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The Journal of General Psychology

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Intellectual and Emotional Factors in the Appreciation of Humor

Jacob Levine
a b a b

& Fredrick C. Redlich

a b

VA Hospital, West Haven, Connecticut, USA

Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, USA Version of record first published: 06 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Jacob Levine & Fredrick C. Redlich (1960): Intellectual and Emotional Factors in the Appreciation of Humor, The Journal of General Psychology, 62:1, 25-35 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221309.1960.9710271

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T h e Journal of General Psychology, 1960, 62, 25-35.

I N T E L L E C T U A L AND EMOTIONAL FACTORS I N THE

APPRECIATION OF HUMOR*
V A Hospital, W e s t Haven, Connecticut; and Department of Psychiatry, Y a l e University
JACOB

LEVINE AND FREDRICK C. REDLICH~

A. INTRODUCTION
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As a complex psychological process, humor appreciation is generally recognized to depend upon many factors. Among the variables which determine whether or not a given stimulus is enjoyed as humorous is the ability to comprehend the point of the joke. Another important determinant seems to be the emotional impact that the theme of the humorous stimulus has upon the individual. According to Freuds theory of humor, the appreciation of a humorous stimulus results from the release of inhibited wishes which are associated with the theme of the humor. Where the theme of the humor engenders too much anxiety it is not appreciated as funny but on the contrary is reacted to as a disturbing stimulus (8). I n a recent study Levine and Redlich (10) showed how even highly sophisticated and well-adjusted individuals were unable to comprehend, let alone appreciate, relatively uncomplicated cartoons. T h e y found that in many of the cases the failures were due to emotional factors which interfered with comprehension and were manifest by a misperception o r a scotomization of some essential detail in the cartoon. I n these cases, as well as in those of more disturbed subjects, the failures to appreciate the humor could be traced to an underlying wish to avoid recognizing the joke because of some conflict which the theme aroused. T h e cartoon touched off the anxiety associated with the conflict. There seems to be little doubt that the comprehension of a humorous cartoon involves a high order of intellectual abstraction. Ordinarily, the theme of the cartoon deals with some familiar inhibited wish, conflict, or fear, which is socially disapproved. T h e expression of the unacceptable wish is permitted in humor by the so-called joke-work as Freud called it, in which it is disguised or distorted so that it is made to look ridiculous or so incongruous that one does not have to take the impulse seriously. I n order to

* Received

in the Editorial Office on June 24, 1958.

1 This work was made possible by a grant to the Department of Psychiatry, Yale

University, from the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry.

25

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comprehend the joke, the listener or viewer must therefore be able to understand the reference behind the distortion. T h u s beyond the purely iconic or pictorial aspects of the cartoon the symbolic elements must also be understood in order to get the joke. As a pictorial representation of some complex human interrelationships and motives, which are disguised and symbolically represented, a comic cartoon represents a high order of achievement in intellectual functioning. It is perhaps the basis for the complexity of humor that it combines both the intellectual and the emotional functions into a single psychological process. T h u s we find that not only do intellectual deficiencies interfere with the appreciation of humor but emotional disturbances as well. In another recent paper ( 8 ) findings were presented which indicated that psychiatric patients tend to have more difficulty with humorous stimuli than do normals. T h e y riot only were not able to enjoy humor as readily, but they tended to reject all cartoons which were likely to be anxiety arousing. Only those cartoons which dealt with relatively innocuous and nondisturbing themes were they inclined to enjoy.

B. PROBLEM
T h e present study is designed to investigate more systematically the influence of intellectual and emotional factors upon the appreciation of humorous cartoons. An attempt will be made to measure some of these relationships and to determine the degree to which each influences spontaneous effective reactions to and judgments about these stimuli.

