Humor comprehension, humor production, and insight: An exploratory study

AARON KOZBELT and KANA NISHIOKA

Abstract The relation between humor comprehension and humor production was examined. Unlike earlier studies that used comprehension tasks requiring a productive component, here participants simply decided whether cartoons were matched or mismatched to presented latent content (i.e., the implied meaning of the cartoon). To test humor production, the same participants devised humorous captions for photographs, which judges reliably rated on funniness. Performance on the two tasks showed a significant positive correlation. Relations between response time, confidence, and funniness ratings in the comprehension task were consistent with an insight view of humor comprehension: correct responses were made more quickly, and matched latent content trials were identified faster and were rated as funnier than mismatched trials. In the humor production task, judged funniness showed a reliable (but rather small) positive correlation with response time, offering little support for an insight view of humor production. Limitations of the study and possibilities for future research on humor production, modeled on creativity research, are discussed. Keywords: Humor comprehension; humor production; insight; latent content; signal detection theory. 1. Introduction Over the past century, hundreds of studies have investigated many aspects of humor (Roeckelein 2002). However, investigations of the cognitive processes involved in humor, especially humor production, remain comparatively scarce. What can we say about the mental processes that occur when people generate,
Humor 233 (2010), 375401 DOI 10.1515/HUMR.2010.017 09331719/10/00230375 Walter de Gruyter

376 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka understand, or appreciate humorous statements? How much do people vary in humor comprehension or humor production abilities? How are these related to each other or to other aspects of cognition? What is the time course of cognitive processes in humor comprehension or humor production? To what extent can such ill-defined constructs be reliably and validly measured in the first place? This study addresses such questions. Most theoretical and empirical work on cognitive processes in humor has aimed to understand humor appreciation or humor comprehension (e.g., Couturier et al. 1981; Cunningham and Derks 2005; Eysenck 1942; Feingold 1983; Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Goldstein 1970; Koestler 1964; Martin 1996; Sheehy-Skeffington 1977; Vaid et al. 2003). Humor appreciation is the experience of finding something amusing. It is typically operationalized by the intensity and duration of the mirth response, including smiling and laughing, or by subjective funniness ratings provided in response to humorous stimuli. Humor comprehension is the process of understanding or getting a joke. It is typically assessed by determining whether participants can correctly interpret a cartoons meaning, using open-ended or multiple-choice questions. In principle, appreciation and comprehension should be positively associated: one should not find an instance of humor funny if one does not understand it. Psychometric evidence is largely consistent with this view, finding at least some reliable, positive correlations between humor appreciation and comprehension (Byrne 1956; Masten 1986; Wierzbicki and Young 1978; for a review, see Kaufman et al. 2008). Many humor theorists and researchers have emphasized unexpectedness and surprise as important, or even necessary, factors in appreciating or understanding humor. For example, Gestalt theory claims that a sudden restructuring, or change in interpretation, occurs during humor comprehension (Derks 1987; Gick and Lockhart 1995; Koestler 1964; Maier 1932). Empirical research also shows that jokes are rated as funnier when participants take a shorter time to appreciate them (Cunningham and Derks 2005; Goldstein 1970), with response time and funniness ratings showing an essentially negative linear relation. Thus, comprehending or appreciating humor does not appear to require protracted effort; indeed, the opposite appears to be true. This perspective on humor appreciation and humor comprehension suggests a link to cognitive psychological research on insight problem solving (Gick and Lockhart 1995; Perkins 1981: 62-64; for a general overview, see Sternberg and Davidson 1995). When an insight occurs, the answer to a difficult problem is hit upon quite suddenly, with an associated emotional A-ha! reaction. One can think about insight problems in contrast to more mundane, incre-

Humor comprehension and production 377 mental forms of problem solving. For instance, as people work to solve algebra word problems, their feeling of warmth, or sense of nearness to a solution, increases. In contrast, when a problem requires an insight, feeling of warmth ratings remain flat until shortly before solution (Metcalfe and Wiebe 1987). Also, just as getting a joke is usually a rapid process, solutions to insight problems generally occur quickly, usually in the first minute of problem solving (Lockhart et al. 1988). While taking up to a minute to solve a problem is hardly instantaneous, the important feature of insight problem solving is that there is not a longer-term speed-accuracy tradeoff, as with problems that can be solved incrementally: after about the first minute, additional working time does not benefit the problem solver. Thus, although in some cases elaboration maybe necessary to solve an insight problem even when an appropriate problem representation has been achieved (Weisberg and Alba 1981), success or failure in insight problem solving seems largely due to the basic choice of a proper problem representation. Typically, an insight-yielding representation will differ from the default representation, necessitating some kind of rerepresentation if a solution is to be found, as in Gestalt views of humor comprehension. Gick and Lockhart summarized the relation between insight and humor comprehension:
The processes involved in insight share features with those involved in understanding jokes. Typical jokes set up representations of concepts that must be revised before the joke can be understood. Application of the revised concept must be fairly automatic; otherwise the joke is not funny if too much explanation is required. (Gick and Lockhart 1995: 224)

While insight and the processes of humor comprehension and/or appreciation have often been associated, little empirical research has studied whether insights happen when people make jokes. Indeed, in general contrast to the literature on humor appreciation and comprehension, relatively few researchers have examined the cognitive processes involved in humor production: Rocke leins (2002) comprehensive reference anthology of humor research, running to nearly 600 pages, includes only a few pages on humor production. In many respects, the difficulties facing psychologists wishing to research humor production are isomorphic to those facing creativity researchers (Derks 1987; Kaufman et al. 2008; Murdock and Ganim 1993; OQuin and Derks 1997). Both can be considered forms of ill-defined problem solving, in which a person must first determine that a problem exists, define or represent the problem in a particular way, generate and evaluate potential novel solutions, and elaborate a basic idea into a definitive form. In ill-defined problems there is no

