Conservatism as a predictor of responses to humour—II. The location of sense of humour in a comprehensive attitude space

It was attempted to locate dimensions of sense of humour in the attitude space. While previous results suggest that appreciation of jokes based on the incongruity-resolution structure is mainly a function of conservatism, the present paper examined the role of toughmindedness, as the second dimension in the attitude space. Subjects were 115 male and female students. Four conservatism questionnaires (C Scale: Wilson and Patterson, 1970; POI: Eysenck, 1976; MK: Cloetta, 1983; 16PF Q1: Schneewind, Schröder and Cattell, 1983), the 16PF scales E, G, I and M, the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey ‘Study of Values’ scales (Theoretical, Economic, Aesthetic, Social, Political and Religious interest), toughmindedness, capitalism, machiavellianism, disinhibition, rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity were used as marker variables in a factor analysis to identify the two major dimensions of the attitude space, conservatism and toughmindedness. An item factor analysis of 158 attitude items served as a second means to establish a frame of reference for the location of the humour scales. The results showed that funniness of jokes based on the incongruity-resolution structure was located on the conservative side, while funniness of nonsense jokes was located on the liberal side of the C-axis. Appreciation of sex as a salient content in jokes was predicted by toughmindedness. Accordingly, incongruity-resolution sex jokes were located in the toughminded/conservative quadrant, but nonsense sex jokes were located on the T-axis. All rejection scores were located on the tenderminded side. The correlation with conservatism depended on the joke’s structure, e.g. rejection of incongruity-resolution jokes was located in the tender/liberal quadrant, while rejection of nonsense jokes was located in the tender/conservative quadrant. The hypotheses were tested at the level of single jokes and also at a higher order level. DOI: 10.1016/0191-8869(86)90085-1 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: http://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-77527 Originally published at: Ruch, Willibald; Hehl, Franz-Josef (1986). Conservatism as a predictor of responses to humour—II. The location of sense of humour in a comprehensive attitude space. Personality and Individual Differences, 7(6):861-874. DOI: 10.1016/0191-8869(86)90085-1 This manuscript was published as: Ruch, W. & Hehl, F.-J. (1986). Conservatism as a predictor of responses to humour-II. The location of sense of humour in a comprehensive attitude space. Personality and Individual Differences, 7, 861-874. CONSERVATISM AS A PREDICTOR OF RESPONSES TO HUMOUR-II. THE LOCATION OF SENSE OF HUMOUR IN A COMPREHENSIVE ATTITUDE SPACE. * WILLIBALD RUCH and FRANZ-JOSEF HEHL Department of Experimental Biological Psychology, University of Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, D-4000 Düsseldorf, F.R.G. * This paper is partly based on data presented at the 5th International Congress on Humour, Cork, Ireland, 26-30 June, 1985. Summary-It was attempted to locate dimensions of sense of humour in the attitude space. While previous results suggest that appreciation of jokes based on the incongruity-resolution structure is mainly a function of conservatism, the present paper examined the role of toughmindedness, as the second dimension in the attitude space. Subjects were 115 male and female students. Four conservatism questionnaires (C Scale: Wilson and Patterson, 1970; POI: Eysenck, 1976; MK: Cloetta, 1983; 16PF Q1: Schneewind, Schröder and Cattell, 1983), the 16PF scales E, G, I and M, the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey 'Study of Values' scales (Theoretical, Economic, Aesthetic, Social, Political and Religious interest), toughmindedness, capitalism, machiavellianism, disinhibition, rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity were used as marker variables in a factor analysis to identify the two major dimensions of the attitude space, conservatism and toughmindedness. An item factor analysis of 158 attitude items served as a second means to establish a frame of reference for the location of the humour scales. The results showed that funniness of jokes based on the incongruity-resolution structure was located on the conservative side, while funniness of nonsense jokes was located on the liberal side of the C-axis. Appreciation of sex as a salient content in jokes was predicted by toughmindedness. Accordingly, incongruity-resolution sex jokes were located in the toughminded/conservative quadrant, but nonsense sex jokes were located on the T-axis. All rejection scores were located on the tenderminded side. The correlation with conservatism depended on the joke's structure, e.g. rejection of incongruity-resolution jokes was located in the tender/liberal quadrant, while rejection of nonsense jokes was located in the tender/conservative quadrant. The hypotheses were tested at the level of single jokes and also at a higher order level. I N T R O D U C T I O N Recently we introduced the hypothesis that preference of humour based on the incongruity-resolution structure is affected by an individual's usual way of dealing with ambiguous uncertain stimuli (Ruch, 1984; Ruch and Hehl, 1983a, 1985a, 1986a). In short, conservatism as well as intolerance of ambiguity questionnaires (as measures of stimulus avoidance) correlated positively with funniness ratings of jokes based on the incongruity-resolution structure. These are jokes in which the surprising divergence between the joke body and the unexpected punchline can be made meaningful by finding a 'cognitive rule' (Suls, 1972) which makes the joke ending predictable by the joke body. Suls postulated that the surprise experienced creates a need to make joke body and joke ending congruent. He predicted positive relations between degree of incongruity, amount of surprise experienced, the need to solve the problem, and appreciation of the joke. Our hypothesis was that there are a priori differences between Ss with regard to their need to avoid uncertain (in the sense of information