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TRACEY PLATT
Abstract
The present study examined the hypothesis that gelotophobia blurs the
emotional responses between ridicule and good-natured teasing. Ridicule
should induce negative feelings and teasing happiness and surprise in indi-
viduals not su¤ering gelotophobia. Gelotophobes will discriminate less be-
tween the two. Their responses to teasing will be similar to ridicule. A sam-
ple of adults (N ¼ 105) specified which emotions they would experience in
nine scenarios of social interactions pre-selected to represent bullying ridi-
cule or good-natured teasing. Ridicule elicited strong responses of shame,
fear and anger, and other negative emotions but low happiness and surprise.
Responses of gelotophobes and non-gelotophobes were highly parallel,
with the exception that among extreme gelotophobes stronger shame and
fear were displayed than among non-gelotophobes. Good-natured teasing
seemed to elicit happiness and surprise and low levels of negative emotions
among the non-gelotophobes. Among the gelotophobes, however, it was
the negative emotions; primarily shame, fear, and anger that were exhibited
as the emotional response pattern. In fact, the emotion profile to good-
humored teasing was highly similar to the profile in response to the
bullying-ridiculing situations. Gelotophobes’ perceptions do not discrimi-
nate between playful teasing and good-natured teasing. They do not identify
the safe and non-threatening quality of the teasing situations. Treatment of
gelotophobes should, therefore, involve helping them to identify the play-
signals, i.e., the meta-message that the interaction is playful, for fun and
that no harm is intended.
1. Introduction
The aim of the present study is to explore the nature of the emotions in-
duced by ridicule and teasing and to verify the proposed role of geloto-
phobia as a moderator. More specifically, individuals will be exposed to a
pre-selected set of prototypical ridicule and teasing situations, and the in-
tensity of di¤erent emotions will be examined. Due to ethical constraints,
participants cannot be confronted with real life bullying or ridicule; there-
fore, scenarios were used.
Emotional responses 109
2. Method
2.1. Participants
A sample of 102 adults, 38 male and 64 female, whose ages ranged from
18 years to 76 years (M ¼ 39.72; SD ¼ 14.51) were recruited by means
of personal contact, Internet contact, or via publicity through an in-
ternational anti-bullying support network group. The sample consisted
of 45 single, 9 cohabiting, 37 married, 6 divorced, and 5 widowed
individuals.
2.2. Instruments
The Geloph 3154 (Ruch and Proyer 2008b; Ruch and Titze 1998) is a
questionnaire designed for the subjective assessment of gelotophobia. It
consists of fifteen items relating to gelotophobic symptomatology with a
four-point answer scale (1 ¼ strongly disagree; 2 ¼ moderately disagree;
3 ¼ moderately agree; 4 ¼ strongly agree).
2.2.1. The Emotion Anchor Question Form. The Emotion Anchor Ques-
tion Form (Ekman 1989) assesses individual di¤erences in several basic
parameters (e.g., latency, intensity, duration, frequency) of his basic emo-
tions. When the instrument is first administered, the participant is asked
to describe an example of the most intense experience of each of the listed
emotions one can imagine that any human being has ever felt, and this
example serves as an anchor for subsequent ratings of those emotions. Af-
ter each experience, the intensity of personal feeling for each emotion is
measured on an eight-point Likert Scale (0 ¼ least; 8 ¼ most), a measure
of how quickly it took for the feeling to begin (0 ¼ immediately; 8 ¼ a
long time), how long it took to recover from the feeling (0 ¼ minutes;
8 ¼ months), and how much these emotions are expressed vocally or fa-
cially (0 ¼ not at all; 8 ¼ very much). Finally, the intensity of that emo-
tion during a typical week is assessed. While the original Anchor Que as-
sesses the six basic emotions of sadness, fear, anger, happiness, disgust,
and surprise, for the purpose of the present study sadness, happiness,
and shame were also selected. The latter are not among Ekman’s basic
emotions, but their assessment was considered essential in the present
study.
Emotional responses 111
3. Procedure
4. Results
The answers to the fifteen items of the gelotophobia scale were aver-
aged. The total scores ranged from 1.00 to 3.67 (maximum possible
score ¼ 4.00) with a mean of 2.15 and a standard deviation of SD ¼ .65.
