A study of sense of humor: its relation to sex, age, and personal characteristics

Abstract

Approximately 600 high school and college students were asked to rate themselves on various points with reference to their sense of humor and to rank 12 jokes from best to poorest; they were free to indicate any which lacked a point. The results show that: (1) no one joke was consistently marked "best" or "poorest"; (2) each joke was marked pointless by at least one student (only one-third of the subjects marked "pointless" the joke designed to be pointless); (3) adolescent boys showed a greater liking for the "shady" joke than did the girls of the same age and older college students; (4) several jokes showed consistently higher ratings by the older group; (5) there was a tendency for students to rate themselves high on possession of a sense of humor, only 1% rating themselves below average; (6) every joke was ranked "best" and "poorest" by at least one student who ranked himself very superior in sense of humor; (7) the rank given to the "shady joke" was raised or lowered by a positive or negative mental attitude toward "shady" jokes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)