378 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka single correct answer, as there might be for objectively scorable, well-defined situations. However, there are usually better or worse solutions, and the quality or creativity of a particular solution can be determined based on reliable, consensual assessment by qualified judges (Amabile 1983). Given these parallels, it is surprising that so few psychological investigations of the cognitive processes of humor production have been undertaken, in contrast to creativity, which, though still not a completely mainstream psychological topic, has spawned a considerable and varied research literature (see, e.g., Sternberg 1999). Interestingly, however, several investigations (Brodzinsky and Rubien 1976; Fabrizi and Pollio 1987; Humke and Schaefer, 1996; Treadwell 1970; Ziv 1976, 1988) have found positive associations between the quality of humor production and more general measures of creativity. While the specific underlying cognitive mechanisms for the link between humor production and creativity are unclear, a plausible candidate involves processes involved in insight problem solving. Indeed, some eminent creators describe prototypical insight-like experiences at moments of great creative discovery, for example, Darwins report of his sudden realization, while reading Malthus, that natural selection provided a mechanism for biological evolution (Perkins 1981). Researchers have frequently linked insight and creativity (see, e.g., Csikszentmihalyi and Sawyer 1995), particularly in the phase of creative thinking where an idea first emerges, rather than in the later protracted effort of elaborating that idea into a finished product. In the context of creative problem solving (and, perhaps, by extension, humor production), insight can be characterized in terms of its underlying cognitive processes in various non-mutually exclusive ways (Schooler et al. 1995). For instance, one possibility is a Gestalt process comparable to perceptual gap-filling; another is search through a problem space which offers few cues for progress (but which, once found, quickly lead to a solution) or which may have been previously defined as to preclude discovering a solution. In common with an insight view of humor comprehension, such insight processes in creative or productive situations occur rapidly and involve modifying a default problem representation of a situation. Since humor production represents a main focus of our investigation, we now review some previous investigations on the topic. One study is that of Derks and Hervas (1988), who examined the relation between the rated funniness of newly created humorous picture captions, the number of captions produced per picture, and the order in which they were produced. They found that captions were rated funnier when participants produced ten captions per picture, rather than two per picture, and that rated funniness increased with output order. Derks and Hervas concluded that a greater quantity of humor production

Humor comprehension and production 379 can lead to higher quality of humor. Using a similar methodology, Derks (1987) tested three models of humor production: rather rapid stimulus-response associations, restructuring patterns of wholistic concepts toward some guiding end, which should take longer for funnier jokes, and computations from a complex network of connections without a wholistic goal, which should show very variable latencies. Derks found some support for all three models: an initial burst of ideas supported the first model, an even distribution of the best jokes throughout the session supported the third model, and the finding that when the worst idea occurred, the best one would likely follow it was consistent with the second model. The initial burst of the first model might also be interpreted as a function of humor expertise involving pattern matching with a repertoire of familiar jokes in a well organized, structured knowledge base in long-term memory. Consistent with this view, Siegler (2004) found that, compared to novices, expert comic writers made more detailed interpretations of photos for which they were to create funny captions, were more likely to create humor by mapping a structural relation to make a humorous transformation of their initial interpretation of the photo, and tended to activate schemas to write their captions. While these investigations are informative in some respects, since participants in the studies by Derks (1987) and Derks and Hervas (1988) generated numerous captions per picture, the fairly coarse temporal measures in these investigations yield little information about another question, namely, the time course of the production of individual instances of humor and their relation to judged humor value. Another aspect of humor production was studied by Turner (1980), who found that participants who scored high on a self-monitoring scale were judged as wittier by members of a discussion group. This finding suggests a metacognitive component to humor production: perhaps people who are more sensitive to whether others will understand and appreciate humor can better evaluate jokes likely chances of success. This interpretation has somewhat different process implications than the quantity-driven aspect of Derkss (1987) and Derks and Hervass (1988) conclusions. In particular, the ability to evaluate potential jokes may be as important as the ability to generate jokes in the first place, suggesting a link between humor comprehension and humor production abilities. Indeed, some theoretical perspectives (e.g. Attardo 1994; Feingold 1983) largely equate generative and explicative aspects of humor, arguing that if one can explain why something is funny, then one can understand how it is produced. Other studies have focused on the relation between humor production andother abilities. For instance, Masten (1986) studied the sense of humor of

380 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka children aged 10 to 14, measuring appreciation (by mirth response and funniness ratings), comprehension (by two judges ratings of participants openended explanations of cartoon humor), and humor production (by two judges assessments of the quality of humor of newly devised cartoon captions and titles). Masten found a positive correlation between production and comprehension and between each of these and appreciation, but only when measured by mirth response (not by funniness ratings). While this investigation is one of the few to look directly at the relation between humor comprehension and production (as well as appreciation), it is an open question whether results obtained with children would generalize to adults. Also, naturally such measures do not inform the time courses of any cognitive processes involved in humor. In another study, Feingold and Mazzella (1993) examined the relation between humor comprehension and production in adults. They used self-report ratings of wittiness and several measures of humor production, including cartoon captioning, answers to absurd questions, and repartee generation, and compared performance on these tests to measures of humor cognition (joke knowledge and joke reasoning) and humor communication (willingness to share captions created in the humor production test) as well as measures of sociability, verbal ability, and scholastic orientation. As in Mastens (1986) study, two judges reliably rated the humor of the captions or statement created in the humor production tasks. Results showed that humor production was positively correlated with measures of humor cognition and verbal ability, but not to the other constructs, consistent with Sieglers (2004) findings on schema activation in expert comic writers. It also reinforces the idea that humor production and humor comprehension may be related, at least to the extent that Feingold and Mazzellas measure of humor cognition is a valid measure of humor comprehension. However, their operationalization of humor cognition, joke knowledge and joke reasoning involved fill-in-the blank questions that actually required a considerable amount of production (cf. Masten 1986), rather than simple recognition or detection processes. Indeed, Feingold and Mazzella acknowledged that their humor cognition measure assessed only the ability to manipulate incongruities ... not to recognize them or to evaluate ones productions (1993: 453454). Ideally, a pure measure of humor comprehension would not involve any productive component, but only recognition or detection of humor in a format that could be objectively scored. Other studies of humor production and appreciation (but not comprehension) include Koppel and Sechrest (1970) and Khler and Ruch (1996), neither of whom found strong evidence for a link between the two constructs. Koppel and Sechrest (1970), in a study of college fraternity brothers, found only a mild

