Search

Humour processing is complex and may be influenced by an individual's emotional state. This study explores the differences in incongruity‐resolution and nonsense joke humour processing between three groups with different emotional states (positive, neutral and negative). Each group consisted of 32 participants. The positive and negative emotion groups were asked to elicit positive and negative emotions, respectively, through autobiographical recall. In contrast, the neutral emotion group was asked to answer questions unrelated to emotions. Participants were also asked to rate their emotional valence, arousal and conformity with the provided emotion words. Subsequently, they were directed to rate their humour appreciation, humour comprehension and level of surprise at the jokes. The results indicate that these variables interacted with the level of amusement derived from the two humour types. The positive emotion group perceived nonsense jokes as funnier than the negative emotion group, while the negative emotion group perceived nonsense jokes as less amusing than incongruity‐resolution jokes. No significant difference was found between the three emotion groups in terms of humour comprehension and surprise at the jokes. The results deepen the understanding of the correlation between emotional states and processing of different humour types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sense of humor constitutes a core factor that influences teacher-student interactions. The humor that teachers utilize in class may influence teacher-student relationships, either positively or negatively. Moreover, teachers' humor style influences students' humor style, and vice versa. This study aimed to construct patterns of humor styles based on typology and explore how these patterns influence their interactions. Data were collected from 990 Taiwanese students regarding their self-reported humor styles and perceptions of class teachers as well as the interaction between the two. Subsequently, k-means clustering was conducted by dividing participants into four clusters based on the collected data: positive humor endorsers, negative humor endorsers, humor deniers, and contradictory humor endorsers. Among these, the grouping of contradictory humor endorsers differed from previous findings. Among the four clusters, the teachers of positive humor endorsers were perceived to have a significantly higher influence and proximity to students, whereas contradictory humor endorsers were perceived to have the lowest influence and proximity to students. The research findings revealed that different patterns of teachers' and students' humor styles have a distinct influence on their interactions, which deepens our understanding of the extent to which their humor styles consistently impact their interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research found that similar appreciation for humor exists between spouses, but it is not certain whether this similarity between spouses also exists in kindhearted or malicious humor. The present study investigated the similarity of Taiwanese married couples' humor styles. Participants included 239 couples (mean age = 42.9 years) who had been married to each other for at least 10 years. We used a traditional Chinese edition of the Humor Styles Questionnaire to measure the humor style and clustered participants' humor styles in order to examine the similarity between spouses. The results show that husbands have higher tendencies toward aggressive (Cohen's d = 0.29, p <.01) and self-defeating (Cohen's d = 0.35, p <.01) humor styles than wives. Results from multilevel modeling indicate that spouses' aggressive (p <.001, confidence interval =.17,.41) and self-defeating (p <.01, confidence interval =.05,.30) humor styles acting as a valid predictor to the other spouses' negative humor styles. Furthermore, the results show that personal humor styles could be categorized into four clusters: positive humor endorsers, negative humor endorsers, general humor endorsers, and humor deniers. According to the clusters within spouse pairs, results show that similarities in humor styles exist between spouses (χ2 = 16.73, p =.01). The current study finds that most couples have similar humor styles and that a high proportion of married couples share the same humor clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both creativity and humor are high-level cognitive functions and complex concepts. Although creativity and humor are generally deemed positively correlated, it has been difficult to explicitly identify their relationship with each other. The cognitive process of creativity includes divergent thinking, insight, and remote association, whereas humor comprehension includes incongruity resolution and nonsense humor. The difference between the 2 types of humor is in whether individuals can understand the content of jokes through logical deduction. This study explored the relationship of the different dimensions of cognitive creativity and incongruity-resolution and nonsense humor comprehension. Furthermore, we examined the influence of divergent thinking, insight, and remote association on incongruity-resolution and nonsense humor comprehension. The scores from 103 participants on a divergent thinking questionnaire, an insight problem-solving task, and the Chinese compound remote associate problems test were used to analyze their comprehension of incongruity resolution and nonsense humor. The results showed a positive correlation between remote association and incongruity-resolution humor comprehension, as well as a positive correlation between insight and nonsense humor comprehension. These findings indicate that each dimension of cognitive creativity has a particular way of connecting to various types of humor comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humor processing can be divided into three sub-stages including incongruity detection, incongruity resolution, and elaboration ( Chan et al., 2012, 2013; Feng et al., 2014 ). However, few studies have investigated the three-stage model of humor processing with readers' surprise, comprehensibility and funniness levels, and little discussion has been devoted to its biological underpinning. To verify the credibility of the three-stage model, electroencephalography (EEG) was utilized in corroboration with two types of stimuli including jokes and non-jokes in the present research. Participants were categorized into high vs. low score groups based on their rating scores of surprise, comprehension, and funniness to joke stimuli. The between-group analyses showed that compared with the less surprised group, highly surprised people elicited a primarily larger N400, which may suggest more incongruity perceived in reading jokes. Additionally, good comprehenders mainly elicited a larger P600, probably indicating a more successful resolution of detected incongruity in comparison with poor comprehenders. Finally, the highly amused group elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP) compared with the less amused group, which could reflect more affective elaboration of jokes. Participants' surprise, comprehension, and funniness levels had smaller impacts on other chief electrophysiological components, with the effects varying with different group contrasts. These results provided the evidence that different degrees of surprise, comprehensibility, and amusement to jokes would influence the three sub-stages (incongruity detection, incongruity resolution, and elaboration) respectively in humor processing. The current study thus generally re-verified the stability of the three-stage model through participants' behavioral ratings which had seldom been touched upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]