Abstract
Freudian (1905 Wien; Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewuβten. Deuticke) and Salience (Goldstein, Suls and Anthony, 1972; The Psychology of Humor. Academic Press, New York) theory make opposite predictions about the effects of attitudes to sex and sexual behaviour on appreciation of sex humour. Male and female students (N=115) answered a questionnaire of attitudes toward sex, a sexual behaviour inventory (Eysenck, 1976; Sex and Personality. Open Books, London) and a humour test. The results generally supported a positive correlation between appreciation of sex humour and the sex scales (sexual libido, satisfaction, experience and pleasure), although the resulting pattern was very complex. Separation of sex humour according to the jokes structure yielded different predictor patterns. Funniness of humour based on nonsense correlated most frequently and most highly with the sex scales libido, experiences and pleasure. Low sexual satisfaction, low permissiveness, and prudishness were correlated with aversiveness of all types of humour. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that these variables are better predictors of enjoyment of sexual humour than the more general factors of conservatism and toughmindedness (T) which turned out to be potent predictors in a recent study (Ruch and Hehl, 1986; Person. individ. Diff.7, 861–874). It turned out that the predictive sex scales were located on the toughmindedness axis and were thus as predictive of sex humour as T itself. A refinement of the salience hypothesis was undertaken.
Ruch, Willibald