Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton February 13, 2009

Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): A multi-national study involving 73 countries

  • René T. Proyer , Willibald Ruch , Numan S. Ali , Hmoud S. Al-Olimat , Toshihiko Amemiya , Tamirie Andualem Adal , Sadia Aziz Ansari , Špela Arhar , Gigi Asem , Nicolas Baudin , Souha Bawab , Doris Bergen , Ingrid Brdar , Rute Brites , Marina Brunner-Sciarra , Amy Carrell , Hugo Carretero Dios , Mehmet Celik , Grazia Ceschi , Kay Chang , Chen Guo-Hai , Alexander Cheryomukhin , Maria P. Y. Chik , Wladyslaw Chlopicki , Jacquelyn Cranney , Donatien Dahourou , Sibe Doosje , Margherita Dore , Nahwat El-Arousy , Emilia Fickova , Martin Führ , Joanne Gallivan , Han Geling , Lydia Germikova , Marija Giedraityte , Abe Goh , Rebeca Díaz González , Sai Kin Ho , Martina Hrebícková , Belen Jaime , Birgit Hertzberg Kaare , Shanmukh Kamble , Shahe Kazarian , Paavo Kerkkänen , Mirka Klementová , Irina M. Kobozeva , Snjezana Kovjanic , Narasappa Kumaraswamy , Martin Lampert , Chao-Chih Liao , Manon Levesque , Eleni Loizou , Rolando Díaz Loving , Jim Lyttle , Vera C. Machline , Sean McGoldrick , Margaret Mcrorie , Liu Min , René Mõttus , Margret M. Munyae , Carmen Elvira Navia , Mathero Nkhalamba , Pier Paolo Pedrini , Mirsolava Petkova , Tracey Platt , Diana-Elena Popa , Anna Radomska , Tabassum Rashid , David Rawlings , Victor J. Rubio , Andrea C. Samson , Orly Sarid , Soraya Shams , Sek Sisokohm , Jakob Smári , Ian Sneddon , Irena Snikhovska , Ekaterina A. Stephanenko , Ieva Stokenberga , Hugo Stuer , Yohana Sherly Rosalina Tanoto , Luis Tapia , Julia Taylor , Pascal Thibault , Ava Thompson , Hanna Thörn , Hiroshi Toyota , Judit Ujlaky , Vitanya Vanno , Jun Wang , Betsie Van Der Westhuizen , Deepani Wijayathilake , Peter S. O. Wong , Edgar B. Wycoff and Eun Ja Yeun
From the journal HUMOR

Abstract

The current study examines whether the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) can be assessed reliably and validly by means of a self-report instrument in different countries of the world. All items of the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉, University of Düsseldorf, 1998; Ruch and Proyer, Swiss Journal of Psychology 67:19–27, 2008b) were translated to the local language of the collaborator (42 languages in total). In total, 22,610 participants in 93 samples from 73 countries completed the GELOPH. Across all samples the reliability of the 15-item questionnaire was high (mean alpha of .85) and in all samples the scales appeared to be unidimensional. The endorsement rates for the items ranged from 1.31% through 80.00% to a single item. Variations in the mean scores of the items were more strongly related to the culture in a country and not to the language in which the data were collected. This was also supported by a multidimensional scaling analysis with standardized mean scores of the items from the GELOPH〈15〉. This analysis identified two dimensions that further helped explaining the data (i.e., insecure vs. intense avoidant-restrictive and low vs. high suspicious tendencies towards the laughter of others). Furthermore, multiple samples derived from one country tended to be (with a few exceptions) highly similar. The study shows that gelotophobia can be assessed reliably by means of a self-report instrument in cross-cultural research. This study enables further studies of the fear of being laughed at with regard to differences in the prevalence and putative causes of gelotophobia in comparisons to different cultures.



Published Online: 2009-02-13
Published in Print: 2009-February

© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin

Downloaded on 30.4.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/HUMR.2009.012/html
Scroll to top button