Creativitate si umor

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Creativity in HumorWalter E. O'Connell

a

aVeterans Administration Hospital, Houston, Texas,

USA

Version of record first published: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Walter E. O'Connell (1969): Creativity in Humor, The Journal of

Social Psychology, 78:2, 237-241

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1969.9922361

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The J ournal of Social Psychology, 1969, 18,237-241.C R E A T I V I T Y I N HUMOR

Vcterans Administration Hospital, Houston, TexasWALTER. OCONNELL~

A. INTRODUCTIONT hi s study was designed to test three Freudian hypotheses (2, 3) pertain-ing to wit and humor: ( a ) T he ability to produce and appreciate humor arehighly related. (6) Hostile wit is correlated with the turning outward orextrapunitiveness of aggression. ( c ) Humor is allied with the failure to befrustrated by stressor situations, or the iinpunitive orientation to aggression.

B. METHODT he experimental sample consisted of 30 females and 28 males, undergrad-uates at the University of Texas, with an average age of 21.9 ( s =3.0),who came from two intact classes of an introductory psychology class. Onegroup took the OConnell W i t and Humor Appreciation T est ( W H A T )

first, followed by the Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration T est (P-F); he otherin the reverse order.T he WHAT, as reported in two previous studies (4, 6) , was developedas apsychometric device for deriving preference ratings on 10humor, 10hos-tile wit, and 10nonsense wit anecdotes. Each 8s score on nonsense and hos-tile wit and humor is the sum of his ratings over the 30 items. These sumsare regarded as reflecting the ability to appreciate wit and humor, an echo,according to Freud, of the similar processes of the wit and the humor maker.T he Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration (P -F ) Study (8, 9) was adminis-tered to the 58 Ss to assess their ability to produce wit and humor. T he re-quest, try to be as humorous as possible, was added to the regular instruc-tions to present a set for wit and humors2T he P-F tests were scored for the* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, M assachusetts, on F ebruary 1,1968. Copyright, 1969, by T he J ournal Press.1 T he author is indebted to the Common Research Computer Facil ity, T exas M ed-ical Center, Houston, T exas, which assisted in the data analysis under USPHS G rantNo. FR 00254.2 A five page supplement has been deposited with ASI S National A uxi l iary Pub-li cations Service, c/o CCM Information Sciences, Inc., 22 West 34th Street, NewYork, New York 10001. T he addition contains instructions to Ss and judges, togetherwith t w o tables describing stressor and nonstressor P-F items and average ratingsfor wit and humor on these items. Order NA PS Document 00361, remitting $1.00 formicrofiche or $3.00 for photocopies.

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238 J O U R N A L OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGYdirection of aggression according to the Rosenzweig manual (9) by an expe-rienced P-F scorer. This psychology technician was unaware of the purposesof the study and had no additional role in the project. Rosenzweig had f ormany years a prohibition against being humorous in his instructions. L ater hediscovered that this warning or even an encouragement to be humorous didnot alter the basic projective character of the P-F test (8).Before the P-F tests could be scored for wit and humor production, a de-cision had to be rendered as to the degree of stressor present in each of the24 P-F picture stimuli. Thi s was necessary because Freuds theory assumesthat humor is a mature, nondefensive jest to an objectively severe stressorsituation. Therefore a nonhostile jest could be considered to be an exampleof humor with a high stressor background or as nonsense wit in the absenceof severe environmental conditions. I n either case (stressor or nonstressor)an attempt at verbal retaliation could be rated as hostile wit. Therefore, inthe second judging situation the task was to separate out the P-F stressorpictures from the nonstressor ones. T en judges, six male and four female,rated and ranked the P-F items for the amount of stressor appearing in thestimuli. All judges were college students ranging from entering freshmen tofinishing graduate students, who were employed as part-time summer stu-dents.For the third judging, four of the previous judges rated the responses ofthe 58 8s on 10 P-F items, the five considered to reflect the most and the fivejudged to show the least stressor. They were provided with a notebook with11 pages of theory and examples for making wi t and humor judgments. T hefolder contained general instructions, Freuds theoretical distinctions, and acopy of the WHAT with labeled hostile and nonsense wit and humor items.T hi s instruction was provided to minimize idiosyncratic definitions of jestand make judgments according to Freudian theory.

C. RESULTSND DISCUSSIONT he interrater reliabil ity of nonprofessional judges on the creation of hu-mor and wit was not high, even when they were given a theoretical outline tofollow; in fact it was so low with nonsense wit creation that this variablecould not be used in the study. T he incidence of humor and wit productionon the P-F was also low. Thi s supported Rosenzweigs study which showedlittle spontaneous wit even with less stringent definitions of jest (8).Table 1 shows that the mutuality between humor appreciation and humorcreation, so central to Freuds thinking on the dynamics of humor, did notoccur in this study ( r=--.02) ; herefore the first hypothesis was rejected.

