CATEGORY AND RATIO SCALING OF SEXUAL AND INNOCENT CARTOONS

Cartoons from Playboy and New Yorker were judged by 104 college students using either a 0–20 category scale or a ratio scale with a standard of 10 as the funniness of a “typical” cartoon. The summed ratings correlated.88 for sexual cartoons and.90 for innocent cartoons. Furthermore, the two scales were linear when plotted against each other. This agreement for the entire range of funniness indicates that the underlying basis for judging sexual and innocent humor was the same. Also, when males judged cartoons, they seemed to add a constant value for sexual content regardless of the funniness of the cartoon. Therefore, the metric for judging cartoon humor is more qualitative than quantitative. These results support the use of category scales in humor research. © 1992, Walter de Gruyter