Willibald Ruch
Biographic Data
| ID | 122905 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Willibald Ruch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Willibald |
| FAMILY NAME | Ruch |
| SIGNATURE | RUCH W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5368-3616 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 87 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 338 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Psychometric Analysis and Cross‐Cultural Comparisons of the Italian and English Sense of Humor Scale Parallel Version Short Form
The Sense of Humor Scale parallel version short form (SHS‐PSF) is a novel self‐report measure aimed at describing personality traits related to enjoyment of humor, laughter, verbal humor, humor under stress, humor in everyday life, and laughing at oneself. The present study recruited Italian ( N = 298) and Canadian ( N = 910) participants to complete the Italian and English versions, respectively, to assess the measurement properties of the newly…
Associations between personality and humor structure appreciation
The current study investigates the associations between personality and humor structure appreciation. A total of 509 participants completed the Big Five Inventory–2 and the Humor Structure Appreciation Scale. The results showed that, as expected, open-mindedness was associated with a preference for nonsense (NON) over incongruity-resolution (INC-RES) humor, and it was negatively related to the aversiveness scores of NON humor. On the other hand, …
Paragons of character—Character strengths and well‐being of moral, creative, and religious exemplars
OBJECTIVE: Which traits best describe individuals who are recognized as exemplary in different domains? And can self-rated positively valued personality traits distinguish such individuals from the general population? BACKGROUND: The study of exemplary individuals' personality traits traditionally focused on general and broad traits. Using character strengths, which are narrower and designed to describe desirable behavior, could provide new insig…
Definitional ambiguities in character strengths: A comparative analysis with personality and other psychobiological attributes
Character strengths lack a consensual definition, creating ambiguity in psychological research. This exploratory study tests whether previously discussed ideas about character strengths’ shared qualities (e.g., fulfilling, morally valued, traitlike) distinguish them from related concepts, such as the Big Five. Ten laypersons rated 12 of these “criteria” across 80 character strengths adjectives and 170 that pertained to the Big Five, emotions, ana…
Ninety years after Lewin: The role of familism and attachment style in social networks characteristics across 21 nations/areas
Drawing on the literature on person-culture fit, we investigated how culture (assessed as national-level familism), personality (tapped by attachment styles) and their interactions predicted social network characteristics in 21 nations/areas ( N = 2977). Multilevel mixed modeling showed that familism predicted smaller network size but greater density, tie strength, and multiplexity. Attachment avoidance predicted smaller network size, and lower d…
What’s Your Humor Profile? A Latent Profile Analysis on the State-Trait Model of Cheerfulness as the Temperamental Basis of Humor
Trait cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood outperform personality traits of the five-factor model in explaining variance in humor behaviors and well-being among adolescents
Toward a dynamic model of Gelotophobia: Social support, workplace bullying and stress are connected with diverging trajectories of life and job satisfaction among Gelotophobes
Recent theoretical advances have grounded gelotophobia (Greek: gelos = laughter, phobos = fear) in a dynamic framework of causes, moderating factors, and consequences of the fear of being laughed at. This understanding corresponds to that of vulnerability and translates gelotophobia into a distinguishable pattern of lacking resources (i.e., misinterpretation of joy and laughter) that can result in negative consequences (e.g., reduced well-being a…
Fear of being laughed at in Italian healthcare workers: Testing associations with humor styles and coping humor
Character Strengths in Adults and Adolescents: Their Measurement and Association with Well-Being
156 mostly friends and partners) completed both character strengths questionnaires and several well-being questionnaires. The psychometric characteristics and the correlations with well-being scales were examined once exclusively on the basis of self-rating and once on the basis of combined self- and informant-ratings. Substantial differences between the questionnaires were found in each of the criteria examined (e.g., identification of signature…
Convergence and Psychometric Properties of Character Strengths Measures: The VIA-IS and the VIA-IS-R