Humor comprehension and production 381 positive correlation between humor production (measured by ratings of participants newly created cartoon captions) and humor appreciation (measured by participants own ratings of the funniness of a set of cartoons). Khler and Ruch (1996), studying a large sample of adults, found only very low positive correlations between humor appreciation and production, as measured by peerrated performance criteria (rather than self-reported humor initiation). In sum, while investigations of humor production have yielded some valuable initial results, many questions remain. One concerns the time course of such processes and whether finer-grained temporal measures would implicate sudden, insight-like processes, particularly in humor production, but also in humor comprehension or appreciation. Previous research (e.g. Cunningham and Derks 2005; Gick and Lockhart 1995; Goldstein 1970) suggests commonalities between insight and humor comprehension or appreciation. However, the relation between insight and humor production remains unclear, since earlier studies examining temporal aspects of humor production (Derks 1987; Derks and Hervas 1988) examined them in the context of generating multiple instances ofhumor, rather than the time course of the genesis of an individual humorous idea. A second remaining question concerns the psychometric relations between humor production, comprehension, and appreciation. Earlier research suggeststhat humor comprehension is related to both humor production (Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Masten 1986) and humor appreciation (Byrne 1956; Masten 1986; Wierzbicki and Young 1978), but that humor production is not strongly related to humor appreciation (Babad 1974; Fabrizi and Pollio 1987; Khler and Ruch 1996; Koppel and Sechrest 1970; OQuin and Derks 1997). However, few studies have examined these constructs on the same sample of individuals, and studies yielding these results have used a wide variety of assessment and measurement techniques, not all of which are necessarily ideal. Addressing these two sets of questions requires considerable methodological care. In general, much humor research is limited by methodological shortcomings; indeed, some researchers (e.g. Khler and Ruch 1996; Sheehy- Skeffington 1977) have explicitly noted the need for much more sophisticated techniques for measuring and assessing the construct of humor. Since humor is subjective, it is not immediately obvious how to obtain useful measures of humor comprehension or production. For instance, a reasonably objective measure of the correct interpretation (or at least a widely agreed-upon interpretation) of a joke must be derived to yield a meaningful measure of humor comprehension; otherwise, the comprehension measure is just self-report.

382 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka Also, an ideal humor comprehension measure would not include any productive component, as was the case with Feingold and Mazzellas (1993) fill-inthe-blank questions and Mastens (1986) open-ended explanations of cartoon humor. Instead, it would require only recognition or detection processes; other wise, any correlation with humor production could be an artifact of the way humor comprehension was measured. Moreover, even with a valid compre hension measure, care must be taken to distinguish a participants sensitivity tohumor from any response bias. This can be achieved using a signal detection paradigm (e.g. Macmillan and Creelman 1991) that treats hits, misses, false alarms, and correct rejections separately. Similarly, to assess the humor value of newly produced jokes, one must have reliable and valid measures of the funniness of the jokes, as rated by an appropriate sample of judges. Ideally, judgments would be made by a fairly substantial sample of individuals, rather than a small number (e.g. the two judges used by Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Masten 1986). A larger set of judges would reduce concerns about potential biases in judgment, even if the smaller number of raters showed respectable reliability. Finally, to examine the nature and time course of the processes of individual instances of humor comprehension and production, it is helpful to have response time measures that are more fine-grained than those used in some earlier research (e.g. Derks 1987; Derks and Hervas 1988). In the present study, we attempt to address all of these methodological points. We use a Humor Comprehension Task and a Humor Production Task, both of which involve captioned cartoons or photos. The basis for correct answers in our Comprehension Task is rooted in Freuds (1953, 1960) idea of latent dreamthoughts or latent content (LC). In psychoanalysis, LC usually refers to the hidden meaning of a dream, joke, or fantasy, in contrast to the manifest content, which involves conscious, overt surface features that are clearly evident. Presently, following Erdelyi (1985, 1999, 2006; Erdelyi and Stein 1981), we defined LC as the implied meaning or message of the cartoon. According to Erdelyis reading of Freud, jokes and humor represent a particularly interesting aspect of LC, since jokes are at least somewhat conscious, as well as voluntary and playful, in contrast to dreams, daydreams, or fantasies (1985: 170175). In this view, LC interpretation is central to humor comprehension and, moreover, is non-idiosyncratic: without the interpretation of the latent content there is no getting a jokethe interpretation is the getting. The interpretation of latent content is not chancy. Subjects claiming to get a joke usually come up with the same interpretation (Erdelyi in press). Thus, studying jokes also has methodological advantages.

Humor comprehension and production 383 As an example of the role of LC in humor, Erdelyi cites:
the comment of an aspish socialite from a bygone era on the goings on at Yale after football games: If all the girls at Yale were laid from one goalpost to the other, I wouldnt be at all surprised. ... The remark about Yale would hardly be funny if the lady had said bluntly that after football games the girls visiting Yale had sexual intercourse with the Yale boys. (Erdelyi 1985: 171173)

In this view, a crucial part of the humor process is the joker censoring or otherwise disguising the LC in some way, just as the process of discovering the LC is crucial for the comprehension of the listener. Finally, while this particular joke involves rather tendentious and taboo LC, the same principle of getting a joke by understanding its LC also applies to more innocent instances of humor, in which the LC is innocuous. In such cases, comical effects depend on the form or style of the joke, rather than on racy content (Erdelyi 1985: 174). In sum, our view of LC is not narrowly psychoanalytic, but simply involves reading between the lines to tease out the tacit meaning or message of the cartoon by putting together information from the cartoon image and its caption. Indeed, besides psychoanalytic views of LC, one might also mention humor theories claiming that jokes have an obvious and a hidden meaning, for example linguistic theories distinguishing inference and implicature (e.g. Grice 1975). To use LC as a means to investigate humor comprehension, we add to captioned cartoons a second caption that is either matched or mismatched to the cartoons LC. If participants understand or get the cartoon, they should understand the reason for its humor and thus be able to identify matched versus mismatched LC. If not, LC identification should be at chance levels. Thus, using matched versus mismatched LC represents a much more objective measure of humor comprehension than self-report data on getting a joke, assuming that the matched versus mismatched LC classification is valid in the first place. Moreover, the data are analyzed using a signal detection model, which allows us to distinguish each participants sensitivity to LC, denoted as d', from their response bias. Thus a signal detection analysis of sensitivity to LC represents a reasonably pure measure of humor comprehension that can then be compared to a measure of humor production. Moreover, besides assessing correct versus incorrect answers, measures of RT and participants confidence in their answers and funniness ratings of each cartoon will be collected. Previous theory and research (e.g. Cunninngham and Derks 2005; Gick and Lockhart 1995; Goldstein 1970; Koestler 1964; Maier 1932) suggest that humor comprehension and insight share many properties; we expect results in line with this view, and our measures should allow us to identify insight-like processes, for