theory, i.e. complex, ambiguous, incongruent, novel) stimuli and the preference for stable and predictable ones. These individual differences can be predicted by conservatism or intolerance of ambiguity scales. Our hypothesis suggests that the general tendency to avoid uncertain stimuli will interact with the need to overcome the surprise induced by the punchline. Conservatives (as well as ambiguity-intolerants) experience the resolution of the incongruity (reduction of uncertainty) as more pleasant than their opposites. On the other hand, they will reject jokes which do not allow reduction of uncertainty. This is the case with absurd nonsense jokes which contain incongruities that cannot be resolved, or in which the resolution adds new incongruities. Both types of jokes, INC-RES jokes and nonsense jokes, were established by several factor analytic investigations (Ruch, 1981, 1984). Jokes which make up these factors were different in content but homogeneous with regard to their structure. Additionally, a third factor was extracted which contained jokes of both structures but one common salient content, sexuality. This factor contains two clusters, INC-RES sex jokes and NON sex jokes, which also have a loading on the first or the second factor respectively, depending on their structure. Previous results suggested that the German version of the Wilson and Patterson (1970) conservatism scale (C Scale) is positively associated with funniness of INC-RES jokes, moderately with funniness of sex jokes, and rejection of NON jokes and slightly negatively with funniness of NON jokes (Ruch, 1984; Ruch and Hehl, 1983a, 1985b, 1986a). On the other hand, the conservatism scale of Eysenck (1976) and the Intolerance of Ambiguity questionnaire were correlated with funniness of sex jokes and only moderately with funniness of INC-RES jokes. We argued that the differences might be explained by the second dimension in attitudes, toughmindedness. There is some evidence that sex jokes are preferred by toughminded Ss (Terry and Ertel, 1974; Hehl and Ruch, 1985; Ruch and Hehl, 1985b, 1986b). Our model is that conservatives generally prefer humour based on the incongruityresolution structure (and reject nonsense humour), but among conservatives, tenderminded Ss prefer the first factor containing INC-RES jokes of different contents and toughminded Ss prefer sex jokes. Recently we showed that value orientation affected preference of INC-RES sex jokes, but not preference of NON sex jokes (Ruch and Hehl, 1986b). Ss scoring high on the 'Economic' and 'Political' scales of the Allport-VernonLindzey (1960) 'Study of Values' and low on the 'Aesthetic' and 'Social' scales had high funniness scores on the sex joke factor. Ss with high 'Social', 'Religious', and 'Aesthetic' scores and low 'Economic' and 'Political' interests rejected sex jokes. Eysenck (1954) demonstrated that these four scales are located along the toughmindedness-conservatism diagonal in the attitude space; with economic and political (interest in power) in the toughminded-conservative quadrant and social and aesthetic in the tenderminded-radical quadrant. This location of the significant predictors of sex jokes underline the relevance of toughmindedness. Unfortunately, the three dimensions (radicalism, capitalism and toughmindedness) of the 'Public Opinion Inventory' were highly interrelated and thus were no good frame of reference for locating the humour scales in the attitude space. In particular, the correlation between toughmindedness and conservatism was too highly negative. Additionally, the items of the German version of the C Scale are only scorable for conservatism but not for Wilson's 'realism' (toughmindedness) factor. In order to give an exact location of the humour scales in the attitude space, an item factor analysis of several conservatism scales will be carried out. Then the humour scales will be correlated with the factor analytically derived axes of the attitude space. The hypothesis introduced above will be tested more stringently. Accordingly, we can see whether or not the tough-tender mindedness dimension is related to the preference for salient contents of jokes. It seems to be reasonable to separate INC-RES sex jokes, NON sex jokes, and pure sex jokes in this study, in order to evaluate whether the toughmindedness hypothesis is generally valid for sex jokes (i.e. irrespective of the jokes's structure) or not. Although toughmindedness is an attitude dimension, it bears a relation to temperamental variables. Eysenck (1954) considered toughmindedness as ...'the projection on to the social attitudes field of a set of personality variables' (p. 170). More recently (Eysenck and Wilson, 1978), Psychoticism (P) has been seen as the more relevant variable; toughmindedness is now regarded as synonymous with P (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985). Therefore the weak German version of the toughmindedness scale can be probably supported by other scales which are usually correlated with toughmindedness. Thus, a second approach in this investigation will be building up an attitude space with the help of factor analysis using marker variables for conservatism and toughmindedness. Correlations between the factor scores and the humour scales will again be calculated and the resulting correlation coefficients will help in locating the humour scales in a second independent way. A comparison of the results of these two alternative approaches will show whether they lead to similar conclusions or not. The hypotheses will be tested in three different ways: First, the factor scores of the Conservatism and Toughmindedness axes will be correlated with the humour scales. Second, the Funniness and Rejection ratings of single jokes will be correlated separately with the conservatism and toughmindedness factors, in order to examine whether the results are valid for each member of the categories or not. Third, we will examine whether there is a higher order structure in the results found for the single jokes. The correlations with the criterion variables should be higher for jokes which are more typical representatives of the categories than for those which are less representative. Tucker's PHI will be used to examine the strength of this relationship.