This study compares the German versions of the original measure of character strengths (VIA-IS) with its latest revision (VIA-IS-R) regarding reliability and convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity. A sample of 499 German-speaking adults (79% women, mean age: 33.3 years) provided self-reports of character strengths (VIA-IS, VIA-IS-R) and several criteria: Core virtues, thriving, and moral behaviors. Results suggested that both me…
Cultural Differences in How People Deal with Ridicule and Laughter: Differential Item Functioning between the Taiwanese Chinese and Canadian English Versions of the PhoPhiKat-45
The PhoPhiKat-45 measures three dispositions toward ridicule and laughter, including gelotophobia (i.e., the fear of being laughed at), gelotophilia (i.e., the joy of being laughed at), and katagelasticism (i.e., the joy of laughing at others). Despite numerous cultural adaptations, there is a paucity of cross-cultural studies investigating measurement invariance of this measure. Undergraduate students from a Canadian university (N = 1467; 71.4% …
Character and Virtues in the Arts and Humanities
This chapter discusses the role of character in the arts and humanities. The authors introduce the most influential model of character, the Values in Action (VIA) classification of character strengths and virtues, review the relevance of the arts and humanities in the creation of this classification, and discuss earlier research and practice of character strengths in these disciplines. They review earlier studies and present new data on differenc…
The State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory State Version–Short Form (STCI-S18): An Examination of Language Use and Psychometric Properties
The State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory–State Version (STCI-S) measures three states of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood as the temperamental basis of humor. The present study investigates (1) the development and psychometric validation of a newly developed short version and (2) test-criterion validity with state measures and language use. Study 1 (N = 933) confirmed the three-dimensional structure, and both the short and standard versions …
Exploring the stability of Hexaco‐60 structure and the association of gender, age, and social position with personality traits across 18 countries
OBJECTIVES: The present paper tests the cross-national stability of the HEXACO-60 structure across 18 countries from four continents. Gender and age differences across countries will be examined. Finally, this is the first study to explicitly analyze the relationships between the HEXACO and social position. METHOD: Ten thousand two hundred and ninety eight subjects (5,410 women and 4,888 men) from 18 countries and 13 languages were analyzed. Conf…
Character strengths and fluid intelligence
OBJECTIVE: Research on the associations between cognitive and noncognitive personality traits has widely neglected character strengths, that means positively and morally valued personality traits that constitute good character. METHOD: The present study aimed to bridge this gap by studying the associations between character strengths and fluid intelligence using different operationalizations of character strengths (including self- and informant-r…
Dark Triad Traits, Social Position, and Personality: A Cross-Cultural Study
This research explores the Dark Triad traits in 18 cultures from Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. We examined the relationships among Dark Triad traits, as measured by the SD3, with gender, age, social status, and two personality models, HEXACO and Zuckerman’s alternative five factor model (AFFM). There were 10,298 participants (5,410 women and 4,888 men) with a mean age of 40.31 ( SD = 17.32) years old. Between 6% and 16% of the variance in th…
On the relationship between valence and arousal in samples across the globe
Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neu…
Profile similarities among romantic partners’ character strengths and their associations with relationship- and life satisfaction
We studied the similarity among partners’ character strengths (i.e., positively valued traits) across two studies. In Study 1, N = 68 couples completed the 240-item VIA Inventory of Strengths and in Study 2, N = 143 couples completed a 24-item brief-form and measures of life- and relationship satisfaction. We computed raw, normative, and distinctive profile similarities for the 24 strengths and found support for partners’ similarity in both studi…
Development and Linguistic Cue Analysis of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory–Short Form
The present study derived a short form of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory-Trait Version (STCI-T30) using an item response theory framework. Latent trait test-retest correlations and reliability across the latent continuum in the STCI-T30 remained high. Moreover, the STCI-T30 showed external validity with criterion variables (e.g., playfulness) and a short writing task completed by these participants was rated by unacquainted judges to infe…
The language of character strengths: Predicting morally valued traits on social media
