Humour Appreciation and Needs: Evidence from Questionnaire, Self-, and Peer-rating Data

Research on the relationship between humour appreciation and needs was traditionally restricted to the investigation of the significance of humour content. The present study extends this scope by relating needs to appreciation of humour structure and to liking of humour in general. Instruments allowing a more comprehensive assessment of both needs and humour appreciation were administered to subjects in two samples (n = 108 and 156) of adults. The 3 WD humour test measures funniness and aversiveness of three humour types (i.e. incongruity-resolution, nonsense, and sexual humour). A list of 14 needs was assessed via questionnaire (Personality Research Form), self-ratings and six peerratings. The results confirm that need for order is related to humour structure. In particular, liking of order correlates positively with funniness of incongruity-resolution based humour (containing fully resolvable incongruities) and disliking lack of order predicts aversiveness of nonsense humour (which generally provides no complete resolution of the incongruity). Certain aspects of need for play are predictive of appreciation of nonsense and sexual humour but not of incongruity-resolution humour. The main results are independent of the methods used to assess the need structure. DOI: 10.1016/0191-8869(93)90071-A Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: http://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-77529 Originally published at: Ruch, Willibald; Hehl, Franz-Josef (1993). Humour appreciation and needs: Evidence from questionnaire, self-, and peer-rating data. Personality and Individual Differences, 15(4):433-445. DOI: 10.1016/01918869(93)90071-A This manuscript was published as: Ruch, W. & Hehl, F.-J. (1993). Humor appreciation and needs: Evidence from questionnaire, selfand peer-rating data. Personality and Individual Differences, 15, 433-445. HUMOUR APPRECIATION AND NEEDS: EVIDENCE FROM QUESTIONNAIRE, SELF-, AND PEER-RATING DATA WILLIBALD RUCH AND FRANZ-JOSEF HEHL Department of Physiological Psychology University of Düsseldorf Universitätsstraße 1, 4000 Düsseldorf, Germany. Summary—Research on the relationship between humour appreciation and needs traditionally was restricted to the investigation of the significance of humour content. The present study extends this scope by relating needs to appreciation of humour structure and to liking of humour in general. Instruments allowing a more comprehensive assessment of both needs and humour appreciation were administered to subjects in two samples (N = 108 and 156) of adults. The 3 WD humour test (Ruch, 1983) measures funniness and aversiveness of three humour types (i.e., incongruity-resolution humour, nonsense humour, and sexual humour). A list of 14 needs was assessed via questionnaire (Personality Research Form; Jackson,1974), self-ratings and six peerratings. The results confirm that need for order is related to humour structure. In particular, liking of order correlates positively with funniness of incongruity-resolution based humour (containing fully resolvable incongruities) and disliking lack of order predicts aversiveness of nonsense humour (which generally provides no complete resolution of the incongruity). Certain aspects of need for play are predictive of appreciation of nonsense humour and sexual humour but not of incongruity-resolution humour. The main results are independent of the methods used to assess the need structure. H U M O U R A P P R E C I A T I O N A N D N E E D S : E V I D E N C E F R O M Q U E S T I O N N A I R E , S E L F , A N D P E E R R A T I N G D A T A I N T R O D U C T I O N Humour theorists from Freud (1905) to Berlyne (1972) agree on the importance of motivational factors in humour appreciation. Among these factors, sex and aggression are the most prominent ones. The significance attributed to them can be estimated from the fact that "sexual" and "aggressive" are humour categories widely accepted by both layperson and researchers. There is disagreement, however, whether appreciation of sexual and aggressive jokes and cartoons reflects the inhibition or the direct expression of the respective need. Motivational constructs also guided the search for theoretical links between humour and personality. Research conducted within the framework of Freudian theory expected that individuals who repress either sex or aggression, will show preference for humour in the respective category (for more detailed hypotheses see Kline, 1977). Others, however, have made just the opposite predictions: individuals for whom these themes are salient will prefer humour dealing with that particular content (Eysenck & Wilson, 1976). The results, in general, tend to favor the assumption of a positive relationship between expression of needs and humour rather than the inverse relationship. However, the matter is far from settled. The fact that different results were obtained for subgroups of sexual humour additionally complicates the issue (Ruch & Hehl, 1988). Research relating motivational factors to humour appreciation can be criticized on at least three grounds. First, both the need categories and the humour categories studied were not Humor and Needs 2 based on comprehensive taxonomies but were most frequently chosen arbitrarily. The humour studied most frequently covered the Freudian categories of harmless, sexual, and aggressive humour. There are several problems with the validity of this taxonomy, however (see Ruch, 1992, for a discussion of the issue); for example, no factor of "aggressive" humour could be extracted from several item pools analyzed although they contained jokes and cartoons a priori classified as "aggressive" (Herzog & Larwin, 1988; Ruch, 1984). Given the predominance of interest in sexual and aggressve humour, it is not surprising that the collection of motivational factors investigated as predictors of humour is, in turn, restricted mainly to.these two humour categories. Second, studies focused only on the relation between needs and appreciation of humour content and nearly no attempt was made to relate needs to appreciation of humour structure. This is surprising, since factor analysis of humour stimuli usually yields strong clusters of jokes and cartoons of different content but similar structure. Furthermore, structural properties contribute to perceived funniness