Elements of sensation seeking and their relationship with two aspects of humour appreciation—perceived funniness and overt expression
Section snippets
Participants
Participants consisted of 186 students aged between 18 and 47 years. The sample contained 117 females (M=20.9 years, S.D.=4.6) and 69 males (M=22.6 years, S.D.=5.0). The majority of participants were first and second year university students mainly recruited from an Australian University's psychology participant pool. These participants received credit points towards their semester psychology mark for volunteering to participate in the study. Other participants were recruited by advertising for
Results
The scores derived for the two adapted questionnaires were examined using SPSS RELIABILITY ANALYSIS. It was ascertained that the Perceived Funniness of Humour Questionnaire (PFQ) obtained a Cronbach's alpha of 0.78, and the Overt Expression Questionnaire (OEQ), a Cronbach's alpha of 0.75, indicating that both questionnaires had moderate to high internal reliability, comparable with the original SHRQ from which they were derived.
The relationship between perceived funniness and overt expression
Discussion
The results suggest some interesting possibilities in the way sensation seeking and humour are related. The significant correlations between both of Arnett's (1994) dimensions of sensation seeking, novelty and intensity, and both assessments of humour, perceived funniness and overt expression, confirm that sensation seeking and a humour appreciation are closely related. However, the precise manner in which the two dimensions of sensation seeking are linked to humour appreciation suggests some
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