Personal sense of humor has been recognized as a coping mechanism. Sense of humor as a construct, however, is multidimensional. Existing efforts to assess overall sense of humor are, for a number of reasons, deficient. The present study reports the development and factor analysis of a new Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale that may be useful in a variety of research and clinical applications.

No abstract

Scores on the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS) are shown to be related positively to a number of factors associated with psychological health, such as optimism and self esteem, and negatively with signs of psychological distress such as depression. Humor is a multidimensional construct that seems to be intimately related to quality of life.

Previous researchers have demonstrated relationships between sense of humor and personality. Most have viewed sense of humor from the perspective of humor appreciation. Others have taken the approach that sense of humor has two factors: appreciation and creativity. Our approach has been to look at sense of humor as made up of creativity and several additional elements. The present study reports on the factor analysis of a Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, as well as correlates of various elements of sense of humor with personality traits assessed by the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule. Relationships by humor scale factors are reported, as are differences between those high and low in sense of humor within a sample of 426 individuals, 18 through 90 years of age.Humor's relationship to personality has been addressed by a number of researchers over the years. Various approaches have been taken t o provide insight into the humorous personality. Humor seems to be used in a number of ways that get people through both life's crises as well as life's petty annoyances.Freud ( 1916, 1928) wrote of the structure and functions of humor as well as the creation of humor and humor appreciation. Eysenck began to publish studies of humor appreciation in 1942, Luborsky and Cattell in 1947. Ruch and his colleagues (Ruch, 1981(Ruch, , 1988Ruch & Hehl, 1983;Ruch, McGhee, & Hehl, 1990) have written extensively on appreciation of humor. These and other authors acknowledge humor's particular potency in its various functions and relationships; it is something either innate or closely related to personality that makes life more enjoyable and worth living. Often thought of as a bipolar construct, appreciation of humor thus could be either high or low along a continuum. Differences between individuals can be seen easily; they are either high or low in personal sense of humor or somewhere in between. These differences contribute to the essence of personality. We seek to explore some of these differences and relationships in the present study.However, there have been a number of methodological difficulties in the measurement of sense of humor. Too many researchers have equated sense of humor with humor appreciation and humor appreciation with laughter. Much humor research has focused upon an individual's likelihood to laugh and has neglected more theoretically appropriate elements of personal sense of humor (Thorson, 1990). Differentiating a cognitive response, ("getting the joke") and an affective response (laughter) has further complicated research on humor. While some researchers have been scrupulous in the specificity of their research in the area of humor appreciation, too many have allowed concepts to become confused and have equated the affective response of laughter with an overall construct of personal sense of humor. Nias (1981) has observed the lack of interest in identifying factors that represent the elements of sense of humor and has pointed to the failures in various attempts to construct a test t o measure sense of ...

The objectives of this study were: (1) to test hypotheses that women would have higher death anxiety than men and that older persons would have lower death anxiety than younger people; and (2) to probe for meanings of death among a large, heterogeneous sample. A group of 599 adolescents and adults completed a death anxiety scale; factor analysis of the resultant data revealed seven orthogonal factors. Both hypotheses were supported at acceptable levels of significance. Item analysis revealed additional information on meanings of death: Older respondents indicated a concern over the existence of an afterlife and over loss of personal control; women expressed more fear of pain and bodily decomposition. The strongest finding was variation in death anxiety by age, which confirms Butler's contention that the life review helps the aged to resolve conflicts and relieve anxiety.