Objective Social media is increasingly being used to study psychological constructs. This study is the first to use Twitter language to investigate the 24 Values in Action Inventory of Character Strengths, which have been shown to predict important life domains such as well‐being. Method We use both a top‐down closed‐vocabulary (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) and a data‐driven open‐vocabulary (Differential Language Analysis) approach to analy…
Effectiveness and feasibility of a humor training in a routine care setting for people suffering from mental disorders
The study tested effectiveness and feasibility of a humor training for members of a community mental health center suffering from schizophrenia, personality disorders, depression, or anxiety. The training group (n=28) was compared to a treatment-as-usual control group (n=26). Outcomes were divided into primary (coping humor and cheerfulness) and secondary ones (well-being, depression, anxiety, and symptomatology), and were assessed prior to and a…
On the dimensionality of humorous conduct and associations with humor traits and behaviors
The aim of the present study is to explore higher-order dimensions of humorous conduct derived from 100 non-redundant and comprehensive statements. These dimensions are validated in self- and other-reports and their criterion validity is assessed by relating them to other humor concepts (temperamental basis of the sense of humor, attitudes towards laughter and being laughed at, humor appreciation and creation). Four broad dimensions (mean-spirite…
Broadening Humor: Comic Styles Differentially Tap into Temperament, Character, and Ability
The present study introduces eight comic styles (i.e., fun, humor, nonsense, wit, irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism) and examines the validity of a set of 48 marker items for their assessment, the Comic Style Markers (CSM). These styles were originally developed to describe literary work and are used here to describe individual differences. Study 1 examines whether the eight styles can be distinguished empirically, in self- and other-reports, …
Attribute des Lachens: Ein lexikalischer Ansatz
Lachen kommt in unterschiedlichen sozialen Situationen vor, wird von unterschiedlichen Arten von Stimuli ausgelöst und geht mit unterschiedlichen Emotionen einher – dies führt zu einer großen Variabilität von Lachen. Diese Variabilität spiegelt sich in der Sprache wider, die dazu verwendet wird, Lachen zu beschreiben: In der deutschen Sprache fanden sich in einer korpuslinguistischen Analyse mehr als 1000 Wörter, die für eine Beschreibung bzw. Di…
Patterns and Universals of Adult Romantic Attachment Across 62 Cultural Regions: Are Models of Self and of Other Pancultural Constructs
As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, a total of 17,804 participants from 62 cultural regions completedthe RelationshipQuestionnaire(RQ), a self-reportmeasure of adult romanticattachment. Correlational analyses within each culture suggested that the Model of Self and the Model of Other scales of the RQ were psychometrically valid within most cultures. Contrary to expectations, the Model of Self and Model of Other dimensions …
Sources of variance in current sense of humor inventories: How much substance, how much method variance
The present study investigates the relationship of self-report inventories of ''sense of humor'' and behavioral measures of humor as well as their location in the Eysenckian PEN system. 110 male and female adults ages 17 to 83 answered the following inventories: SHRQ (Martin and Lefcourt 1984), SHQZ (Ziv 1981), SHQ-3 revised (Svebak 1993), CHS (Martin and Lefcourt 1983), MSHS (Thorson and Powell 1993), HIS (Bell, McGhee, and Duffey 1986), 3 WD-K …
Extending the study of gelotophobia: On gelotophiles and katagelasticists
In Ruch and Proyer (Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 21:47–67, 2008a), the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) was introduced as a new individual differences phenomenon. In this article, two new laughter-related concepts are presented: gelotophilia (the joy of being laughed at) and katagelasticism (the joy of laughing at others). The main aim of the present article was an empirical verification of these three concepts. Data anal…
Assessing the „humorous temperament“: Construction of the facet and standard trait forms of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory — STCI
Article Assessing the „humorous temperament“: Construction of the facet and standard trait forms of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory — STCI was published on January 1, 1996 in the journal HUMOR (volume 9, issue 3-4)
The fear of being laughed at: Individual and group differences in Gelotophobia
Single case studies led to the discovery and phenomenological description of Gelotophobia and its definition as the pathological fear of appearing to social partners as a ridiculous object (Titze 1995, 1996, 1997). The aim of the present study is to empirically examine the core assumptions about the fear of being laughed at in a sample comprising a total of 863 clinical and non-clinical participants. Discriminant function analysis yielded that ge…
