakers produced more successful laughables, despite their partners’ high level of L2 proficiency. Interestingly, the couples’ self-assessments often did not match their actual laughing behavior and appeared to be clearly gendered; no couple considered the female partner to be funnier, and several men even questioned their partner’s sense of humor, while male humor was often praised.

This article reports on research on failed humor in French conversation. The aim is to investigate disalignment and (dis)affiliation as a type of interactional failure. For this purpose, 1,345 instances of humor were identified within a corpus of eight interactions in French. Among them, 259 were instances of failed humor, 158 of which were produced by the recipient, i.e., the participant who had taken the turn to produce humor. These 158 instances were analyzed using a method combining Conversation Analysis and corpus-based approaches. Conversation is seen as intrinsically dynamic: participants constantly shift between serious and humorous frames, different activities and different roles within them. In this light, each instance of failed humor was analyzed in relation to the frame and the type of activity within which it was embedded. All of the instances were found to be either disaligned and affiliated or disaligned and disaffiliated. Viewing conversation through its dynamism thus brings to light the ways in which disalignment and (dis)affiliation are a type of interactional failure. The analysis of three examples of disaligned and (dis)affiliated humor illustrates this type of interactional failure.

The safety valve metaphor is ubiquitous in scholarship on satire and usually implies that, although the genre seems intent on upsetting the political order, it really has unintended conservative effects which maintain the status quo. Although there is previous criticism of the safety valve theory, which focuses on the inadequacy of its empirical predictions or the flawed theoretical foundations of the associated relief theory of humor, the metaphor remains in common use – and continues to obscure our understanding of satire’s political effects. What remains overlooked in humor studies is the fundamental mistakenness of the metaphor itself. We argue that comparing satire to a safety valve always implies a reasoning about the genre which is mistaken because the mechanistic function of a safety valve cannot be informatively mapped onto the political effects of satire. As a result, the safety valve metaphor is problematically opaque (because its actual meaning is unclear) and elastic (because it means whatever anyone wants it to mean). The metaphor fails to elucidate how satire works even in authoritarian political contexts, like Egypt, which should, in principle, act as a fertile ground for its purported function as a safety valve.

Public ridicule of a minority typically predicts a defensive response from the target of that humor. This is because public ridicule provides a polarizing spectacle, where the majority enjoys a humorous face reward, and solidarity, at the expense of that minority. Logically, we could expect a faith-based minority to be especially sensitive to public ridicule, since their face investment is greater, in inverse proportion to their social position and power, and because their group (and personal) identity is linked inextricably to what would normally be inviolable: a sacred text, a prophet, or deity. However, the official response from the LDS Church to the musical comedy The Book of Mormon defies this expectation. This paper analyses this response, in order to understand why a religious minority chose to creatively engage with what should have been a highly face-threatening satire.

Using the lenses of humor studies and narrative analysis, this paper discusses the stand-up comedy of Vivek Mahbubani, a Hong Kong-born stand-up comedian of Indian descent. Mahbubani uses humor about ethnicity-related issues to highlight the irrationality of racial discrimination and stereotypes. Specifically, Mahbubani challenges people’s preconceived ideas about the speakerhood of Cantonese and the local identity. The present study demonstrates how this comedian has effectively built humor into his narrative as a response to oppression, thus engaging the local, ethnically Chinese audience to reflect on the social and ethnic tension felt by minorities in Hong Kong. This study further argues that Mahbubani’s comedy reflects a more general trend in stand-up comedy: humor as a vehicle for a more inclusive and progressive grand narrative across different cultures; this trend stands in stark contrast to earlier ethnic jokes that often made minorities the target of verbal humor.