C. METHOD
1.
T h e o r y and H y p o t h e s i s

T h e theoretical foundation for these studies on humor is Freuds theory of humor. O n the basis of Freuds theory, several working notions were formulated, which essentially attributed to the pleasurable effects of humorous stimuli to need-gratification and to anxiety-reduction. T h e painful effects were attributed to the release of unreduced or elevated anxiety associated with the content or form of the stimulus. W e begin with the hypothesis that a basic element in humor is the momentary reduction in anxiety. T h e anxiety arises from inner conflicts and fears over strong unacceptable drives or impulses. A joke seems funny only if it arouses anxiety and then relieves it. Sex and hostile aggression are among the most common themes of humor because they are primary sources of most human conflicts and tensions. From this theory w e derive a hypothesis that

JACOB L E V I N E A N D FREDRICK C. REDLICH

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there are three types of reaction to a joke or humorous stimulus. If it evokes no anxiety a t all in an individual, either because he has no conflict over the main theme or because his conflict is too deeply repressed, he will be indifferent to the joke. If the situation calls forth anxiety and immediately dispels it, the individual will find it funny. But if it arouses anxiety without dissipating it, he will react to the ostensibly humorous stimulus with unreduced anxiety in the form of disgust, shame, embarrassment, or even horror. Because of the intimacy of relationship between anxiety and psychiatric symptoms, it is likely that psychiatric patients will tend to be more sensitive to humorous stimuli than individuals without noticeable anxiety signs. Clinical observations confirm this notion ( 1 1). W e would be inclined to predict that such patients would be less capable of appreciating many humorous stimuli and would actually find some to be disturbing. T h e difficulty in evaluating the actual extent of anxiety from which an individual is suffering prevents us from trying to connect degree of anxiety with degree of impairment of sense of humor. Nonetheless we can note the extent to which these stimuli are found to be gratifying as well as disturbing. I n one study (2) Berkowitz found, for example, that when college students were made anxious o r angry, they tended to overreact to humorous stimuli. W e would therefore predict that psychiatric patients, having emotional problems, would be particularly sensitive to such stimuli. I n combining emotional with intellectual elements, humorous stimuli should provide us with an opportunity t o study the effects upon these functions of psychiatric illness.

2. Subjects
For the purposes of this exploratory study, 164 hospitalized patients, 24 normal controls, and 19 mental defectives were used. T h e patients came from two V A general medical hospitals, a private and a state mental hospital, and a state training school for mental defectives. All were in reasonably good contact and showed no severe mental deterioration. T h e normal controls consisted of 24 naval enlistees in the Submarine Service who had been carefully screened for absence of overt anxiety and phobic symptomology.

3 . Procedure
Each subject was given the M i r t h Response Test ( M R T ) which was composed of 31 cartoons taken from popular magazines such as the New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, T r u e , etc. ( 11) T h e administration of the M R T consists of three successive steps, ( u ) Free expression, ( 6 ) Sorting, ( c ) Inquiry, and is fully described elsewhere ( 11 ). Essentially

28

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the test consists of noting various responses which the subject gives to each of the cartoons. I n the Free Expression part, the spontaneous mirth and dysphoric responses are noted. I n the Sorting, the subject sorts the cartoons into three piles: Like, Indifferent, and Dislike. And in the Inquiry, the subject is asked to interpret and freely react to the stimuli. Scoring of the responses to the cartoons was based upon the following variables: ( u ) number of cartoons to which positive (smile and laugh), zero, and negative (frown, grimace, etc.) responses were given ; ( b ) the number placed in Like, Indifferent, and Dislike piles; ( c ) the number of cartoons understood ; ( d ) the number of cartoons in which the aggressive content and the sex content were distorted either by mitigation or exaggeration; ( e ) the number which showed gross distortion of the content as when some important detail was grossly misidentified or misperceived. Essential background information was obtained. These included age, sex, education, occupation, I Q where available, religion (active-inactive) , psychiatric diagnosis, test anxiety, and series of ratings or types of relationship with others, as well as an inquiry as to the subjects typical humor behavior. T h e reliabilities of the ratings of test responses and of background data were established by the method of a comparison of the ratings of at least two and in some instances three raters. For the test responses the intertester reliabilities ranged between .8 1 and .96. Reliabilities of background ratings relevant to the present report were also all above .80. I n Table 1 are given the means and standard deviations of the ages, education, I Q , of the various groups of subjects. It is evident that there seems to be some difference between the controls and the patient groups, but there
TABLE 1 MEANAGE,EDUCATION, AND I Q OF GROUPS Group
OF

SUBJECT^
Mean

N
24 45 27 12 7 23 19 41

Mean age
21.1 31.2 32.3 36.3 30.1 38.7 33.8 45.3

Age range
16-25 16-55 21-50 21-60 16-45 16-66 16-66 21-66

Mean* Education* education range

2.21 2.13 1.85 1.7 2.3 2.0 1.0 1.9 2-3 1-3 1-3 1-3 1-3 1-3 1 1-3

ZQ
112.0 (24)** 105.6 (28) 103.9 (18) 107.8 ( 6 ) 111.6 ( 7 ) 106.5 ( 1 5 ) 71.5 (19) 92.2 (161

I.

