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Psychometric Comparisons of Benevolent and Corrective Humor across 22 Countries: The Virtue Gap in Humor Goes International

Heintz S 1 , Ruch W 1 , Platt T 2 , Pang D 1 , Carretero-Dios H 3 , Dionigi A 4 Show all authors , Argüello Gutiérrez C 3 , Brdar I 5 , Brzozowska D 6 , Chen HC 7 , Chłopicki W 8 , Collins M 9 , Ďurka R 10 , Yahfoufi NYE 11 , Quiroga-Garza A 12 , Isler RB 13 , Mendiburo-Seguel A 14 , Ramis T 15 , Saglam B 16 , Shcherbakova OV 17 , Singh K 18 , Stokenberga I 19 , Wong PSO 20 , Torres-Marín J 21

Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Psychology, Personality and Assessment, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2 Faculty of Education, Health and Wellbeing, Institute of Psychology, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom
  • 3 Department of Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, Centro de Investigación Mente, Cerebro, y Comportamiento, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
  • 4 Federazione Nazionale Clown Dottori (FNC), Cesena, Italy
  • 5 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
  • 6 Institute of English, Faculty of Philology, University of Opole, Opole, Poland
  • 7 College of Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan
  • 8 Department of English Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
  • 9 School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
  • 10 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Letters, Catholic University in Ružomberok, Ružomberok, Slovakia
  • 11 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 12 Departamento Académico de Psicología, Universidad de Monterrey, San Pedro Garza García, Mexico
  • 13 School of Psychology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
  • 14 Facultad de Educación, Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile
  • 15 Department of Psychology, HELP University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 16 Psychology Department, Üsküdar University, Istanbul, Turkey
  • 17 Faculty of Psychology, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
  • 18 Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India
  • 19 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Psychology and Art, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia
  • 20 Centre for Fundamental and Liberal Education, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Kuala Nerus, Malaysia
  • 21 Department of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Centro de Investigación Mente, Cerebro y Comportamiento, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
Front Psychol, 2018;9:92.
PMID: 29479326 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00092

Abstract

Recently, two forms of virtue-related humor, benevolent and corrective, have been introduced. Benevolent humor treats human weaknesses and wrongdoings benevolently, while corrective humor aims at correcting and bettering them. Twelve marker items for benevolent and corrective humor (the BenCor) were developed, and it was demonstrated that they fill the gap between humor as temperament and virtue. The present study investigates responses to the BenCor from 25 samples in 22 countries (overallN= 7,226). The psychometric properties of the BenCor were found to be sufficient in most of the samples, including internal consistency, unidimensionality, and factorial validity. Importantly, benevolent and corrective humor were clearly established as two positively related, yet distinct dimensions of virtue-related humor. Metric measurement invariance was supported across the 25 samples, and scalar invariance was supported across six age groups (from 18 to 50+ years) and across gender. Comparisons of samples within and between four countries (Malaysia, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK) showed that the item profiles were more similar within than between countries, though some evidence for regional differences was also found. This study thus supported, for the first time, the suitability of the 12 marker items of benevolent and corrective humor in different countries, enabling a cumulative cross-cultural research and eventually applications of humor aiming at the good.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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