Toward an empirical verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor
The present study derives hypotheses from the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and tests them on a sample of 534 subjects. Subjects are presented with three sets of jokes, each consisting of an anchor joke and comparison jokes in which variations in one and only one of the six Knowledge Resources (KR), script Opposition (SO), logical mechanism (LM), Situation (SI) target (TA), narrative strategy (NS), andlanguage (LA) occurred. Subjects rate…
Fearing humor? Gelotophobia: The fear of being laughed at Introduction and overview
Multivariate Methods for the Comparison of Factor Structures in Cross-Cultural Research: An Illustration with the Big Five Questionnaire
The goal of the present study was to demonstrate the value of a multiple data analytic approach for testing the cross-cultural generalizability of a personality measure. Data were collected in four different countries (Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United States) on the Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ), which is a measure of the Five Factor Model of personality traits. Different analytical strategies were conducted. Item-level analyses were carried …
A personality-based model of humor development during adulthood
Thepresent article advances a model of humor development extending from late adolescence until about age 60.Previously advanced models of humor development during the preadolescent years are reviewed, and issues related to the proposal of models of adult humor development are discussed.The developmental model presented here drawsfrom a series of factor-analytic studies which document the importance of two principal humor-appreciation factors (non…
The emotions of gelotophobes: Shameful, fearful, and joyless
The present research examines the hypothesis that the fear of being laughed at is related to three emotions: shame, fear, and (low) joy. In two self-report studies the participants (N = 234, N = 102) filled in the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉. Unpublished questionnaire, 1998) for the assessment of the level of gelotophobia and the Anchor Que question form (Ekman, Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and…
Temperament, Eysenck’s PEN system, and humor-related traits
The Eysenckian PEN System of personality (Eysenck 1991;Eysenck and Eysenck 1985), comprising the superfactors Psychotidsm (P), Extraversion (E), and Neuroticism (N), is used äs a means to locate different humorrelated traits.A sample of 159 German adults answered a sample of temperamental traits relating to the PEN System äs well äs five humorrelated questionnaires.The temperament inventories investigated comprised the following: the Eysenck Pers…
Training the sense of humor with the 7 Humor Habits Program and satisfaction with life
The current study tested the 7 Humor Habits Program after McGhee (1996, Health, healing, and the amuse system (2. edition): Humor as survival training . Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing; 2010, Humor as survival training for a stressed-out world: The 7 Humor Habits Program . Bloomington, IN: Author House) in two groups receiving the eight-week training (group sessions; one group additionally completing “Home Play” exercises and one group witho…
How do gelotophobes interpret laughter in ambiguous situations? An experimental validation of the concept
The present study was designed to examine the phenomenon of the fear of being laughed at. Three groups of adults, preselected with respect to: (1) having no fear of being laughed at, (2) being borderline with respect to the fear of being laughed at, and (3) being abnormally afraid of being laughed at (gelotophobic). All the subjects listened to tape recordings of laughter. These recordings of laughter reflected a variety of emotional qualities. T…
Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): A multi-national study involving 73 countries
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 …
Dealing with laughter and ridicule in adolescence: Relations with bullying and emotional responses
WD meets GTVH: Breaking the ground for interdisciplinary humor research
The present paper describes an interdisciplinary effort, in which results based on the same material, but analyzed with tools from two different disciplines are brought together for mutual evaluation. The set of 70 jokes and cartoons from the 3 WD (Ruch 1995), which has been extensively studied psychologically for its affective properties, is analyzed linguistically for its internal morphology based on the General Theory of Verbal Humor— GTVH (At…
An examination of the convergence between the conceptualization and the measurement of humor styles: A study of the construct validity of the Humor Styles Questionnaire
The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ
Investigating the humor of gelotophobes: Does feeling ridiculous equal being humorless