Controls 11. Patients: ( a ) Schiz. ( b ) Anxiety ( c ) Neur.depr. ( d ) 0bs.comp. ( e ) Others ( f ) Mental defectives ( g ) Organics

* 1 = 1 year **

2 = 1 year College and below. 3 =Above 1 year College.

High School and below.

Number in group having scorable ZQs.

JACOB LEVINE AND FREDRICK C . REDLICH

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does not appear to be any significant difference between the patient groups themselves. Because of the small size of the samples of patients in psychiatric categories like character disorder, sociopathic personality, etc., these patients were grouped into a single miscellaneous category. For the purposes of the present report no attempt will be made to analyze the finer differences between the patient groups. There is little doubt that a great many factors such as culture, religion, intelligence, age, personality, and sex, to name but a few, are important in the appreciation of humor. But because of the number and the complexity of the relationships, the setting of satisfactory controls for some of these factors and not for others is difficult. I n our studies several variables such as intelligence and education clearly appear to be of much greater significance than do factors like age, religion, and marital status. Differences between the normal controls and the patient groups in the present study are readily apparent. T h e influence upon the variability in humor of these background differences between the groups will have to be investigated systematically in a further study. T h e intent of the present investigation is to investigate the effects of mental illness upon humor appreciation and to determine differences between individuals grossly placed in distinguishable psychiatric groups.

D. RESULTS
1. Mirth Responses
T h e results with respect to the spontaneous mirth responses to the 31 cartoons is given in Table 2. It can be seen that there is considerable variability between and within groups in their expression of affect to the stimuli. T h e controls showed clearly that they were the most affectively responsive. They displayed some positive mirth to nearly two-thirds of the cartoons. O n
TABLE 2 GROUP MEANS A N D STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF SPONTANEOUS MIRTH RESPONSES Mirth response Subjects
~~ ~~~ ~

N
24 45 27 45 20 41 202

Neg. response
0.29 0.78 0.11 0.42 0.15 0.68 0.41

Neg. re-

SD
0.69 1.66 0.32 1.01 0.37 1.82 0.98

sponse
10.90 18.42 21.96 19.40 29.45 22.98 20.52

SD
7.52 8.85 3.15 9.35 1.64 8.18 6.45

Smile
14.70 8.67 4.81 8.64 1.15 4.98 7.16

SD
6.49 7.20 6.84 7.42 1.35 5.86 5.91

Laugh
5.04 2.82 2.19 2.33
0.10 2.20 2.45

SD
5.41 3.18 6.58 3.22 0.45 4.02 3.81

I. Controls 11. Patients Schiz. Anxiety Others Mental defectives Organics Total

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JOURNAL OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY

the average, they laughed a t about five and smiled a t nearly 15 of the cartoons. If we omit the mental defectives and the organics because of their failure to comprehend most of the stimuli, we find that the rest of the patient groups responded with positive mirth to less than one-third of the cartoons. They laughed on the average of about two and smiled a t about seven of them. It is interesting to note that the Anxiety group expressed the least amount of mirth with an average of about two laughs and five smiles, with the greatest number of zero responses. T h e y also showed the least amount of variability. It can be seen that few overt negative responses were noted in any group, in no case did it reach an average of one cartoon; the Schizophrenics and the other patient groups showed much variability with some cases obviously showing several negative affective responses. T h e inference might be drawn that the failure of the patient groups to show more appreciation for the cartoons may have been due to their failure to understand them. T h e fact that there is no significant difference in intelligence between the patients and the controls suggests that any differences in comprehension are not as likely to be due to intellectual as to tmotional factors. A product moment correlation between mirth response and comprehension for each group shows that for the psychiatric patients the correlations are all significant, but are not for the controls, mental defectives, or organics. These findings indicate that those individuals in the psychiatric groups who express by mirth their appreciation of the cartoons understand more of them than those who do not, or that those who understand the humor tend to express it by either smiling or laughing. Additional support for the notion that a part of the failure of the patient groups to comprehend many of the cartoons is due to emotional as well as to intellectual factors is given by the high correlations between comprehension and the Dislike category. These findings are consistent with the high correlations found between comprehension and mirth response. As Table 3 indicates, for each of the patient groups the correlations are highly significant ( t o the .01 level of significance) but for the controls it is not significant. T h i s finding suggests that the failure t o understand the stimuli is to some degree associated with a negative response to them. Similarly, where the cartoons are understood they tended to be chosen as Like, as the correlation for the patient groups between comprehension and Like indicates (Table 3 ) . Correlation between not comprehended and Dislike for the total patient sample was .52. For the controls it was .02. T h e absence of a correlation between comprehension and either Like or Dislike in the controls would appear to reflect the fact that the under-

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JACOB LEVINE A N D FREDRICK C. REDLICH

31

TABLE 3 GROUP CORRELATIONS OF COMPREHENSION WITH TOTAL MIRTHRESPONSE, LIKE, AND DISLIKE Total mirth response .01
.33 .41** .42**

Subjects

N
24

Like

Dislike
.04
-.73** -.53**

I.

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Controls 11. Patients Anxiety Schizophrenic Others Mental defectives Organics

.oo .so**
.37*
.16 .05 .3 9.9

27 45 45 20
41

.I5
.10

--.38** .20

.oo

**

Significant to .05 level of confidence. Significant to .01 level of confidence.

standing of the cartoons is unrelated to emotional reaction to them. T h i s lack of relationship is what one would normally expect under ordinary conditions. T h e understanding of humor does not seem to determine whether or not it is appreciated, for there a r e many humorous jokes or cartoons which are not reacted to as funny even though they are well understood. T h e presence of significant correlations in the patient groups between comprehension and both Like and Dislike supports the notion that emotional factors are involved in the understanding of the cartoons. T h e opposite direction of the two sets of correlations turns out as one would predict and suggests either emotional factors interfered with the understanding of the cartoons, o r contrariwise, the failure to understand the cartoons by these psychiatric patients led them to dislike them and to like only those they understood. A comparison between groups with respect to comprehension, sorting, and obvious distortion of the cartoons tends to follow the general pattern of the mirth responses. T h e controls on the average understood more than twothirds of the cartoons and showed little variability (Table 4). I n Table 4 are given the group means and standard deviations with respect to those variables other than mirth which reflected the subjects responses to the stimuli. T h e controls were able to understand two-thirds of the cartoons and showed little variability. None of the patient groups approached the controls with respect to comprehension though they did not seem to differ significantly between themselves. As might have been expected the schizophrenics, generally assumed to be the most ill, understood less than the Anxiety and the Other groups of patients. T h e mental defective group showed the least comprehension showing an average of

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TABLE 4 GROUP MEANS OF RESPONSES TO CARTOONS OTHER THAN MIRTH Subjects

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Comprehension
22.33 15.27 17.63 16.27 5.79 9.46

SD
2.58 6.61 5.21 7.9 1 3.62 7.42

Like
13.13 12.16 11.78 11.51 12.42 12.20

SD
4.17 5.66 5.16 6.03 4.22 5.68

Indifferent
11.21 8.98 10.15 11.09 7.50 9.76

SD
3.39 4.50 5.06 4.80 5.61 6.30

Dislike
6.58 9.62 8.52 8.18 11.16 8.56

Controls Schizophrenics Anxiety Other patients Mental defectives Organics

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TABLE 4 ( C o n t . ) Subjects
1 . 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

