Abstract
A sense of humor may be related to our survival, yet the value one places on humor is typically not very explicit. Sex, age, and education were selected as variables to examine how participants would respond to Vitulli's Humor Rating Scale. 217 volunteers (108 men and 109 women) were distributed among four levels of education: Grade 8, high school, college, and a combined sample of graduate students and professors. The rating scale measured attitudes toward male-oriented humor, female-oriented humor, general humor values, and an index of “differentiation of humor by gender.” Significant interactions between sex and humor scales and between educational levels and humor scales were found in a 2 × 4 × 4 factorial (split-plot) design. Scheffé tests of multiple comparisons between sample means showed significant sex differences on the male-oriented scale and on the differentiation scale. Significant differences between educational levels occurred on the male- and female-oriented scales, as well as on the differentiation scale. The ‘egalitarian hypothesis’ and the ‘androgyny hypothesis’ were evaluated to assess under what conditions they do or do not account for the data.
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