{"title":"The effect of self-related humor on convergent and divergent thinking","authors":"Md. Shahinoor Rahman, Zhijin Zhou","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.820","url":null,"abstract":"Humour enhances creativity, but the question is whether different types of humour have a similar effect on improving individual creativity. It is evident that negative humour style is negatively related to creativity, while positive humour style is positively related to it. However, no evidence has been found that self-related humour (self-enhancing and self-defeating humour) directly affects creative thinking in the experimental setting. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effect of self-related humour on convergent and divergent creative thinking. We included 60 (38 male, 22 female) participants and randomly assigned 20 in each condition to conduct this experiment. To evoke humour, we used 12 stimuli (12 self-enhancing jokes, 12 self-defeating jokes, and 12 non-humorous statements) in each condition. Remote Association Task (RAT) was used to measure convergent thinking, and Alternative Uses Task (AUT) was used to measure divergent thinking. We expected that i) people who engage in self-enhancing humour would perform better at convergent thinking tasks than the control group and the self-defeating humour group and ii) people who engage in self-enhancing humour would perform better at divergent thinking tasks than the control group and the self-defeating humour group. Our results supported our hypotheses and suggested that self-enhancing humour induced individual creativity both in convergent or divergent thinking (originality, fluency, flexibility). In contrast, self-defeating humour failed to affect either convergent or divergent thinking.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"51 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139130884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Humour as an advertising resource: memes at the service of brands","authors":"Juan-Manuel González-Aguilar, Beatriz Feijoo, Romina Caluori","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.854","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we investigated the phenomenon of memes generated based on user-generated content (UGC) discourse about the Japanese electronic brand Casio. We collected 150 memes from various platforms and applied a quantitative content analysis methodology to determine the main characteristics of the memes. Additionally, we employed statistical techniques to identify patterns and relationships among the variables studied. The results revealed that user-generated content could be interpreted as an unintentional advertising strategy for the Casio brand. We observed significant similarities in the structure and themes of the memes, indicating a mutual influence among users. Furthermore, we found that mentioning the brand in one of Shakira’s songs significantly impacted the meme generation. These findings emphasise the importance of understanding and harnessing the unintentional advertising potential that arises from the interaction between popular culture and brands.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"109 16","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139134461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Humour-themed holistic learning processes in a Finnish primary school","authors":"Juli-Anna Aerila, Marja-Leena Rönkkö, Tuula Stenius","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.841","url":null,"abstract":"Although humour in education has shown positive research results, its use in Finnish classrooms is not common and is not included in Finland’s curricula. In this study, pupils’ humour is utilised as part of a holistic learning process in Finnish primary education. Implementing holistic learning processes means focusing on child-centredness, dissolving subject boundaries and concentrating on learning-to-learn skills, overall growth and traditional subject-learning goals. As a framework for the learning process, this study follows the guidelines of the Narratives and Crafts model, which aims to connect arts-based activities with different themes. This study aims to investigate the role of humour in the context of an arts-based learning process and to assess opportunities for its more conscious use in learning. The data were taken from the outcomes of 36 pupils during a holistic learning process and were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results indicated that creative or arts-based activities and humour worked well together as a means for pupils to incorporate their inner thoughts and personal perceptions into their assignments. Furthermore, humour can be a source of a long-term process, and expressions of pupils’ humour can be steered by assignments and preliminary materials, as well as by collaboration with other pupils and the teacher. However, teachers should have more research-based information about humour in the classroom and about the importance of humour in the community and for pupils.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":" 608","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139136751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The humorous body","authors":"Neha Khurana","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.850","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is a commentary upon the mingling of the affective and discursive varieties of humour in the eighteenth century based on the observation that the body and bodily processes are at the core of humour in Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The author notes in this novel a curious coming together of the various conceptions of the functioning of the human body prevalent at that time and linguistic slippages. Linguistic quips aid in a slippery transition between the various conceptions of the body and discursive linguistic aspects, thus creating humour. Linguistic slips of this kind seem to be inspired by John Locke’s philosophy popular at the time, while an analysis using Henri Bergson’s essay on the comic is carried out to look at the mechanism in which humour is produced through the body in the novel as the iatromechanistic and humoral models of the body lend themselves to be seen as comic in the Bergsonian sense.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"80 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139132227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Humorous advertisement categories","authors":"Emese Babinszki, Katalin Balázs","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.781","url":null,"abstract":"Humour is a prevalent strategy in advertising, but research findings are contradictory regarding its effectiveness. A potential resolution of the contradictory findings could be to create a category system distinguishing between the basic types of humorous advertisements, which could systematically be used in future research. Several classifications have been reported and some typologies have been suggested, but none is based on the audience’s representations. Our aim was to identify the basic types of humorous advertisements with an approach that considers both the previous typologies and the non-experts’ representations. In the present study, 18 humorous advertisements were assessed based on a questionnaire study with 13 questions and 246 adult participants. Based on the cluster analyses of the empirical data, three basic types of humorous advertisements were identified: taboo-breaking, exaggeration, and cute or sentimental humour. Eight items were differentiated most clearly among the humorous advertisement types. Both the humorous advertisement categories and the applied items are worth consideration in further studies. Conscious use of the identified categories in future research could help to develop a more comprehensive model of humorous advertising effects.