SD
2.42 6.19 4.28 5.24 4.38 4.63

Gross distortion
2.33 6.78 6.37 7.31 14.00 12.22

Sex

SD
1.54 4.22 3.54 2.42 4.17 6.43

distortion
3.21 5.33 4.48 5.40 8.79 7.02

SD
1.75 2.39 1.93 2.42 1.36 2.67

Aggressive distortion
5.54 10.93 9.59 11.73 18.37 15.34

SD
2.21 4.82 3.42 5.99 1.72 6.61

Controls Schizophrenics Anxiety Other patients Mental defectives Organics

about six cartoons understood. T h e organics averaged less than 10 cartoons understood, but with considerable variability reflecting perhaps the differences in intellectual functioning and in the extent of the organic deficit. These variations in the comprehension of humorous stimuli raise the question of its relation to intellectual capacities. As complex stimuli often involving relatively high degrees of abstraction of relationships, it would appear a priori that there is an intimate relationship between intelligence and humor comprehension. Fortunately, in some of the cases used as subjects in the present study intelligence test data were available and could therefore be correlated with comprehension. Correlation between intelligence quotient and comprehension score for 38 patients taken from all groups gave a value of +.75. I n a group form of the M R T using the same cartoons and multiple choice answers for comprehension a correlation of +.7 1 between comprehension and the AGCT was obtained. T h e subjects were 120 naval enlistees in the submarine corps, a group similar to the 24 c6ntrols used in the present study. O n the basis of these findings it is evident that the relation between intelligence and the understanding of humorous cartoons is close. It is reasonable to infer that intellectual factors probably play a most important r6le in the getting of the joke, even though emotional factors may interfere to a considerable degree. For if we obtain such a high correlation among patients in whom emotional interferences to comprehension would be greatest,

JACOB LEVINE A N D FREDRICK C. REDLICH

33

we may well expect that amongst normal subjects the correlation will be much higher. T h e measures used in the M R T involve two different indices of positive response to the cartoons. These are, first, the spontaneous mirth responses and, secondly, the choice of the cartoons in the Like category, essentially a judgment response. A comparison of the group means between these two different response categories reveals that only in the control group do the positive mirth responses exceed the Like responses, and to a considerable degree, namely, 19.75, as opposed to 13.13. For the schizophrenics and other patients there seems to be hardly any difference between the two, but for the Anxiety group, the Likes far exceed the mirth responses (henceforth identified as m r s ) , 11.77 vs. 7.00. T h e minimal mrs of the organics and the mental defectives reflect a similar trend. These findings when integrated with earlier ones suggest the inference that for psychiatric patients and particularly those with anxiety symptoms the expression of mirthful effect is inhibited. T h e significantly fewer mrs given by the patient groups might have reflected the fact that they liked much fewer cartoons. T h e fact that the differences in cartoons liked are not that great would tend to negate such a conclusion. Perhaps the most striking differences in the choices of the patient groups from the controls is seen in the number of cartoons placed into the Dislike ( D ) pile. Although they did not differ in score among themselves, the patient groups disliked significantly more cartoons than did the controls. T h e controls, on the other hand, placed more cartoons in the Indifferent pile than did any of the other groups. These findings are consistent with those from other studies (8) which showed that patients tend to respond to the disturbing elements of these humorous cartoons and rather than enjoying many of them find them upsetting. O n the basis of the data we are inclined to infer that the control subjects, in placing cartoons in the Indifferent category, do not find the stimuli funny nor upsetting, and whatever anxiety is evoked by the cartoon is readily mastered. For the patients, however, it is our impression that more of the cartoons are actually disturbing, and are therefore rejected as disliked. From Table 4 it is seen that the patients not only understood far fewer cartoons than did the controls, but distorted the content more frequently. T h e patients again differed little on the average between groups in the number of cartoons they grossly distorted ; in comparison, the controls distorted nearly two-thirds less. More than six of the 31 cartoons were grossly misinterpreted on the average by each of the patient groups as compared with

