Relationships among affective and cognitive factors in humor

One hundred and twenty-five college students rated a total of 74 jokes, chosen by stratified sampling, on funniness and on 13 other scales suggested by humor theories. Highly similar factor structures were found with two sets of jokes. Ratings of surprise, resolution, and originality correlated strongly with funniness and helped define a factor on which funniness ratings loaded. Scales pertaining to painfulness, anxiety, or importance of joke topic were positively correlated with funniness but defined a factor essentially independent of it. Partial correlations suggested that these scales were related to funniness through their common relationship with incongruity and resolution scales. Ratings of how much a joke made subjects “feel free” correlated much more highly with ratings of incongruity and resolution than with ratings of painfulness, anxiety, or importance of joke topic. Results were interpreted as providing support for an incongruity-resolution theory of humor, and for the interdependency of affective factors with incongruity-resolution mechanisms.     

Children's use of perceptual set

The effects of perceptual set and of “sequential visual noise” on the identification of briefly exposed pictures were examined in 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults. Subjects were asked to indicate whether a brief target matched a standard. The standard picture was presented either before the target picture (to establish a set) or after the target. The target was presented either alone or last in a series of six brief pictures (i.e., in noise). Adults and 8-year-olds were at ceiling when the target was presented alone, but set facilitated their identification of the target in noise. The 5-year-olds benefited from set both when the target was presented alone and when it was presented in noise. These findings suggest that set for a specific target picture functions similarly at all ages.     

Interference with ingestional aversion learning produced by preexposure to the unconditioned stimulus: Associative and nonassociative aspects

Preconditioning exposure to a lithium chloride unconditioned stimulus (US) interferes with the subsequent conditioning of a taste aversion. Multiple US preexposures produce a long-lasting or durable interference with aversion learning, whereas a single US exposure produces a transient interference effect. The present experiments demonstrate that the durable US preexposure effect is substantially reduced if the method of drug treatment (infusion versus injection of the drug into the peritoneal cavity) or the spatial cues present during drug treatment (home cage versus a distinctive environment) are changed between the preexposure and taste conditioning phases of the experiment. In contrast, these manipulations do not attenuate the proximal/transient US preexposure effect. These findings indicate that different mechanisms are responsible for the two US preexposure effects. The results are consistent with previous suggestions that the durable effects of lithium preexposure are due to associative interference produced by the exteroceptive stimuli that accompany drug administrations and indicate that the proximal/transient US preexposure effect is mediated by nonassociative mechanisms.     

Relative deprivation and referent cognitions

Determinants of relative deprivation were examined in a laboratory experiment. Discontent associated with relative deprivation was hypothesized to be a function of likelihood, or the perceived probability of actually obtaining a desired outcome under existing circumstances, and referent cognitions, which involve the subjunctive probability of obtaining that outcome under alternative (hypothetical) circumstances. Male and female undergraduates discovered that their alleged chances of receiving experimental credit were either poor (low likelihood) or good (high likelihood). They also learned that if a different procedure had been used, their chances of receiving credit would have been either poor (low referent) or good (high referent). Responses to a subsequent questionnaire indicated that whereas discontent did not differ by referent conditions under high likelihood, greater discontent was shown by low-likelihood/high-referent subjects than by low-likelihood/low-referent subjects. This low- versus high-referent difference under low likelihood was also found in two conceptual replications designed to eliminate any influence of social comparison. The relevance of this model to other findings and theoretical formulations is discussed.     

A clarification of selective exposure: The impact of choice

Selective exposure as a reaction to cognitive dissonance has long eluded researchers working in the realm of dissonance theory. It is proposed here that the difficulties in selective exposure paradigms have resulted from inadequate designs, and more particularly, it is likely that many of the previous findings are due to confoundings. The present experiment manipulates the variable of choice with the intent of controlling for a variety of possible confounds. The experiment shows a simple, theoretically predicted effect: Selective exposure, favoring supporting over nonsupporting information, increases to the degree that an onerous task is undertaken with volition.     

Helping behavior in children: Addressing the interaction of a person-situation model

A critical review of major trends and developments in the study of children's helping behavior is presented, with specific emphasis on demand characteristics of different situations (rescue, donation, assistance) and methodological difficulties inherent in such a study. In general, researchers have been able to isolate certain here-and-now situational influences which have led to mean increases in children's sharing behavior. As yet, however, relatively few studies have attempted to isolate personal characteristics of individual children as a means of examining baseline differences of individuals across different helping behaviors. As a start, this paper calls for a person-situation interactional approach to the study of children's helping behavior, examining such key factors as the child's family style, status in the peer group, and personality style as interactive with the characteristics of the particular helping situation.