384 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka instance, if correct responses are made faster and more confidently than incor rect responses. Moreover, we expect a positive association between humor comprehension and appreciation, consistent with earlier findings. Just as we use a reasonably objective measure of humor comprehension, we also want a reliable basis for gauging the quality of humor production. Our Production Task involves having participants devise funny captions for photos, which are then rated on funniness. Previous researchers (Derks 1987; Derks and Hervas 1988; Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Khler and Ruch 1996; Koppel and Sechrest 1970; Masten 1986; Siegler 2004) have used a similar approach, and The New Yorker magazine runs a weekly competition in which readers devise funny captions for cartoons. To assess individual differences in humor production ability, we recruited judges from a similar population to rate the funniness of the captions (cf. Derks and Hervas 1988). Our statistical technique (Rasch analysis, explained below) yields measures of the internal consistency of raters judgments and each captions humor value, against which comprehension performance and RT measures can be compared. Although humor judgments are ultimately subjective, we expect that judges will show sufficiently high internal consistency in their ratings that individual differences in humor production ability will be meaningful. In sum, we will test two sets of hypotheses. The first set concerns the time course of humor comprehension and production processes. Specifically, we hypothesize that both humor comprehension and humor production will show insight-like properties. In each case, this would be evident by a negative relation between RT and the dependent variable (correct comprehension or the judged humor of newly produced captions). In other words, both comprehension and production processes should occur quickly, and prolonged reflection should not be beneficial. The second set of hypotheses concerns the psychometric relations between humor production, comprehension, and appreciation. In line with earlier results, we predict a positive correlation between our measures of humor comprehension and humor production, a positive correlation between comprehension and appreciation, but no correlation between humor production and humor appreciation. 2. Method 2.1. Comprehension task 2.1.1. Participants. Eighteen persons (7 females, 11 males) participated, all native English speakers from the New York metropolitan area and ranging

Humor comprehension and production 385 in age from mid-20s to mid-50s. Some degree of extraversion and a good sense of humor were thought desirable for this study. Therefore, participants were initially recruited mainly by referrals of funny, extraverted personal acquaintances of the experimenters, who then referred others in a snowball sample. Participants were ultimately drawn primarily from entertainment fields and most were actors, music performers, or writers. While one could argue that selecting participants based on extraversion and a sense of humor might lead to a restriction of range in humor ability potentially resulting in lower correlations, we felt that it was more important to select individuals who would be comfortable in the task and would likely produce captions judged as funny. As will be seen below, our humor comprehension and humor production measures did generate sufficient variability to yield reliable correlations. 2.1.2. Stimuli. Stimuli were single-frame, black-and-white, captioned cartoons from The New Yorker magazine. These were scanned electronically and standardized to a width of 6 inches using Adobe Photoshop 5.0.2. The original captions were retyped in black 12-pt font underneath the image, so that they would be clear and uniform across the cartoons. Underneath the original captions, latent content (LC) statements were added in a different 12-pt font, in blue. In the debriefing, none of the participants indicated that they were previously familiar with any of the particular New Yorker cartoons used in the study. LC for each cartoon was either correctly matched to the cartoon (i.e. the LC actually captured the implied meaning or message of the joke) or mismatched to the cartoon (i.e. the LC did not capture the implied meaning or message of the joke). For example, in one cartoon, a man and his pet cat are standing next to the cats litter box. The man says to the cat, Never, ever think outside the box. The matched LC is Inappropriately creative. (The joke, of course, involves a play on the expression think outside the box as a way of describing creativity. Here, the box is literally a (litter) box, and doing things outside the litter box that should be done inside creates a problem!) The mismatched LC is A man trying to talk rationally to a cat. In another cartoon, a busy executiveis talking on the phone and consulting his calendar, saying, No, Thursday is out. How about neveris never good for you? The matched LC is Some people dont get the idea. (The joke, of course, is that the executive is exas perated and strongly hinting that he does not want to meet with the other person.) The mismatched LC is He also cares for how it fits into the other partys schedule. In each of these cases, the mismatched LC does not really explain capture the meaning or message of the cartoon, while the matched LC does.

386 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka For each cartoon, matched and mismatched LC statements were produced by the experimenters, in consultation with Matthew Hugh Erdelyi and Jacquelyn Bergstein (see Erdelyi 1985, 1999, 2006; Bergstein 2005). Typically, five or so candidate LC statements were generated per cartoon. Over 100 cartoons and LC statements were reviewed for their funniness, understandability, and LC fits. In a pilot study, five participants who were otherwise unconnected with the study rated whether and how well each candidate LC was matched or mismatched to the cartoons. The cartoons on which judges most strongly agreed about matched versus mismatched LC were selected for use in the Comprehension Task. The agreed-upon best-matched LC was counted as the correct answer for each cartoon. The least well-matched LC served as themismatched version of each of these cartoons. In all, 20 cartoons were chosen as stimuli, each one in a matched LC and mismatched LC version, for a total of 40 stimuli. These were randomly divided into two sets, each containing 20 cartoons, half of which had matched LC and half of which had mismatched LC. During the experimental session, no participant saw the same cartoon image more than once. 2.1.3. Procedure. Each participant received written instruction for the Comprehension Task. Participants were told they would see cartoons on the computer, with captions in black and LC in blue. LC was defined as the implied meaning of the cartoon, which will generally not be explicitly stated in the cartoon itself. Participants were asked to determine if the LC matched the cartoon or not. To clarify further, they were also told to pay attention to the interpretation a LC implies, rather than whether the LC exactly matched the content of what was shown in the cartoon. Participants were told to try not to be influenced by the funniness of the cartoon or LC and to respond to the matched or mismatched LC as quickly as possible once they made their decision, since timing was of interest. Participants were also told to try to use the full range of the scales across all of the cartoons. Finally, participants were not told what proportion of cartoons would have matched or mismatched LC. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two sets of stimuli and began the task when they indicated that they understood the procedure. A custom-designed computer program was used to show stimuli and obtain responses. Each participant worked individually on a Dell Latitude C840 laptop computer. Participants were first given practice with two cartoons with matched versus mismatched LC. To make the task as clear as possible, cartoons that were judged as very understandable and easy to answer in the pilot test were used in the practice trials.