This shows that the mean (but not SD) is di¤erent from the preliminary
UK norm data (M ¼ 1.87; SD ¼ .58). Cronbach alpha is .89, and cor-
rected item total correlations ranged from .36 to .71.
The recruitment strategy was successful as it generated a fairly high
percentage of gelotophobes (34.6 percent, i.e., 36 out of 104 yielded a to-
tal mean score exceeding 2.5) and 65.4 percent (68 out of 104) with incon-
spicuous gelotophobic values. A closer inspection of the gelotophobes
showed that 26 (25 percent), 8 (7.7 percent), and 2 (1.9 percent) exceeded
the cut-o¤ point for slight, pronounced, and extreme fear of being
laughed at, respectively. The latter two groups were combined for the
analyses to form a group of pronounced gelotophobia.
Who is gelotophobic? Product moment correlations were computed to
examine the relationships between gender, age and gelotophobia. Like in
prior studies, there were no di¤erences due to gender (r ¼ .05; df ¼ 102;
ns) nor age (r ¼ .16, df ¼ 102; ns). Also the ANOVA assessing marital
status did not yield a significant e¤ect (F ½4; 99 ¼ 1:48, ns).
As the sample was selected from di¤erent sources, it might be instruc-
tive to see whether there are any di¤erences within the group. Participants
who were ‘‘familiar,’’ i.e. known to the data collectors in some way
(n ¼ 16; M ¼ 1.81) had a significantly lower score than those who were
‘‘unfamiliar,’’ i.e. recruited online with no personal contact (n ¼ 88,
M ¼ 2.21), F ð1; 102Þ ¼ 15.24, p ¼ .024. This either means that the data
Emotional responses 113
collectors knew more individuals that did not su¤er from gelotophobia or
that being tested with a lack of total anonymity leads to lower scores.
Participants from the USA seemed to have slightly higher scores than
the ones in the UK, but this di¤erence was marginally significant and
may reflect the recruitment pursued (F ½1; 76 ¼ 4:16; p ¼ .045).
Individuals recruited randomly (n ¼ 30; M ¼ 1.71) had lower scores
than the ones recruited with the purpose of finding gelotophobes (via in-
ternet, discussion groups, website) (n ¼ 61; M ¼ 2.28), F ð1; 89Þ ¼ 18.75,
p < .0001. Of more importance was the aspect of bullying. Those
who reported having been a victim of bullying (n ¼ 58) scored higher
(M ¼ 2.37) than those (n ¼ 35) who did not disclose previous experiences
of being bullied (M ¼ 1.73), F ð2; 101Þ ¼ 13.44, p < .0001. Interestingly
those who did not select any alternative choices scored similarly to the
ones who indicated they were bullied before (n ¼ 11, M ¼ 2.32). This
requires further analysis. Among those who indicated they were never a
victim of bullying, most of them (91.43 percent) did not indicate a fear
of being laughed at. While 8.57 percent had slight gelotophobia, none
of them had pronounced (or extreme) gelotophobia. Among those who
indicated they were bullied, 50.00 percent were not afraid of being
laughed at, but 34.48 percent had a slight fear, and 15.52 percent a pro-
nounced fear of being laughed at by others. The two participants who ex-
ceeded the 3.5 cut o¤ point for extreme gelotophobia were among those
who admitted to being bullied. Among the 36 participants with scores
higher than 2.5, only three (2.53, 2.60, 2.67) indicated they were not bullied.
The others either reported being a bully victim or did not answer at all.
The scores of each individual were averaged for each emotion sepa-
rately across the ridicule scenarios and for the four teasing scenarios in
the Ridicule Teasing Scenario questionnaire. The ambiguous scenario
was omitted. The alphas for the fourteen scales (two types of scenarios,
seven emotions) ranged from .62 to .88 with a median of .77. These coef-
ficients are very high, especially as there are only four items per scale.