even in sexual humour; i.e., in a humour category usually considered to be largely content dominated. Third, the assessment of needs was only based on questionnaire data, allowing no estimation of whether the results obtained are independent of variables like method format (questionnaire vs. ratings) and source of information (self evaluation vs. peer evaluation). In order to overcome these shortcomings, the present study investigated the relationship between needs and the appreciation of humour considering both humour content and humour structure. Furthermore, the assessment of both humour and needs was based on taxonomies of greater comprehensiveness. Finally, assessment of the individual's need structure was covered by three methods: questionnaire, self-report, and peer-report. A Taxonomy of Humour In the present study a humour test (3 WD Humour Test; Ruch, 1983) is employed which is based on a taxonomy of humour derived from factor analytic studies of both humour stimuli and responses to humour. Analyses of different sets of stimuli yielded three dimensions whereas the responses to humour varied along two dimensions. Stimulus dimensions. Two of the humour categories are heterogeneous with respect to content but are characterized by common structure and only one humour category is contentdominated. Whereas incongruity is a necessary ingredient of any form of humour, the two structural factors mainly differ with respect to the degree of resolution obtainable for the incongruity. Incongruity-resolution (INC-RES) jokes and cartoons are characterized by punch lines in which the surprising incongruity can be completely resolved. The common element in this type of humour is that the recipient first discovers an incongruity which is then fully resolvable upon consideration of information available elsewhere in the joke or cartoon. Although individuals might differ with respect to how they perceive and/or resolve the incongruity, they have the sense of having "gotten the point" or understood the joke once resolution information has been identified. Nonsense (NON) humour also has a surprising or incongruous punch line, however, "... the punch line may 1) provide no resolution at all, 2) provide a partial resolution (leaving an essential part of the incongruity unresolved), or 3) actually create new absurdities or incongruities." (McGhee, Ruch & Hehl, 1990, p. 124) In nonsense humour the resolution information gives the appearance of making sense out of incongruities without actually doing so. Nonsense humour should not be confused with the so-called "innocent" humour, because it refers to the typical structure of humour rather than to a harmless content. Sexual (SEX) humour may be based on one structure or the other, but is homogeneous with respect to the sexual content involved. Sex jokes and cartoons typically have two Humor and Needs 3 loadings: one on the sexual humour factor and a second one on one of the two structure factors. According to their loading patterns, the items of the general sexual humour category roughly can be subdivided into three classes of "pure" sexual humour (in which the content largely overpowers the structure), incongruity-resolution based sexual humour, and nonsense based sexual humour. Thus, whereas it is assumed that content and structure affect perceived funniness of all forms of humour, the weight of the two differs from joke to joke resulting in the three factors. Response dimensions. Results of factor analytic studies (summarized by Ruch, 1992) suggest that the appreciation of humour is defined by two nearly orthogonal components of positive and negative responses which are best represented by ratings of "funniness" and "aversiveness". Maximal appreciation of jokes and cartoons consists of high funniness and low aversiveness, while minimal appreciation occurs if the joke is not considered funny but is found aversive. However, a joke can also be considered not funny but be far from being aversive; or it can make one laugh although there are certain annoying aspects (e.g., one can consider the punch line original or clever but dislike the content of the joke). Humour and Needs: Some New Hypotheses In order to obtain a more comprehensive assessment of the individual ́s need structure, the German version of Jackson's (1974) Personality Research Form (PRF) is used in the present study. The PRF was designed by Jackson to measure a selected and revised list of needs postulated by Murray (1938) comprising the following: need for abasement, achievement, affiliation, aggression, autonomy, change, cognitive structure, deference, dominance, endurance, exhibition, harmavoidance, impulsivity, nurturance, order, play, sentience, social recognition, succorance, and understanding. This questionnaire is considered to be most suitable for the purpose of the study because it specifically allows to investigate the role of needs in appreciation of humour structure and in generalized appreciation of humour. Need for order and humour structure. Contrary to older beliefs, it is hypothesized, that the relationship between needs and humour appreciation is not restricted to humour content. It is postulated that motivational factors affect appreciation of the structural properties of humour materials too. Evidence from several sources (reviewed by Ruch, 1992) led to the hypotheses that appreciation of the incongruity-resolution structure in humour is a manifestation of a broader need of individuals for contact with structured, stable, unambiguous forms of stimulation, whereas appreciation of the nonsense structure in humour reflects a generalized need for uncertain, unpredictable, and ambiguous stimuli. Given this theoretical framework, it is hypothesized that need for order will correlate positively with funniness of incongruity-resolution humour (Hypothesis 1) and with aversiveness of nonsense humour (Hypothesis 2). The prediction that individuals with a high need for order will find nonsense humour more aversive than individuals with a lower need for order do (Hypothesis 2) is based on the fact that the punch lines of this humour category do not allow a complete closure; there always is a residue of incongruity. The remaining incongruity frustrates the need for order and thus subjects scoring high in need for order will respond to this type of humour negatively, i.e., with enhanced aversiveness scores. The prediction that individuals