MEMORABLE HUMOROUS INCIDENTS - GENDER, THEMES AND SETTING EFFECTS

Using an autobiographical/everyday memory approach, ninety-three under-graduates each anonymously reported a personal humorous incident which was due to situational factors and not to prepared humor such as a joke, a movie, or a cartoon. Subjects subsequently identified the incident's major theme, the degree of funniness, where the event happened, how many people were involved, who was the butt-of-the-incident and whether the butt was present or absent. Contrary to expectation from laboratory-based studies on jokes, stories with women as victims were not rated by either gender as funnier than stories with male victims. In addition it was found that the majority of remembered incidents were not focused on sex or aggression for males or females but revolved around the foolishness of someone who was present at the time he or she was being laughed at by others.