Relationships Among Humor Styles, Funniness Ratings of Jokes, and Fatigue

Описание: Relationships Among Humor Styles, Funniness Ratings of Jokes, and Fatigue
Shelia M. Kennison

Description:
Prior research has suggested that the use of humor and other forms of arousing language (e.g., curse words) may be related to individuals’ level of fatigue (Kennison & Hurtado Morales, 2024). The present research aimed to examine these relationships in more detail, specifically examining the use of the four humor styles (i.e., affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating, Martin et al., 2003) in relation to participants' self-reported level of fatigue (fatigue assessment scale, Michielsen et al., 2003), sleepiness (Stanford Sleepiness Scale, Hoddes et al., 1972), and chronotype (i.e., morningness-eveningness, Horne & Östberg, 1976). In the study, participants also rated the level of funniness for 12 jokes (e.g., Did you hear they arrested the devil? Yeah, they got him on possession.) and 12 non-jokes (e.g., Why were the teacher’s eyes crossed? She couldn’t control them.). Non-jokes were constructed by making minimal changes to jokes, removing the humorous content and replacing it with non-humorous content. The time of day in which the judgments were made was also recorded. The results indicated that some humor styles were more strongly related to chronotype, fatigue, and sleepiness than others. Funniness ratings were not strongly related to chronotype, fatigue, sleepiness or time of day in which the funniness ratings were made. Theoretical implications include the possibility that using some types of self-generated humor may have been adaptive in human history in that the arousing nature of humor may have served to increase alertness, which could have enabled one to remain vigilant during periods of heightened nocturnal risk.

About the Conference:
The Humor Research Conference is hosted annually by East Texas A&M University. The conference brings together scholars and practitioners to explore research on humor across disciplines. For more information, visit www.etamu.edu/humor

#hrc2026 #humor #humorresearch #etamu