Titze (Humor and Health Journal 5:1–11, 1996) concluded from individual case studies that gelotophobes do not experience humor and laughter as a shared enjoyment but rather as a threat. Two studies examined whether gelotophobes are less humorous in general or whether this is true only for certain components of humor. In study I, three samples (N = 120 and 70 students; N = 169 adults) filled in the GELOPH〈46〉 along with several humor instruments (…
The fear of being laughed at among psychiatric patients
The fear of being laughed at brings to the fore the problematic side of an otherwise very positive aspect of human experience. In the streamline of investigations analyzing the presence and characteristics of gelotophobia, a study focusing on psychiatric patients was carried out. The diagnoses were established according to the criteria of the DSM IV TR (American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM),…
Cross-national comparison of humor categories: France and Germany
The present study examines the cross-national stability of a factor-analytically derived taxonomy ofjokes and cartoons.The comparison is based on a humor lest aimed at measuring funniness and aversiveness of incongruityresolution, nonsense, and sexual humor.Funniness anddegree ofcontroversiality of these humor categories were compared in France and Germany, and it was determined whether conservatism and intolerance of ambiguity are potent predict…
Can self-defeating humor make you happy? Cognitive interviews reveal the adaptive side of the self-defeating humor style
The present set of studies employs two cognitive interviewing techniques (thinking aloud and online cognitive probing) of the scale assessing the self-defeating humor style, aiming at delineating the role that self-defeating humor plays in self-esteem and emotions. The self-defeating humor style comprises humor to enhance one’s relationships with others at the expense of oneself, and has often been related to lower well-being. The analyses are ba…
Gelotophobia: Life satisfaction and happiness across cultures
The fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) was examined in its relations to concepts from positive psychology in Austria, China, and Switzerland. It was related to satisfaction with life and Peterson et al.'s (2005) three orientations to happiness; the life of pleasure (hedonism), life of engagement (related to flow-experiences), and life of meaning (eudaimonia). Participants (
Assessing Gelotophobia, Gelotophilia, and Katagelasticism in Children: An Initial Study on How Six to Nine-Year-Olds Deal with Laughter and Ridicule and How This Relates to Bullying and Victimization
Intelligence and gelotophobia: The relations of self-estimated and Psychometrically measured intelligence to the fear of being laughed at
The present article examines the relation between the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) and intellectual abilities (verbal, numeric, and spatial intelligence, memory and reasoning, vocabulary, and attention) and the self-estimation of one's own abilities. In a first study, N = 167 participants completed ability tests along with a subjective measure for gelotophobia. The results indicate that gelotophobia and intellectual abilities exist ind…
Were they really laughed at? That much? Gelotophobes and their history of perceived derisibility
The List of Derisible Situations (LDS; Proyer, Hempelmann and Ruch, List of Derisible Situations (LDS), University of Zurich, 2008) consists of 102 different occasions for being laughed at. They were retrieved in a corpus study and compiled into the LDS. Based on this list, information on the frequency and the intensity with which people recall being laughed at during a given time-span (12 months in this study) can be collected. An empirical stud…
A personality-based model of humor development during adulthood
Thepresent article advances a model of humor development extending from late adolescence until about age 60.Previously advanced models of humor development during the preadolescent years are reviewed, and issues related to the proposal of models of adult humor development are discussed.The developmental model presented here drawsfrom a series of factor-analytic studies which document the importance of two principal humor-appreciation factors (non…
Cross-national comparison of humor categories: France and Germany
The present study examines the cross-national stability of a factor-analytically derived taxonomy ofjokes and cartoons.The comparison is based on a humor lest aimed at measuring funniness and aversiveness of incongruityresolution, nonsense, and sexual humor.Funniness anddegree ofcontroversiality of these humor categories were compared in France and Germany, and it was determined whether conservatism and intolerance of ambiguity are potent predict…
The nature of humor appreciation: Toward an integration of perception of stimulus properties and affective experience
Introduction: Current issues in psychological humor research
Toward an empirical verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor
The present study derives hypotheses from the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and tests them on a sample of 534 subjects. Subjects are presented with three sets of jokes, each consisting of an anchor joke and comparison jokes in which variations in one and only one of the six Knowledge Resources (KR), script Opposition (SO), logical mechanism (LM), Situation (SI) target (TA), narrative strategy (NS), andlanguage (LA) occurred. Subjects rate…
