A Behavioral Genetic Study of Humor Styles in an Australian Sample

Baughman, Holly M.; Giammarco, Erica A.; Veselka, Livia; Schermer, Julie Aitken; Martin, Nicholas G.; Lynskey, Michael T.; Vernon, Philip A.

doi:10.1017/thg.2012.23

Cited by 21 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The cartoons and captions were derived from the American based New Yorker magazine and thus the Canadian sample may have served as a surrogate for an American sample of participants. Conversely, Baughman and colleagues (2012) found an Australian twin sample produced results similar to those found in Britain in their study of self-reported humor styles. Although both Canada and Australia are members of the Commonwealth, Canada’s proximity to the United States and Australia’s relative geographical isolation may explain why Australian participants’ ratings of humor are more similar to British participants than to Canadian participants.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

Are men funnier than women, or do we just think they are?

Hooper

Sharpe

Roberts

2016

Translational Issues in Psychological Science

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Despite the widely held view that men are funnier than women, research supporting this view is inconsistent. Instead, the view that men are funnier than women may be a stereotype rather than a reflection of real differences in humor. Considering a previously found source memory bias in the attribution of funnier captions to men and less funny captions to women, this stereotype may be working to perpetuate this view. The current study aims to investigate this possible stereotype and an attribution bias arising from such. College students (N = 228) from 3 countries (Britain, Canada, and Australia) rated the funniness of male- and female-authored cartoon captions while blind to the gender of the caption authors. Participants were then asked to guess the gender of the caption authors and which gender they believe to be the funniest. Participants both male and female in the Canadian and British samples believed men are the funniest gender, whereas participants in the Australian sample were split between men as funnier or the genders as equally funny. No difference was found between funniness ratings of male- and female-authored captions for the Canadian and Australian samples. The British sample rated female-authored captions as funnier. Support was found for a bias in attributing male authorship to the funniest cartoon captions and female authorship to the least funny for all countries. This stereotype may be self-fulfilling in nature, and additional mechanisms maintaining this stereotype are proposed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

Are men funnier than women, or do we just think they are?

Hooper

Sharpe

Roberts

2016

Translational Issues in Psychological Science

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“… Martin et al (2003) refined the item pool to measure the four humor styles using several samples to arrive at the final 32-item solution, the HSQ. Combining these samples ( N = 1,195), they obtained sufficient internal consistencies (Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .77 for aggressive to .81 for self-enhancing), which were replicated in other studies (e.g., Baughman et al, 2012 ). Occasionally, lower internal consistencies were obtained, especially in translated versions of the HSQ aggressive scale.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…Effect sizes were small for affiliative, self-enhancing, and self-defeating (Cohen’s d < 0.20) and medium to large for aggressive (Cohen’s d = 0.72). Baughman et al (2012) replicated these gender differences. Others found significant gender differences (males obtaining higher values than females) for specific subscales only, namely for the aggressive scale (Cohen’s d = 0.39, Bilge & Saltuk, 2007 ; Cohen’s d = 0.43, Sirigatti et al, 2014 ) or the aggressive and self-defeating scales (Cohen’s d = 0.31 and 0.21, Kazarian & Martin, 2004 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

The German version of the Humor Styles Questionnaire: Psychometric properties and overlap with other styles of humor

Ruch

Heintz

2016

Eur. J. Psychol.

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The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003) is one of the most frequently used questionnaires in humor research and has been adapted to several languages. The HSQ measures four humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating), which should be adaptive or potentially maladaptive to psychosocial well-being. The present study analyzes the internal consistency, factorial validity, and factorial invariance of the HSQ on the basis of several German-speaking samples combined (total N = 1,101). Separate analyses were conducted for gender (male/female), age groups (16–24, 25–35, >36 years old), and countries (Germany/Switzerland). Internal consistencies were good for the overall sample and the demographic subgroups (.80–.89), with lower values obtained for the aggressive scale (.66–.73). Principal components and confirmatory factor analyses mostly supported the four-factor structure of the HSQ. Weak factorial invariance was found across gender and age groups, while strong factorial invariance was supported across countries. Two subsamples also provided self-ratings on ten styles of humorous conduct (n = 344) and of eight comic styles (n = 285). The four HSQ scales showed small to large correlations to the styles of humorous conduct (-.54 to .65) and small to medium correlations to the comic styles (-.27 to .42). The HSQ shared on average 27.5–35.0% of the variance with the styles of humorous conduct and 13.0–15.0% of the variance with the comic styles. Thus–despite similar labels–these styles of humorous conduct and comic styles differed from the HSQ humor styles.

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“…This result is consistent with past research that has shown that men typically score lower than women on such variables as agreeableness across multiple cultures (e.g., Costa et al, 2001). This finding could also reflect gender differences in humor styles, as men tend to use aggressive humor more than women (e.g., Baughman et al, 2012). Finally, in the Polish sample, Item 5 (“Being mean to others can be exciting”) displayed moderate DIF favoring women.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Differences or Gender Bias?

Plouffe

Kowalski

Tremblay

et al. 2021

European Journal of Psychological Assessment

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Abstract. Sadism, defined by the infliction of pain and suffering on others for pleasure or subjugation, has recently garnered substantial attention in the psychological research literature. The Assessment of Sadistic Personality (ASP) was developed to measure levels of everyday sadism and has been shown to possess excellent reliability and validity using classical test theory methods. However, it is not known how well ASP items discriminate between respondents of different trait levels, or which Likert categories are endorsed by persons of various trait levels. Additionally, individual items should be evaluated to ensure that men and women of similar levels of sadism have an equal probability of response endorsement. The purpose of this research was to apply item response theory (IRT) and differential item functioning (DIF) to investigate item properties of the ASP across its three translations: English, Polish, and Italian. Overall, the results of the IRT analysis showed that with the exception of Item 9, the ASP demonstrated sound item properties. The DIF rate analyses identified two items from each questionnaire that were of practical significance across gender. Implications of these results are discussed.

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A Behavioral Genetic Study of Humor Styles in an Australian Sample

Cited by 21 publications

References 17 publications

Are men funnier than women, or do we just think they are?

Are men funnier than women, or do we just think they are?

The German version of the Humor Styles Questionnaire: Psychometric properties and overlap with other styles of humor

Gender Differences or Gender Bias?

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