Individual differences in the communication of humorous messages

Abstract

This report develops an individual differences approach to the encoding of humor, provides a scale to measure it, and offers four empirical studies in support of the conceptualization. Results indicate that individual differences in the predisposition to enact humorous messages can be reliably measured via the Humor Orientation Scale. Variation in humorous orientation is related to the number of situations in which the person will or will not attempt humor, the number of different types of humor behavior encoded, the level of detail used to describe humorous episodes, and amount of planning prior to enactment of humor, a predispositon both stable and consistant across time.