Is it possible to scientifically measure someone’s sense of humor? Are there universally good or bad jokes that make people laugh no matter their gender, profession or cultural background?

These are some of the questions answered by the doctoral thesis Sentido del humor: construcción de la escala de apreciación del humor (Sense of humor: building of the appreciation of humor scale), carried out by Hugo Carretero Dios, researcher in the department of Social Psychology and Methodology of Behavioural Science at the University of Granada.

This study, directed by researchers Cristino Pérez Meléndez and Gualberto Buela Casal, is the first work in Spain stemming from Psychology aimed at measuring people’s sense of humor to analyze the psychological variables related to humor. Carretero Dios analysed more than 1,500 people between the ages of 18 and 80 and a similar number of men and women.

This study focused on the following types of humor:

1) Sexual humor
2) Dark humor
3) Humor degrading to men
4) Humor degrading to women
5) Simple humor
6) Complex humor.

The study provided the first scientifically approved evaluation instrument in Spain to evaluate humor appreciation. Moreover, it helped to improve other instruments used in other countries.

Generational Change

Carretero Dios observed a generational change in the women’s preferences to the different types of humor. “There has been change in women’s values and roles in our society,” says Carretero Dios. “In people over 45-50, we observed that both men and women laughed more at jokes degrading to women than those degrading to men”. At the same time, both men and women showed more rejection to jokes degrading to men.

However, among the participants between 18-25 years old, the trend was different and men and women had different reactions. Men laugh more at jokes degrading to women and reject those degrading to men. By contrast, women laugh more at jokes degrading to men and reject those degrading to women. Indeed, this trend is more pronounced in women.

Could these findings show a change in educational values or even a new pattern in the roles played by women? According to Carretero Dios, “humor is useful to study the predominant values of a specific society, and is also a powerful instrument to show cultural trends (beliefs, actions, etc). We only need to remember the conflict caused by the Mohammed cartoons last year, in which humor clashed with religion.”

There is no 'universal humor'

One of the conclusions of this study was that the different personalities of people help to differentiate specific humor preferences. “Consequently, there are no universally good or bad jokes — humor depends on the person,” says Carretero Dios.

Contrary to what we would expect, “a particular person’s momentary state of mind in a humorous situation, such as on hearing a joke, does not imply that the person finds that particular situation funny,” explains Carretero Dios. A person’s taste in humor “is rather an intellectual or aesthetic question, emotion or state of mind being more related to physiological and behavioural factors of sense of humor than an opinion of what we think is funny.”

Humor in hospitals

Carretero Dios is the president of the Spanish Cultural Association "Titiritas: Humor y Salud" (Titiritas: humor and health), which works with hospitals and aims at bringing humor to these centres to make this context more human and see the influence of this humor in different parameters. This association has been awarded best non-profit youth organisation in the Andalusian region by the city of Granada.

Moreover, it receives funding from the Area of Culture of the Andalusian Institute of Youth. Recently, this association participated in a study that analysed the impact of humor on the behaviour of psychiatric patients in an acute unit. This study was chosen by the American association HumorLab as one of the four most important studies on an international level on sense of humor in 2006.

The results of this thesis were recently presented at the 'International humor Conference', sponsored and organized by the International Society of Humor Studies, the world's leading scientific association on humor.

Source: University of Grenada