Joke cruelty, emotional responsiveness, and joke appreciation

Appreciation for jokes was exploredas afunction of perceivedjoke cruelty, emotional responsiveness and sense ofhumor of participant, joke category, and participant gender. We replicated an earlier finding of an inverted-U relationship between appreciation and cruelty and also found t hat thefunction wasflatter andpeaked at a lower cruelty level for females thanfor males. The inverted-U function was associated with joke-category differences and disappeared when those differences were controlledstatistically. Wefailed to replicate an earlier finding ofan inverted-U relationship between the participant's overall appreciation for the jokes and the emotional responsiveness of the participant. Instead, the linear relationship of appreciation with emotional responsiveness dependedon the joke category. Responsiveness was positively related to appreciation for nonsense jokes, negatively relatedfor sick jokes, and unrelatedfor sexual jokes. The participant's sense ofhumor was positively related to overall joke appreciation, but the relationship depended on participant gender. Males had higher appreciation in general than females, but the positive relationship between appreciation and sense ofhumor was stronger for females thanfor males. The result was that females had higher appreciation than males only among participants highest in sense ofhumor. In a recent study comparing appreciation for sick and nonsick humor, Herzog and Karafa (1998) reported an inverted-U relationship between the perceived cruelty of jokes and appreciation for the jokes. That is, appreciation increased with cruelty up to a point and then declined äs cruelty increased further. The authors proposed an optimal-cruelty theory of humor and related it to Berlyne's (1972) arousal-jag theory. They suggested that the optimal level of cruelty in a joke sends arousal beyond Humor 13-3 (2000), 333-351 0933-1719/00/0013-0333 © Walter de Gruyter 334 T. Herzog and M. Anderson its optimal point for experiencing pleasure, but the resolution of the joke then reduces arousal to its optimal level, constituting an arousal jag. That cruelty might be a basis for humor appreciation seems implicit in most superiority theories of humor. Such theories typically postulate that we bolster our self-esteem by laughing at the misfortunes of others, especially members of negative reference groups or identification classes (e.g., La Fave 1972; Zillman and Cantor 1976). Despite the theoretical plausibility of the optimal-cruelty proposal, the Herzog-Karafa study was the first, äs far äs we know, to document empirically the predicted inverted-U relationship between appreciation and cruelty. Furthermore, Herzog and Karafa had not intended to look for an inverted-U relationship; it forced itself upon their attention while they inspected scatterplots early in their data analysis. They thereupon altered their analysis strategy to test for curvilinear relationships. Thus, given the modest empirical basis for the optimal-cruelty proposal, we thought it worthwhile to attempt a replication of the predicted inverted-U relationship with improved methodology. Specifically, we selected four of the 13 joke categories from Herzog-Karafa, strategically located to span the entire ränge of cruelty based on their data. The four categories, in increasing order of mean rated cruelty on a 5-point scale, were Konsense (mean = 1.47), Sexual (2.51), Handicapped (3.68), and Dead Baby (4.67). The latter two categories represent sick humor and feature jokes about the handicapped or cruelty to infants. With fewer joke categories, we were able to include more jokes in each category, giving us a better statistical basis for investigating category effects. We had ten jokes from each category, yielding a total sample of 40 jokes, äs compared to three or seven jokes per category in Herzog-Karafa. We also used over 100 raters in each of our two independent samples for rating appreciation or cruelty, compared to only 36 cruelty raters in Herzog-Karafa. A second unanticipated inverted-U turned up in the Herzog-Karafa study. This one was for the relationship between a person's overall appreciation for the sample of jokes and that person's emotional responsiveness to nonhumorous real and fictional situations. Emotional responsiveness was measured via a 16-item Likert-scale questionnaire. The finding suggests that a moderate amount of emotional responsiveness is ideal for humor appreciation; too much or too little is detrimental. This finding is also in need of replication for two reasons. First, close inspection of the scatterplot (not included in the published study) reveals that the inverted-U was anchored by only two data points, representing Joke cruelty andjoke appreciation 335 individuals very low in both appreciation and responsiveness, from a total sample of 115. Removal of the two atypical data points results in the disappearance of the inverted U and its replacement by a modest negative linear relationship between appreciation and responsiveness. It is, of course, entirely possible that the two anchor points represent legitimate but rare cases. Thus, given the quite different implications of the two models (inverted U versus negative linear), replication is warranted. The second problem with the earlier finding is that Herzog-Karafa's emotional responsiveness scale contained items dealing only with situations involving negative emotions, such äs sorrow, anger, sadness, upset, and depression. Regardless of the true relationship between humor appreciation and this kind of emotional responsiveness, one has to wonder whether the same relationship would hold for responsiveness to positive emotions like joy, happiness, enthusiasm, and exhilaration. On the one band, most humor theorists would be comfortable with the idea that a playful state of mind is a necessary precondition for humor appreciation (e.g., McGhee 1979), but no one has endorsed a readiness to be sad or depressed äs an aid to humor appreciation. This line of thought suggests that the results might be different for responsiveness to positive versus negative emotions. On the other band, emotional responsiveness seems similar to what is called affect intensity in the personality literature. A review of affect-intensity research by Larsen and Diener (1987) documents a substantial positive correlation between affect intensity for positive and negative emotions and similar kinds of relationships between both kinds of affect intensity and a host of other variables. Their review suggests that the kind of emotional responsiveness, positive or negative, may be irrelevant. More recently, however, there have been dissenters who have provided evidence that affect intensity might be better conceptualized äs composed of anywhere from two (positive and negative affect intensity) to four subcomponents (e.g., Bryant, Yarnold, and Grimm 1996; Weinfurt, Bryant, and Yarnold 1994; Williams 1989). To our knowledge, affect intensity has been included in only two studies of humor (Ruch 1994, 1997) but only in a peripheral way that provides little guidance on the issue of conceptualization. Thus, there is some support either for distinguishing between responsiveness to positive and negative emotions or for not doing so. To settle the matter, we developed a revised 28-item version of the Herzog-Karafa emotional-responsiveness scale, with exactly half of the items dealing with positive emotions and half dealing with negative emotions. 336 T. Herzog and M. Anderson We also included three additional predictor variables in this study: joke category, sense of humor, and participant gender. Joke category effects are typically very strong and often are involved in interactions with other predictor variables, notably gender (e.g., Herzog and Karafa 1988; Mundorf et al. 1988). While on the alert for such effects, the specific questions we wished to pursue in this study were whether an inverted-U relationship between appreciation and cruelty survived after controlling statistically for joke-category differences in cruelty and also whether cruelty or emotional responsiveness worked differently for different joke categories or for the two genders. We thought it likely, for example, that the inverted-U relationship between appreciation and cruelty might be different for males and females because females would have a lower tolerance for cruelty. This would create a flatter curve for females with its maximum shifted to a lower level of cruelty than for males. Statistically, a quadratic interaction of cruelty and gender would result. Sense of humor was included because it has been a positive predictor of humor appreciation in several studies and, at least in one case (Herzog and Hager 1995), it interacted with gender.