with a high need for order will find incongruity-resolution humour more funny than individuals with a lower need for order do (Hypothesis 1) is based on the fact that this humour category allows for a complete resolution of the incongruity induced by the punch line. The complete resolution of incongruity should appeal to those who have a high need for order. Since most sexual humour in the 3 WD humour test is based on the incongruity-resolution structure, a positive correlation between need for order and funniness of sexual humour can be expected too. However, since in this humour category the content Humor and Needs 4 contributes much more to funniness, the coefficients will be lower than for the incongruityresolution humour category. Need for play and general appreciation of humour. Two further hypotheses are independent of the distinction between humour content and structure. It is predicted that need for play will be positively correlated with funniness of incongruity-resolution humour, of nonsense humour, and of sexual humour (Hypothesis 3a to 3c) and negatively correlated with their aversiveness (Hypothesis 4a to 4c). Humour researchers (e.g., McGhee, 1979) repeatedly pointed out the important role of a playful attitude in the domain of humour and also Jackson's (1974) description of the high scorer in play, portrays him/her as a person enjoying jokes and funny stories and spending much time with amusements. Empirical evidence for this relationship, however, is still missing. Among the trait adjectives defining a person scoring high in play Jachson lists laughter-loving, joking, mirthful, gleeful, and funloving. These attributes would predispose the high scorer in play (relative to the low scorer) to generally enhanced appreciation of humour. The trait description does not include a differentiation between types of humour and therefore, at present, the hypotheses are related to all three humour categories. Since high appreciation of humour incorporates both high funniness and low aversiveness, the hypotheses put forward cover both dimensions of humour appreciation. Discriminant aspects. The PRF assesses needs which, although considered to be important in other humour theories, are not expected to be related to humour appreciation in the present study and thus allow for testing discriminant validity. In particular, contrary to other studies, no relationship between humour appreciation and need for exhibition, or need for aggression is postulated. No hypothesis was set up for exhibition although the trait description includes that high scorers enjoy having an audience and being witty. This trait thus might be a promising predictor for humour performance, however, in the case of humour appreciation no significant relationship is expected. Furthermore, no hypothesis was set up for need for aggression since factor analytic studies have shown that so called aggressive humour does not form its own category and potential markers for this category are distributed among all humour factors (Herzog & Larwin, 1988; Ruch, 1984) suggest ing that the role of aggression in humour appreciation is commonly overestimated. Although the above considerations included four scales only, the data analyses also will include the other PRF-content scales for exploratory purposes. There is one shortcoming associated with the PRF, namely, that it does not allow for the investigation of the relationship between appreciation of sexual humour and sexual needs. Although a need for sex is included in Murray ́s list of needs it is unfortunately not adopted in Jackson ́s PRF. The relationship between sex and humour appreciation, however, already has been studied repeatedly (e.g., Prerost, 1984; Ruch & Hehl, 1988). Hence this does not constitute a reason for rejecting the PRF. Similarly, the failure of a prior study to verify a link between the needs assessed by the PRF and humour does not constitute a problem. In a study of personality characteristics of wits (Clabby, 1980), humour production was not related to the needs investigated. The need for play, impulsivity, dominance, exhibition, change, and abasement did not predict the score on the wit measure. In the present study, however, appreciation rather than production of humour is investigated. Consideration of method variance. The present study will also test whether the relationship between humour appreciation and needs is affected by method variance. Since the German adaptation of the PRF included an extensive evaluation of its convergent and discriminant validity (Ostendorf, Angleitner & Ruch, 1985), selfand peer-rating forms for the assessment of the PRF needs with known reliability and validity are available. Since the three data sources for the assessment of need structure share different aspects with the humour measure, a potential effect of method variance can be identified. Three Humor and Needs 5 factors might account for differences in the size of the coefficients obtained for the three methods, namely method format (rating vs. questionnaire), source of information (self evaluation vs. peer evaluation), and difference in reliability. The PRF and the self-rating scales share with the 3 WD the element of self-evaluation. If the results of the peer-ratings are markedly different from these two methods, the results can be explained by the method variance due to the source of information (self evaluation vs. peer evaluation). Selfand peerrating employ a rating format; so does the 3 WD. A markedly lower outcome for the PRF with its yes/no answer format may be due to the method formats (questionnaire vs. ratings) used. Finally, the PRF and the peer-ratings will have a higher reliability than the self-ratings since the latter are based on one measurement only. Thus, lower coefficients of the selfratings might be explained by reliability differences. The predictions for the need-humour relationship are made for all three sources of data. At present, there is no basis for assuming that the differences between the three methods are so pronounced, that the hypotheses apply differently to the three methods. Since with few exceptions (e.g., Babad, 1974; Koppel & Sechrest, 1970), peer-ratings were never used in research on humour and personality, the results obtained for the peer-ratings in the present study will allow for an estimation of the generizability of results found in other studies employing questionnaire data only.