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":" 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139136149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Genre and stylistic markers of Ukrainian folk jokes","authors":"Olena Yemelyanova, Svitlana Baranova, Iryna Kobyakova","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.4.868","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the study of Ukrainian social and domestic folk jokes that contain information about the life of people, their habits, customs, traditions, and relations, and ridicule the weak sides of Ukrainians. The research material comprises 311 folk jokes that date back to the second part of the 19th century – the beginning of the 20th century. They are selected from the collection by M.V. Nagornyi (1940) and the book of Ukrainian folk satire and humour (1959). The goal of the research is to study the main genre and stylistic markers of Ukrainian folk jokes. It is noted that Ukrainian folk jokes have a form of dialogue. Ukrainians’ longstanding tradition of self-deprecating humour is also mentioned. The stylistic markers of the texts under consideration are the choice of vocabulary with diminutive suffixes, a wide range of expressive means, and stylistic devices that are a basis for achieving humorous effects. Diminutive suffixes are proved to have acquired specific characteristics in folk jokes giving positive or negative evaluation. Ukrainian social and domestic folk jokes, some of which take the form of joke-stories, are distinguished by precision, witty expression, and concise and dynamically constructed plot. The future research might involve the detailed study of the peculiarities of the Ukrainian social and domestic jokes of the third millennium, focusing on their linguistic and extra-linguistic features.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"121 19","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139133995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legal analysis of freedom of expression and online humour in Indonesia","authors":"Andryka Syayed Achmad Assagaf","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.807","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the issue of freedom of expression in relation to online humour, particularly in Indonesian law. Despite being an inherent individual right within the broad scope of freedom of expression, there is currently no clear demarcation line in Indonesian law to position humour as an integral aspect of this right and of entertainment. Consequently, forms of humour such as memes, parodies, and satire may potentially be considered as insulting due to the subjective nature of humour and the lack of a consistent interpretation. This legal uncertainty raises concerns about the protection of freedom of expression as a fundamental human right in the present era. Despite the protection granted by the Constitution and various laws, Indonesia's legal framework does not explicitly define humour as a constituent of freedom of expression, thus leaving its interpretation to the discretion of the courts.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"695 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Have media texts become more humorous?","authors":"Haoran Zhu, Yueqing Deng","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.810","url":null,"abstract":"As a research topic, humour has drawn much attention from multiple disciplines including linguistics. Based on Engelthaler & Hills’ (2018) humour scale, this study developed a measure named Humour Index (HMI) to quantify the degree of humour of texts. This measure was applied to examine the diachronic changes in the degree of humour of American newspapers and magazines across a time span of 118 years (1900-2017) with the use of texts from Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Besides, the study also discussed the contributions of different types of words to the degree of humour in the two genres. The results show significant uptrends in the degree of humour of both newspapers and magazines in the examined period. Moreover, derogatory and offensive words are found to be less frequently used than other categories of words in both genres. This study provides both theoretical and methodological implications for humour studies and claims or hypotheses of previous research, such as infotainment and linguistic positivity bias.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The relationship between humour types, assertiveness, self-efficacy, personality, and perfectionism in pre-service teachers","authors":"Elena Mirela Samfira, Ionel Samfira","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.824","url":null,"abstract":"Teachers’ humour has a special place in the educational context with multiple benefits for themselves and their students. As a complex concept, humour is strongly related to individual personality, which is also complex and diverse. The current research aimed to investigate the correlations between four types of humour (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating) and assertiveness, perfectionism, and Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability) in pre-service teachers. The obtained results show that the adaptive type of humour (affiliative and self-enhancing) positively correlated with assertiveness, Big Five personality traits, and the adaptive form of perfectionism, and negatively with the maladaptive form of perfectionism. Also, the maladaptive type of humour (aggressive and self-defeating) negatively correlated with assertiveness, Big Five personality traits, and positively with the maladaptive form of perfectionism. An intriguing finding was the positive correlation between aggressive humour and assertiveness.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sexual jokes in Nigerian stand-up comedy","authors":"Eyo Mensah, Idom Inyabri, Romanus Aboh","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.791","url":null,"abstract":"Nigerian stand-up comic artists explore emerging social, religious, and political issues as materials for comic entertainment within their performance space and community of practice. One of the resources for comic performance is the recourse to sexual contents which are deployed to reduce apprehension around stereotyped norms about sex and sexuality in the Nigerian sociocultural context. Drawing on ethnographic qualitative data using social media skits, audio-visual disks and semi-structured interviews, this article examines sexual jokes as ideological texts and rhetorical devices that embody the struggle between conservatism and postmodern conceptions of sex and sexuality. It highlights the recurrent themes and creative discourses of sexual humour which stand-up comedy performers exploit as artistic tools for the engagement of gender roles, sexual myths, sexual politics and social contradictions within a vulnerable socio-political and economic context. We adopt social relief theory and incongruity theory of humour comprehension to provide a nuanced understanding of sexual jokes and the sociocultural inhibitions that surround them. The dominant themes in these jokes include male sterility, faking orgasm, commodification of sex, prostitution, rape, and the use of aphrodisiac. The results indicate that sexual jokes are circulating within the comedy performance space as forms of protest against stereotyped sexual culture. In this way, male and female comedians, working with the tools and ideology of postmodernism, help to satirise conventional sexual values and radicalise their audiences against normative construction of sex and sexuality.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}