Humor comprehension and production 387 Cartoons in the actual Comprehension Task were presented serially in a random order. The cartoon remained visible throughout each trial, during which three questions were presented under the cartoon, one at a time. The first question was: Is the latent content matching the cartoon? Participants responded by clicking a Yes or No button on the screen, and response time was recorded. The next question was: How confident are you of your answer? Participants responded on a scale of 1 to 10 (1=not at all confident, and 10=very confident). Finally they were asked: How funny was the cartoon? Participants responded on a scale of 1 to 10 (1=not at all funny, 10=very funny). After participant answered the third question, the next cartoon appeared. Participants continued until they had rated all 20 cartoons in the set. 2.2. Production task 2.2.1. Participants. The same people who participated in the Comprehension Task participated in the Production Task, immediately afterwards, using the same laptop computer. 2.2.2. Stimuli. The main stimuli were a series of twenty color photographs of people in everyday activities or social situations. These served as the basis for participants generation of humorous captions. Over 100 copyright-free photographs were initially sampled from Fotki, a website where people can post their own photos and have others look at them online (http://www.fotki. com). In a separate pilot study, two acquaintances of the experimenters generated multiple funny captions for the candidate photos. Twenty photos that led to rapid, relatively easy generation of funny captions were chosen from the initial pool and used as stimuli in the Production Task. Photos were standardized to a height of 7 inches using Adobe Photoshop 5.0.2. The Production Task itself was preceded by four example trials in which participants saw photos with humorous captions already included. These were selected from a website showing numerous such captioned photos, the Found Slides Foundation (http://www.lostandfrowned.com/foundsl2.html). In a separate pilot study, four judges viewed 31 captioned photos directly on the website and completed a survey rating each one on understandability and funniness. The four captioned photos rated highest on these criteria were chosen for the example trials. 2.2.3. Procedure. Each participant received written instructions for the Production Task. After the four example trials, participants were told they

388 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka would see 20 photos on the computer, one at a time in a random order, and that they should devise one funny caption for each photo. Participants were told to try to take up to about one minute per photo to devise a caption; after one minute, the computer screen would blink as a warning to try to finish soon. Participants were advised that ideally the caption should be funny both to themselves and to others and that they should pick the first caption that came to mind that they thought was acceptably funny. If participants had more than one caption idea for a photo, they were instructed to pick the one they thought funniest. Participants were told that when they had a pretty good idea of the wording of their caption, they should type it below the photo and then to click a submit button on the screen to make the next photo appear. As before, a custom-designed computer program was used to show stimuli and obtain responses. In addition to recording the captions themselves, the program recorded several measures of response time: the elapsed time from the appearance of the photo until the onset of typing and then from the onset of typing until the submit button was clicked. We refer to these intervals as pre- typing time and typing time, respectively; their sum is total time. Participants began the task when they indicated that they understood the procedure, con tinued until they had created captions for all of the photos, and were then debriefed. 2.2.4. Judgment of the captions. A different set of persons rated the funniness of the captions created in Production Task. Twelve persons (6 female, 6 male) participated, all native English speakers, all from the New York metropolitan area, and ranging in age from early-20s to late 30s. We attempted to obtain judges from a similar population as before, since such judges are probably more likely to find the captions humorous. Judges received written instructions and were given a set of 20 papers on which they were asked to write their ratings. Each page contained all captions for a given photo generated by participants in the Production Task, listed in a random order. (For each photograph, the order of captions on the page differed across judges.) The 20 photos were identified by unique letter or number ID codes and were first shown as small thumbnail images on the computer. Participants were instructed to click on an image to enlarge it and then to find the sheet with matching ID code. Participants rated the funniness of each caption on a scale from 1 to 8 (1=not very funny at all, 8=very, very funny). After rating all of the captions on a page, participants proceeded to the next picture on the computer and repeated the procedure until they had rated captions for all of the photos. Judges had unlimited rating time but were asked not to over-think why

Humor comprehension and production 389 they found any captions funny. After completing the task, participants were debriefed. 2.2.5. Statistical technique: Rasch analysis. Because ratings in the Judgment task are ultimately subjective, one must take care in analyzing them. In particular, one must be sure that raters judgments show adequate reliability; if they do not, there is little basis for discussing meaningful individual differences in humor production ability. Also, one must also acknowledge the possibility that different judges might have idiosyncratic senses of humor or at least have different standards for what constitutes a funny caption. Taking such factors into account should improve the quality of the measure of humor production ability. Fortunately, these concerns can be addressed through the use of Rasch statistical analysis (Rasch 1980; Wright and Masters 1982), implemented in the WINSTEPS software program (Linacre and Wright 2000). In Rasch analysis, the funniness of captions and harshness of judges are each assumed to vary intrinsically. Captions and judges are first separately rank-ordered on these criteria. When combined, they should produce a meaningful pattern. For instance, harsh judges will rate only the funniest captions highly; lenient judges will rate many more captions highly, except perhaps the least funny ones. If this pattern does not generally hold, the intended variable loses its quantitative basis (Wright and Masters 1982: 4) and it is meaningless to talk about humor as a measurable construct. However, if such a pattern does hold, the Rasch analysis will converge, reflecting an underlying uni-dimensional construct (here, the funniness of the captions). The Rasch procedure uses an iterative, maximum-likelihood process that minimizes the residuals of the differences between each caption and each judge until their positions on the dimension are stable. In particular, along the dimension, each judge is located across from a caption that has an equal likelihood of receiving a high or a low rating. The unit of measure is the logit, denoted by =log / (1 ), which represents the log-odds probability () of a caption being rated funny by a particular rater. The Rasch procedure keeps this uniform over the range of observations, and a higher score indicates a funnier caption. If an underlying dimension exists, the captions and judges positions on the dimension will stabilize and the iterative Rasch procedure will converge; if such a dimension does not exist, the analysis will not converge. A successfully converged Rasch analysis yields interval-scale measures of the funniness of each caption and the harshness of each judge. The procedure also yields reliability indices for the analysis. The Rasch measures of all of the captions