Temperament, Eysenck’s PEN system, and humor-related traits
The Eysenckian PEN System of personality (Eysenck 1991;Eysenck and Eysenck 1985), comprising the superfactors Psychotidsm (P), Extraversion (E), and Neuroticism (N), is used äs a means to locate different humorrelated traits.A sample of 159 German adults answered a sample of temperamental traits relating to the PEN System äs well äs five humorrelated questionnaires.The temperament inventories investigated comprised the following: the Eysenck Pers…
Measurement approaches to the sense of humor: Introduction and overview
There has been a renaissance of research interest in the "sense of humor" in recent years, partly äs an attempt to define the concept but more strenuously to provide Instruments for its measurement. A quick count of recent publications shows an average of two to three new sense of humor- instruments per year — or one every four to six months. This intensity of research is unparalleled in the history of humor research and contrasts sharply with 25…
A cross-cultural study of humor appreciation: Italy and Germany
The present study examines the cross-national stability of a factor analytically derived taxonomy of jokes and cartoons. A sample of 100 female and 48 male Italian adults responded to Italian translations of the 3 WD humor test (Ruch 1983) which is aimed at measuring funniness and aversiveness of incongruity-resolution, nonsense, and sexual humor. The results were compared with that of a German sample of 98 female and 50 male adults. Funniness an…
Assessing the „humorous temperament“: Construction of the facet and standard trait forms of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory — STCI
Article Assessing the „humorous temperament“: Construction of the facet and standard trait forms of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory — STCI was published on January 1, 1996 in the journal HUMOR (volume 9, issue 3-4)
Sources of variance in current sense of humor inventories: How much substance, how much method variance
The present study investigates the relationship of self-report inventories of ''sense of humor'' and behavioral measures of humor as well as their location in the Eysenckian PEN system. 110 male and female adults ages 17 to 83 answered the following inventories: SHRQ (Martin and Lefcourt 1984), SHQZ (Ziv 1981), SHQ-3 revised (Svebak 1993), CHS (Martin and Lefcourt 1983), MSHS (Thorson and Powell 1993), HIS (Bell, McGhee, and Duffey 1986), 3 WD-K …
Debate
Debate
The present work puts into perspective claims that have been made in a recent article by Paolillo (1998). It is pointed out that the conclusions drawn are based on misrepresentation and misunderstanding of our general approach as well as the aims of the criticized study by Kohler and Ruch (1994) in particular. Different ways of taxonomizing hunter are discussed and it is concluded on the basis of both studies that Far Side humor falls well within…
Multivariate Methods for the Comparison of Factor Structures in Cross-Cultural Research: An Illustration with the Big Five Questionnaire
The goal of the present study was to demonstrate the value of a multiple data analytic approach for testing the cross-cultural generalizability of a personality measure. Data were collected in four different countries (Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United States) on the Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ), which is a measure of the Five Factor Model of personality traits. Different analytical strategies were conducted. Item-level analyses were carried …
Do cheerfulness, exhilaration, and humor production moderate pain tolerance? A Facs study
Prior studies have shown that watching a funny film leads to an increase in pain tolerance.The present study aimed at separating three factors considered potentially essential (mood, behavior, and cognition related to humor) and examined whether they are responsible for this effect.Furthermore, the study examined whether trait cheerfulness and trait seriousness, as measured by the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory (STCI; Ruch et al. 1996), moder…
Patterns and Universals of Adult Romantic Attachment Across 62 Cultural Regions: Are Models of Self and of Other Pancultural Constructs
As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, a total of 17,804 participants from 62 cultural regions completedthe RelationshipQuestionnaire(RQ), a self-reportmeasure of adult romanticattachment. Correlational analyses within each culture suggested that the Model of Self and the Model of Other scales of the RQ were psychometrically valid within most cultures. Contrary to expectations, the Model of Self and Model of Other dimensions …
National Character Does Not Reflect Mean Personality Trait Levels in 49 Cultures