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2.33 by the controls. These gross distortions were of the nature of deviant
responses or incongruous elaborations not supported by the content or were gross misidentifications of a significant detail. T h e fact that the controls meraged as many as 2.33 such deviant responses would not appear to indicate so much that there is serious disturbance even in these control subjects as it would that response to humor often tends to touch rather deeply. T h i s observation is supported by findings in an earlier study (10) which demonstrated how normal sophisticated subjects distorted or scotomized essential elements in these cartoons for emotional reasons which enabled them to avoid understanding them. T h e relative number of sex and aggressive distortions of the cartoon content tends to support these conclusions. As Table 4 indicates, the Schizophrenics, the Anxiety, and the other patients, distorted on the average about 10, o r one-third of the cartoons. These distortions of aggressive content were all in the direction of either mitigating or denying completely any aggressive content essential for the understanding of the cartoons. T h e controls averaged only 5.54 of such distortions. W i t h respect to the sex distortions, however, the difference between the controls and the patients is not nearly so great. T h e controls mitigated or denied the sex content of 3.21 cartoons in comparison to around five for each of the three patient groups. T h i s difierence between sex and aggressive distortions in the controls may possibly be the consequence of the unique characteristics of the controls and their environmental circumstances, for as vigorous young men placed in a situation where they are being trained in hostile destructive behavior but where outlets for sexual behavior are not easily available, their responses are understandable. In other words, it is suggested that either because of their youth or their dammed-up sexual feelings, the controls responded with some anxiety to the sexual content of the cartoons and therefore tended to distort it either by mitigation or denial. Further investigation of this area is needed to clarify it.

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E. SUMMARY
Five groups of psychiatric patients and one group of normal controls were compated in their performances in a humor test, identified as the M i r t h Response Test. T h e findings indicated that the humor behavior of psychiatric patients is impaired as shown by their failure to appreciate the humor of the stimuli. They not only laughed and smiled a t fewer cartoons, but displayed less positive reaction to these stimuli, either by choice or affective expression, than would normally be expected. Although a high correlation between intelligence and the understanding of the humorous stimuli was found,

JACOB LEVINE A N D FREDRICK C. REDLICH

35

there was evidence that the psychiatric patients failed to understand many cartoons because of emotional rather than intellectual factors. T h e y expressed a dislike for the stimuli much more often than did the controls, and tended to make many more perceptual and cognitive distortions of the thematic content, particularly in the direction of overlooking or mitigating sexual and aggressive elements. Inferences from these findings were made that emotional disturbances, particularly those involving anxiety, greatly impairs the ability to appreciate humor.

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REFERENCES
1. ABELSON, R., & LEVINE,J. Common stimulus elements in cartoon humor: A factorial study of psychiatric patients. (Submitted for publication.) 2. BERKOWITZ, M. A study of some relationships between anxiety and the humor response. Ph.D. Thesis, 1954, Penn. State College, deposited in Penn. State College Library. E. B., & REDLICH, F. C. T h e response of schizophrenic patients to comic 3 . BRODY, cartoons, before and after prefrontal lobotomy. Folia Psychiat., Neurol., at Neurochirur. (Neerlandica), 1953, 66, 623-635. J., LEVINE, J., REDLICH, F. C., & FIERMAN, E. Y. T h e relation between 4 . LAFFAL, anxiety and the response to cartoons dealing with hostile aggression. P a p e r presented at Eastern Psychol. Assn. Meeting, Boston, April, 1953. J., LEVINE, J., & REDLICH, F. C. An anxiety reduction theory of humor. 5. LAFFAL, Amar. Psychol., 1953, 8, 383 (abstract). 6. LEVINE, J. Responses to humor. Sci. Amer., 1956, 194 ( 2 ) , Pp. 31-35. Ego-controlled regression in primitive clowning. Int. J. Psychoanal. 7 . , (Submitted for publication.) 8. LEVINE, J., & ABELSON, R. Humor as a disturbing stimulus. J . Gen. Psychol., in Press. 9. LEVINE, J., & RAKUSAN, J. T h e sense of humor of college students and psychiatric patients. J. Gen. Psychol., in Press. 10. LEVINE, J., & REDLICH, F. C. Some factors in the failure to understand humor. Psychoanal. Quart., 1955, 24, 560-572. 11. REDLICH,F. C., LEVINE, J., & SOHLER, T. P. A mirth response test: preliminary report on a psychodiagnostic technique utilizing dynamics of humor. A m e r . J. Orthopsychiat., 1951, 21, 717-734.

Clinical Psychology Section T/A Hospital W e s t H a v e n 16, Connecticut

D e p a r t m e n t of Psychiatry Y a l e Uniwersity M e d i c a l School N e w H a v e n , Connecticut