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WALTER E. OCONNELL 239T he second hypothesis, that of a significant hostile wit and extrapunitive ex-pression of aggression correlation, also failed to materialize. O n the wi t ap-preciation side of the ledger, the correlation was only a negligible .07, andfor wit production an insignificant .01. Of the three theoretical suppositionsonly the third one, the predicted relationship between humor appreciationand an impunitive direction of aggression, reached significance ( r = .26).T hi s concurrence definitely agrees with Freuds views that the cathexis of thesuperego causes stressor situations to appear insignificant. T he humorist, i t isassumed, sees his interactions from a broad space-time spectrum. T hi s type of

T A B L E 1CORRELATIONSF W I T A ND HUMORAPPRECIAT IONND CREAT IONWITH DIRECTIONF AGGRESSION

Appreciation Creation Direction. of( W H A T ) ( P - F ) aggressionCorre-lation Hostile Nontynse Hostile Extra- I ntro- Im-items Humorl wit, witg Humor4 wit, punitives punitive, punitives~ ~ ~~ ~

1 .47** .51** -.02 -.14 -.09 -.07 .26*2 - .17 .21 .19 .07 -.06 . 08.03 -.11 --.09 .16 -.074 - .67** -.14 .14 .08-01 .07 -,066 - -.58** --.69**7 - -.028 -* p=05 .** p


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240 J O U RN A L O F SOC IA L PSYCHOLOGYtiveness. The intropunitive and impunitive modes of aggression significantlyrelated to extrapunitiveness in a negative direction (r = .58 , --.69). T heintro- and impunitive classifications were not so opposed to each other (r =-.02), suggestive of a dual aggression classification. T hat is, one was eitherextrapunitive or intropunitive-impunitive in orientation.

Sex differences (4, 5 ) on the W H A T once again showed the greater malepreference for hostile wit ( t=2.64, p < ,005, one-tailed test) and a lessersex differential for females to favor nonsense wit ( t=1.22, p >.lo, one-tailed test). Thi s continues to be explained, until proven otherwise, as a cul-turally imposed sex difference (4).

D. SUMMARYT hi s study was designed to test the hypotheses of Freud pertaining to aclose relationship between humor appreciation and production, extrapunitiveaggression and hostile wit, and impunitive handling of aggression and humorappreciation and creation.T he W i t and Humor Appreciation T est ( W H A T ) was used to gatherscores on attraction for wi t and humor. Rosenzweig's Picture-Frustration

(P-F) T est gave scores on the direction of aggression and the ability to cre-ate wit and humor. Direction was scored on all 24 items, but only the fivejudged to have greatest stressor and the five least stressor were made avail-able for humor and wit judging. J udges rated the responses of 58 collegestudents to the 10 P-F items for hostile wit, humor, and nonsense wit. Reli-ability of the latter was so low that i t was dropped from the study. Resultssuggest that the ability to produce wi t and humor was not closely related toits appreciation. Humor appreciation, not creation, was correlated with impu-nitiveness. T here was no relationship between wit creation or appreciationand extrapunitiveness. M ales favored hostile wit. There was a slight tendencyfor female preference for nonsense wit.REFERENCES

12.3. - W it and its relation to the unconscious. Bnsic Writings. New Y ork:4. O'CONNE L L , . T he adaptive functions of wit and humor. J . Abn. U Sac. Psy-5 .-Resignation, humor, and wit. Psychoanal. Rev., 1964, 51, 49- 56.6.-Organic and schizophrenic differences in wit and humor appreciation.

BE R G LE R ,. L aughter and the Sense of H umor. New Y ork: I ntercontinental M ed.FREUD, . Humor. I nternat. J . Psychoanal., 1928, 9, 1-6.Book Corp., 1956.

M odern L ibrary, 1938.chol., 1960, 61, 263-270.Amer. Psycho!. Assoc. Proc., 1966, 2, 171-172.

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W ALTER E. OCONNELL 2417.-Humanistic identification:A theory about persons. J . Existentialism, inpress.8. ROSENZWEIG,. T he treatment of humorous responses in the R osenzweig picture-

frustration study: A note on the revised (1950) instructions. J . of Psychol.,ROSENZWEIG,., F L E M I N G ,., & CLARKE, . Revised scoring manual for the Ro-1950, 30, 139- 143.9.

Yeterans Administration Hospital2002 H olcombe BoulevardH ouston, Texas 77031

senzweig picture-frustration study, J . of P~ychol.,1947, 24, 165-208.

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Creativitate si umor