The prevalence of sense of humor in a large, unselected county population in Norway: Relations with age, sex, and some health indicators

Abstract

A 3-item humor measure derived from the Sense of Humor Questionnaire (SHQ: Svebak 1996) was included in a health survey of all adult residents of a Norwegian county (study n ¼ 65,333). Health-related measures included subjective health satisfaction, prevalence of common bodily complaints (e.g., nausea, diarrhea, pounding heart, dyspnea, musculuskeletal pain), blood pressure, and body mass index. SHQ mean scores were slightly skewed toward high values. Overall, humor scores (metamessage sensitivity, liking of humor, laughter expressiveness) declined with age (r ¼� .29) and were slightly higher in males than females among younger age cohorts. Sense of humor was positively correlated with overall health satisfaction (r ¼ .21) and negatively related to systolic blood pressure (r ¼� .14). However, after controlling for age, only the partial correlation with subjective health satisfaction remained greater than .10 (partial r ¼ .12). Due to the large number of participants, coe‰cients were statistically significant despite very low explained variance. Overall, these data, comprising the largest study of humor and health ever undertaken, provide very little evidence for a direct relationship between sense of humor and physical health parameters.