Assessing the appreciation of the content and structure of humor: Construction of a new scale

Abstract

The study describes the construction and initial validation of a new assessment instrument named EAHU (from the Spanish Escala de Apreciación del Humor, Humor Appreciation Scale, in English). A dimensional proposal is presented, which incorporates funniness and aversiveness of the content and structure of humor. The dimensions are incongruity-resolution, nonsense, sexual, black, man disparagement and woman disparagement humor. The construction strategy for the EAHU is outlined. The development of the EAHU involved using Spanish samples comprising more that 1500 participants altogether. The metric characteristics of the items and the internal structure of the scale appeared to be highly stable across the samples. The psychometric characteristics of the EAHU scales appeared to be satisfactory. There were sex differences only in the content scales, and a relevant role of age was observed in the EAHU scales. An interaction effect was found for sex, age and different type of humor. We conclude that the EAHU is an adequate instrument to assess the content and structure of humor.

Sexist Humor and Rape Proclivity: The Moderating Role of Joke Teller Gender and Severity of Sexual Assault

“…The passage further contained four jokes demeaning women. The four sexist jokes comprise the “woman-disparagement humor” factor of the Humor Appreciation Scale (Carretero-Dios et al, 2010). The next page of the booklet contained a manipulation check.…”

The role of identification with women as a determinant of amusement with sexist humor

“…Participants then read 10 jokes and cartoons taken from the Escala de Apreciación del Humor, EAHU (Humor Appreciation Scale; Carretero-Dios et al 2009;Carretero-Dios et al 2010). The EAHU contains 32 jokes and cartoons.…”

Humor appreciation and sensation seeking: Invariance of findings across culture and assessment instrument?

“…Sample 1 answered version V of the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-V; Zuckerman 1994), the Arnett Inventory of Sensation Seeking (AISS; Arnett 1994) and the EAHU humor test (Carretero-Dios et al 2010). The latter consists of 32 jokes and cartoons which are rated on 2 unipolar 5-point scales for "funniness" (from 0 = not at all funny, to 4 = very funny) and "aversiveness" (from 0 = not at all aversive, to 4 = very aversive).…”