– Humour depends on the person
Washington, June 15 : Researchers at University of Granada, Spain has measured peoples sense of humour to analyse the psychological variables associated to humour.
Hugo Carretero Dios, researcher in the Department of Social Psychology and Methodology of Behavioural Science at the university.
The study, doctoral thesis Sentido del Humor: Construccisn de la Escala de Apreciacisn del Humor (Sense of humour: building of the appreciation of humour scale), directed by researchers Cristino Pirez Melindez and Gualberto Buela Casal 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 humour: sexual humour, black humour, humour degrading to men, humour degrading to women, simple humour and complex humour. The study provided the first scientifically approved evaluation instrument in Spain to evaluate humour appreciation. Moreover, it helped to improve other instruments used in other countries.
Carretero Dios observed a generational change in the womens preferences to the different types of humour.
There has been change in womens values and roles in our society. 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, Carretero Dios said..
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.
According to Carretero Dios, humour 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 humour clashed with religion.
One of the conclusions of this study was that the different personalities of people help to differentiate specific humour preferences.
Consequently, there are no universally good or bad jokes – humour depends on the person, Carretero Dios said.
A particular persons momentary state of mind in a humourous situation, such as on hearing a joke, does not imply that the person finds that particular situation funny, explained Carretero Dios.
A persons taste in humour is rather an intellectual or aesthetic question, emotion or state of mind being more related to physiological and behavioural factors of sense of humour than an opinion of what we think is funny.
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