390 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka produced by each participant can then be averaged, providing an overall appraisal of each participants humor production ability. The results will be roughly comparable to average raw scores, but the Rasch score will better measure the underlying construct and achieve a more reliable result, as it maximizes the fit between captions and judges. 3. Results From each participant, we collected 20 comprehension measures (360 total) and 19 original captions (342 total). Due to a computer error, only 19 of 20 captions in the Production Task were collected per participant. However, the missing photo differed across participants, and we were still able to collect 14 to 18 captions for each photo. 3.1. Comprehension task The results reveal substantial dispersion among participants in correctly identifying matched LC. The M (SD) number correct out of 20 was 14.17 (2.33), with scores ranging from 10 to 19 correct out of 20. We also calculated each participants sensitivity to LC (d') using a signal detection model. Sensitivity was measured using the ratio of Hits (correctly identified matched LC) over all potential hit items, and the ratio of False alarms (mismatched LC incorrectly identified as matched) over all items that should be correctly rejected (for details on the computation, see Macmillan and Creelman 1991). For each participant, d' was calculated five times, using progressively higher thresholds of confidence ratings (1, 3, 5, 7, or 9 out of 10) to count as committed decisions. These were then averaged to yield an overall d' for each participant. The results echo the individual differences found using percent correct. The M (SD) d' was 1.47 (0.81), with scores ranging from 0.22 to 3.16. Indeed, the raw number correct and d' measures were strongly correlated, r (16)=.92, p<.0001. Analyses of response times (RT) also yielded some notable findings. Because the distribution of RT scores was positively skewed, RTs were first transformed by the natural logarithm. Results showed that, across all captions, lntransformed RT was negatively correlated with participants appraisal of each cartoons funniness, r (358)=.16, p=.002, and negatively correlated with participants confidence in their answers, r (358)=.23, p<.0001, both small to medium effect sizes. Thus, when participants were able to comprehend LC more quickly, they found the cartoon funnier and were more confident of their

Humor comprehension and production 391 answer. Participants funniness ratings were also strongly correlated with their confidence ratings, r (358)=.43, p<.0001, a medium to large effect size. This result probably means that people find cartoons funnier if they understand them better, since lower confidence about LC implies that participants did not fully get the jokes. Finally, for each participant, we divided responses into correct versus incorrect and matched versus mismatched LC. Paired t tests were used to compare each type of response on ln-transformed RT, funniness, and confidence; effect sizes were estimated by Cohens d. As suggested by Dunlap et al. (1996), the original standard deviations of each condition, not the standard deviation of the difference scores between conditions, were used in the computation of Cohens d. The results of these analyses are shown in Table 1. As can be seen, correct responses were made significantly more quickly than incorrect responses, with a medium effect size. Correct and incorrect responses did not reliably differ in confidence or funniness. More reliable results were found for comparisons of matched versus mismatched latent content. In particular, matched LC cartoons were answered significantly faster and were judged as funnier than mismatched LC cartoons. Participants confidence ratings for matched LC cartoons were marginally sig-

Table 1. Within-subjects comparisons of all three dependent measures on correct versus incorrect responses and matched versus mismatched latent content trials Correct vs. Incorrect Responses Correct Measure ln (RT) Confidence Funniness M 2.50 7.82 6.67 SD 0.32 1.09 1.57 M 2.63 7.59 6.72 Incorrect SD 0.26 1.04 1.71 t 2.39 1.30 0.26

p .029 .210 .798

Cohens d 0.45 0.22 0.03

Matched vs. Mismatched LC Matched LC Measure ln (RT) Confidence Funniness M 2.48 7.92 7.08 SD 0.29 1.15 1.38 Mismatched LC M 2.60 7.59 6.29 SD 0.29 1.05 1.77 t 2.58 1.99 4.04

p .020 .063 .001

Cohens d 0.41 0.30 0.50

Note: All df=17. Cohens d calculated using the original standard deviations of each condition, not the standard deviation of the difference scores between conditions.

392 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka nificantly higher than those for mismatched LC cartoons. Here funniness showed a medium effect size; RT and confidence each showed small to medium effect sizes. Note also that since matched LC cartoons were rated as funnier than mismatched LC cartoons, conceivably participants could have used funniness information to make their response, rather than only relying on their basic comprehension of the cartoons and their assessment of the LC per se. Alternatively, the matched LC statements could simply have helped participants make better sense of some of the cartoons, boosting funniness ratings via increased comprehension and indirectly contributing to the funniness advantage for matched LC cartoons. These alternatives cannot be decisively distinguished by the present dataset and should be pursued in future research. These data also allow a participant-level comparison of humor comprehension scores with degree of humor appreciation, which was operationalized by averaging each participants funniness ratings over all of the trials in the Comprehension Task. Across all trials, funniness was marginally positively correlated with number correct, r (16)=.47, p=.052, and with d', r (16)=.46, p=.058. The basic pattern of results held when funniness ratings for matched versus mismatched items were separately correlated with humor comprehension (measured by number correct or by d') and when funniness ratings for correct versus incorrect responses were separately correlated with humor comprehension (measured by number correct or by d'). The resulting eight correlations, all positive, were nearly all marginally reliable and ranged from r=.40, p=.102, to r=.47, p=.049. Thus, humor appreciation and humor comprehension appear to be at least mildly positively related. In sum, the results of the Comprehension Task show considerable individual variation in sensitivity to LC, a fairly strong positive correlation between rated funniness and confidence, shorter RTs for correct versus incorrect responses, and faster and funnier ratings for cartoons with matched LC, compared to mismatched LC. Participants who were more sensitive to LC also found the cartoons marginally funnier, and this effect held across trial type and response type. 3.2. Production and judgment tasks As noted above, captions created in the Production Task were rated in the Judgment Task, and the rating data were entered into a Rasch statistical analysis. The iterative Rasch procedure did converge, indicating a stable underlying dimension of humor production ability. Caption and judge reliabilities were .67 and .99, respectively, indicating substantial agreement between raters in the