Most people hold beliefs about personality characteristics typical of members of their own and others' cultures. These perceptions of national character may be generalizations from personal experience, stereotypes with a “kernel of truth,” or inaccurate stereotypes. We obtained national character ratings of 3989 people from 49 cultures and compared them with the average personality scores of culture members assessed by observer ratings and self-r…
WD meets GTVH: Breaking the ground for interdisciplinary humor research
The present paper describes an interdisciplinary effort, in which results based on the same material, but analyzed with tools from two different disciplines are brought together for mutual evaluation. The set of 70 jokes and cartoons from the 3 WD (Ruch 1995), which has been extensively studied psychologically for its affective properties, is analyzed linguistically for its internal morphology based on the General Theory of Verbal Humor— GTVH (At…
Strengths of character, orientations to happiness, and life satisfaction
Why are certain character strengths more associated with life satisfaction than others? A sample of US adults (N = 12,439) completed online surveys in English measuring character strengths, orientations to happiness (engagement, pleasure, and meaning), and life satisfaction, and a sample of Swiss adults (N = 445) completed paper-and-pencil versions of the same surveys in German. In both samples, the character strengths most highly linked to life …
The fear of being laughed at: Individual and group differences in Gelotophobia
Single case studies led to the discovery and phenomenological description of Gelotophobia and its definition as the pathological fear of appearing to social partners as a ridiculous object (Titze 1995, 1996, 1997). The aim of the present study is to empirically examine the core assumptions about the fear of being laughed at in a sample comprising a total of 863 clinical and non-clinical participants. Discriminant function analysis yielded that ge…
Intelligence and gelotophobia: The relations of self-estimated and Psychometrically measured intelligence to the fear of being laughed at
The present article examines the relation between the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) and intellectual abilities (verbal, numeric, and spatial intelligence, memory and reasoning, vocabulary, and attention) and the self-estimation of one's own abilities. In a first study, N = 167 participants completed ability tests along with a subjective measure for gelotophobia. The results indicate that gelotophobia and intellectual abilities exist ind…
How do gelotophobes interpret laughter in ambiguous situations? An experimental validation of the concept
The present study was designed to examine the phenomenon of the fear of being laughed at. Three groups of adults, preselected with respect to: (1) having no fear of being laughed at, (2) being borderline with respect to the fear of being laughed at, and (3) being abnormally afraid of being laughed at (gelotophobic). All the subjects listened to tape recordings of laughter. These recordings of laughter reflected a variety of emotional qualities. T…
Investigating the humor of gelotophobes: Does feeling ridiculous equal being humorless
Titze (Humor and Health Journal 5:1–11, 1996) concluded from individual case studies that gelotophobes do not experience humor and laughter as a shared enjoyment but rather as a threat. Two studies examined whether gelotophobes are less humorous in general or whether this is true only for certain components of humor. In study I, three samples (N = 120 and 70 students; N = 169 adults) filled in the GELOPH〈46〉 along with several humor instruments (…
Were they really laughed at? That much? Gelotophobes and their history of perceived derisibility
The List of Derisible Situations (LDS; Proyer, Hempelmann and Ruch, List of Derisible Situations (LDS), University of Zurich, 2008) consists of 102 different occasions for being laughed at. They were retrieved in a corpus study and compiled into the LDS. Based on this list, information on the frequency and the intensity with which people recall being laughed at during a given time-span (12 months in this study) can be collected. An empirical stud…
Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): A multi-national study involving 73 countries
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 …
The emotions of gelotophobes: Shameful, fearful, and joyless
The present research examines the hypothesis that the fear of being laughed at is related to three emotions: shame, fear, and (low) joy. In two self-report studies the participants (N = 234, N = 102) filled in the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉. Unpublished questionnaire, 1998) for the assessment of the level of gelotophobia and the Anchor Que question form (Ekman, Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and…
Psychology (78 works) · Social Psychology (70 works) · Humor Studies and Applications (60 works) · Social Psychology (44 works) · Developmental psychology (40 works) · Communication in Education and Healthcare (24 works) · Personality (22 works) · Laughter (19 works) · Clinical Psychology (17 works) · Big Five personality traits (16 works)