Humor comprehension and production 393 Judgment task. These numbers are equivalent to Cronbach a and KR-20 (Linacre and Wright 2000: 100) and indicate the extent to which captions reli ably separate into different levels of funniness and judges reliably separate into different levels of harshness. Thus, these results provide a relatively firm basis for examining meaningful individual differences in humor production ability. As expected, participants average Rasch Production scores were highly correlated with their raw scores, r (16)=.94, p<.0001. The M (SD) raw funniness scores for each participants captions were 2.76 (0.45), ranging from 1.77 to 3.56. The M (SD) Rasch funniness scores for each participants captions were 42.46 (2.10), ranging from 37.79 to 45.24. Thus, there appear to be considerable individual differences in the average funniness of the captions produced by different participants. Is there any relation between caption funniness and the amount of time taken for production? Recall that the Production task yielded three measures of RT: pre-typing time, typing time, and total time. The different RT measures gave somewhat varied results. As with Comprehension RT, each Production RT distribution was positively skewed, so each was transformed by the natural logarithm. The correlation between funniness and ln-transformed pre-typing time was not significant, r (340)=.06, p=.27. However, the correlations between funniness and lntransformed typing time and between funniness and ln-transformed total time were reliable: respectively, r (340)=.11, p=.04, and r (340)=.14, p=.01, both small effect sizes. Since it is likely that participants continue to think about and refine their caption idea while they are typing, total time is probably the best measure of response time. There thus seems to be a slightly positive relation between the judged funniness of a caption and the time taken to create it. However, these small effects probably should not be over-emphasized.

3.3. Comprehension and appreciation vs. production The final sets of analyses examine the relations between each participants average performance in the Production Task and their LC performance and funniness ratings in the Comprehension Task. When each participants number correct on the Comprehension Task was correlated with average Rasch Production scores, the correlation was positive and statistically reliable,r(16)= .62, p=.007, a large effect size. Note also that when raw scores on both measures were compared, the correlation remained significant, r (16)=.51, p=.03, again with a large effect. A very similar result was obtained when d' was compared to Rasch Production scores, r (16)=.49, p=.04, again a large

394 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka effect. Interestingly, when d' was compared to raw Production scores, the correlation dropped substantially, r (16)=.31, p=.21, but remained a medium effect size. This somewhat discrepant final result reinforces the utility of Rasch statistical analysis for establishing a sensitive measure of humor production ability. Overall, these results indicate that people who are better at getting jokes (i.e., in correctly identifying matched versus mismatched LC) appear to be better at making jokes. In contrast, no evidence for a correlation between humor appreciation and humor production was found. Specifically, for participants funniness ratings in the Comprehension Task versus raw ratings of their captions in the Production Task, r (16)=.22, p=.38. For participants funniness ratings in the Comprehension Task versus Rasch ratings of their captions in the Production Task, r (16)=.19, p=.44.

4. Discussion The basic findings are straightforward. Substantial individual differences were found in humor comprehension and humor production, and these two abilities were positively correlated. Judges rating newly created humorous captions reliably agreed on the captions funniness, providing a firm foundation for this comparison. In itself, the basic relation between comprehension and production is consistent with earlier views and empirical findings (Attardo 1994; Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Masten 1986) and thus may not be completely unexpected. However, demonstrating this relation with a comprehension task that involves no productive component (in contrast to Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Masten 1986), as well as the large effect size observed in three of the four comparisons, is notable. More generally, this investigation demonstrates that humor comprehension and humor production abilities are both amenable to reliable, objective measurement. In particular, the use of a LC matching task to assess humor comprehension and Rasch measurement to refine humor production judgments appear to be methodologically advantageous aspects of the present study. Such methodological advances can help lay the groundwork for future research into the cognitive processes involved in humor (cf. Khler and Ruch 1996). A measure of humor appreciation, derived from the funniness ratings given by participants to cartoons in the Comprehension Task, was also examined. Humor appreciation was consistently (though only marginally) positively cor-

Humor comprehension and production 395 related with both measures of humor comprehension, in line with theoretical arguments and other reports (Byrne 1956; Masten 1986; Wierzbicki and Young 1978). In contrast, humor appreciation showed no reliable relation with humor production, again consistent with numerous other findings (Babad 1974; Fabrizi and Pollio 1987; Khler and Ruch 1996; Koppel and Sechrest 1970; Masten 1986). In both the Comprehension and Production tasks, data from other measures (e.g. RT, confidence, and funniness ratings) were also informative. In the Comprehension Task, we found a fairly strong positive correlation between funniness and confidence, shorter RTs and higher confidence for correct versus incorrect responses, and faster and funnier ratings for cartoons with matched LC, compared to mismatched LC. These results support an insight view of humor comprehension (e.g. Cunningham and Derks 2005; Gick and Lockhart 1995; Goldstein 1970; Koestler 1964; Maier 1932), in which getting a joke is a fast, confident process with no speed-accuracy trade-off. Indeed, taking additional time to consider a joke was adversely associated with accurate humor comprehension. In contrast, RT data failed to support the notion that humor production is also an insight-like process. Such a conclusion would have been supported by a significant negative correlation between RT and the judged funniness of each caption. However, two of the three RT measures showed reliable (though small) positive correlations with judged funniness. This suggests that to at least some extent, the more a person crafts a humorous caption, the better. The fact that typing time, rather than pre-typing time, drove the relation with funniness reinforces this view. However, as mentioned above, these effects, though statistically reliable, are small. Despite this basically null result, our data do not conclusively rule out the idea that humor production, like humor comprehension, might have some sudden, insight-like properties. Specifically, the present methodology might not have been sensitive to the manner or timescale in which such processes may operate. Alternatively, one could collect dynamic feeling of warmth ratings (Metcalfe and Wiebe 1987) or verbal protocols (Siegler 2004) while participants work on generating humorous statements or photo captions. Temporally sampling the process of humor production more densely might yield evidence for spikes of insight that represent the sudden onset of a humorous idea. Such a pattern might be more diagnostic of insight-like processes (likely involving abrupt changes of representation, as in humor comprehension) than looking for general speed-accuracy tradeoffs over the entire duration humor production trials, each of which can last up to a minute or more. Such an

396 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka pproach would likely yield more detailed information about the nature and a time course of cognitive processes in humor production. Such future work should also take into account the possibility that a fast response could be the result of rapid associations due to humor expertise, that is, pattern matching with a repertoire of familiar joke schemas in memory (Derks 1987; Siegler 2004). Ruling out this possibility is not trivial, either methodologically or conceptually, but modifying Derkss (1987) method of having participants produce multiple captions per photo might be one informative approach. Specifically, expert pattern matching should mostly happen early in the response window; in contrast, sudden, insight-like new associations could arise at any time. Eliminating participants early contributions and then focusing on feeling of warmth ratings leading up to later captions to the same picture might yield some evidence that would link insight and humor production. Moreover, producing written humor, as in the present study, may simply require more revision and polishing than is possible when producing spoken humor (Feingold and Mazzella 1993: 440). Indeed, there is evidence that even some insight problems require considerable elaboration to reach a solution (Weisberg and Alba 1981). Thus, spoken humor production, including spontaneous humor that occurs in interpersonal interactions, may show more evidence of insight-like processes than written humor production; this is another potential direction for future research. Other types of tasks besides picture or cartoon captioning would also reveal the extent to which the present results would generalize. While the present findings are suggestive, there are limits to their interpretation. For instance, one might question the generalizability of the results to a broad population, given the selection criteria of the present study, where participants were chosen based on extraversion and likely success at the humor production task. If anything, restriction of range should have diminished the correlation between production and comprehension. While some basic cognitive differences may exist between our participants and others, the fact that present results are consistent with numerous other reports increases confidence that this is not the case. However, broader objections about attempts to measure humor in settings that may not be ecologically valid (e.g. Babad 1974) are still relevant here, as with a great deal of humor research. Another limitation centers on understanding the reasons for the correlation between humor comprehension and humor production. One possibility is that cognitive processes in humor rely on domain-specific knowledge or abilities. In this view, the ability to understand jokes may be a prerequisite to producing good jokes. Funny people might have finer assessment skills for both other

Humor comprehension and production 397 peoples jokes and their own jokes and thus may use the same humor comprehension skill to produce or select better jokes of their own (Turner 1980). They may also prefer more humorous entertainment forms, associate with more funny friends, or have richer humor schemas or a richer reserve of jokes. Sieglers (2004) expert-novice comparison suggests that comic writers possess such knowledge and schemas and can appropriately activate them to produce humor, and this is partly consistent with the findings of Derks (1987). Feingold and Mazzellas (1993) findings that humor cognition measures positively predict humor production are likewise consistent with this view. Alternatively, a more general cognitive aptitude like verbal intelligence or the cognitive flexibility to achieve insights through re-representation might also provide a common explanation for the observed advantages of some persons in both humor comprehension and humor production. Indeed, a number of investigations have found positive associations between humor comprehension and verbal intelligence (e.g. Couturier et al. 1981; Feingold 1983; Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Masten 1986; Wierzbicki and Young 1978), and a few have reported positive correlations between humor production and verbal intelligence (Feingold and Mazzella 1993; Koppel and Sechrest 1970; Masten 1986). Ultimately, the explanation for the positive correlation between humor comprehension and humor production need not be unitary, and it would not be surprising if both domain-specific knowledge and a more general cognitive aptitude contribute to this relation. Along these lines, Feingold and Mazzella (1993) reported that the overall correlations between humor production versus humor cognition and verbal ability, respectively, were .38 and .41, while humor cognition and verbal ability were themselves positively correlated, r=.55, all p<.001. Future work in this mode could further inform the basis of individual differences in humor abilities by partial correlational analyses that would control for individual differences in factors like verbal or general intelligence or insight problem solving ability (see Schooler and Melcher 1995). Another potentially fruitful direction, not pursued in this report, is to develop links between the accurate measurement of humor appreciation, comprehension, and production with evolutionary theory, specifically Darwinian sexual selection. If humor comprehension and production are stable, ability-based, and possibly heritable individual difference variables, then they may be related to other cognitive skills, intelligence, and creativity, and thus reflect genetic fitness (Kaufman et al. 2008, Miller 2000). From a sexual selection viewpoint, there should also be selection pressure for males to be better producers of humor and women to be better appreciators of humor, a hypothesis supported in recent work by Bressler et al. (2006).

398 A. Kozbelt and K. Nishioka Finally, future work might examine the extent to which the ability to detect and understand LC functions broadly across domains, that is, not just in jokes or humor. These domains might include art, poetry, literature, advertising, interpreting narratives in psychotherapy sessions, or other twilight phenomena (Erdelyi 1985: 145209). In any case, the present investigation provides a promising basic methodology and set of statistical procedures that can serve as the basis for inquiry into the nature of humor production, its relation to humor comprehension and appreciation, and some of their underlying cognitive mechanisms. Brooklyn College of the City University of New York

Notes
Correspondence addresses: aaronk@brooklyn.cuny.edu; nishioka.kana@gmail.com * Special thanks to Matthew Hugh Erdelyi and Jacquelyn Bergstein, who provided valuable advice about latent content. James Liu wrote the computer programs used for stimulus display and data collection, and Felix George greatly helped with data entry and organization. Paul Bruening and Michael Magee helped pilot test some of the materials. Two anonymous referees provided very helpful critiques.

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