A 3 (no, slight, pronounced gelotophobia) 2 (ridicule vs. teasing
scenario) 7 (type of emotion) ANOVA was computed with gelotopho-
bia as a classification variable and type of scenario and Emotions as
repeated measures factors. Virtually all main e¤ects and interactions
were significant ( p < .05), but attention is only given to the two of theo-
retical relevance. First, the two-way interaction between type of scenario
and emotions was significant (F ½6; 600 ¼ 34:02, p < .0001) confirming
that ridicule and teasing yielded di¤erent emotion profiles. Second, the
114 T. Platt
M SD Alpha M SD Alpha F p
F 64.735 — — 5.214 — — — —
p .0001 — — .0001 — — — —
Sadness, disgust, and fear are significantly lower than all previously men-
tioned emotions. Anger is numerically between these two blocks but actu-
ally only significantly di¤erent from happiness. Thus, as predicted, the
scenarios did have quite distinct emotion profiles. While teasing is usually
surprising and leads to happiness, it was not expected that teasing would
also lead to shame. Shame, happiness, and fear had larger standard devia-
tions indicating that there are individual di¤erences in the intensity of
those emotions. Obviously, some individuals experience little shame, hap-
piness, and fear in response to teasing while others feel very much.
As mentioned above, the three-way interaction was highly significant,
suggesting that gelotophobia does moderate the emotion profiles elicited
by the two types of scenarios. Two types of post hoc analyses were
performed separately for each of the three levels of gelotophobia. First,
teasing and ridicule were examined for di¤erences in each of the seven
emotions. Second, the profile of emotions was examined for teasing and
ridicule separately. The results of the analyses are presented in Table 2
and Figure 1. The emotion profile for teasing and ridicule are presented
separately for individuals with no, slight, and pronounced gelotophobia.
Figure 1 shows how the emotion profile of the two types of scenarios
is moderated by level of gelotophobia. While teasing and ridicule led to
almost mirroring emotions for the non-gelotophobes, by and large the
emotion profiles of gelotophobes for ridicule and teasing are highly
M M F p M M F p M M F p
Happiness 1.545d 4.131a 84.132 .0001 .625c 1.846d 17.105 .0003 .650c 1.400c 5.870 .0384
Sadness 4.683a 1.944cd 121.588 .0001 4.856ab 2.740ac 26.346 .0001 5.200a 3.700b 28.421 .0005
Anger 4.899ab 2.075c 184.113 .0001 5.231ab 3.500a 25.168 .0001 5.625a 2.825b 20.692 .0014
Disgust 4.216ab 1.970c 96.303 .0001 4.740a 3.010a 21.195 .0001 2.900b 3.075b .042 .8413
Surprise 3.653c 2.843b 11.264 .0013 3.981a 3.144a 5.432 .0281 2.125bc 2.600bc 1.080 .3259
Shame 3.746c 2.063c 41.337 .0001 4.644a 3.885ab 5.306 .0298 6.400a 5.925a .681 .4305
Fear 3.802c 1.451d 100.042 .0001 4.913ab 3.394a 23.960 .0001 6.225a 5.050a 6.901 .0275
Key: a,b Means with di¤erent superscripts di¤er at p < 0.05 (Fisher’s PSLD).
Emotional responses 117
For more direct tests of the hypothesis that the ridicule and teasing pro-
files are more similar for high gelotophobia individuals (compared to the
lows), two indices of similarity were derived. First, the mean absolute dif-
ference between ridicule and teasing was computed by averaging the mag-
nitude of the di¤erences across the seven emotions. This profile proximity
index correlated significantly negatively (r ¼ .307; p ¼ .002) with the
118 T. Platt
Table 3. Correlations between gelotophobia and intensity of emotions in response to the two
scenarios as well as a di¤erence score
and teasing. This determined the emotions in which individuals high and
low in gelotophobia di¤er. Furthermore, the di¤erence between scores
for ridicule and teasing were computed to see if gelotophobia accounts
for individual di¤erences in response to the two types of scenarios. The
correlations are given in Table 3.
Table 3 shows that gelotophobia correlates positively with shame and
fear in response to ridicule and negatively with the amount of happiness.
However, gelotophobia is more relevant for the a¤ective responses to the
teasing scenario. All negative emotions are correlated positively with ge-
lotophobia with the correlations particularly high for shame and fear.
Happiness is negatively correlated, and there is no correlation with sur-
prise. Gelotophobia is not only related to the mean levels of emotions
but also to reacting di¤erently to the two scenarios. Lower scores in ge-
lotophobia go along with greater di¤erences between teasing and ridicule
(more sadness, disgust, and fear in response to ridicule than teasing, and
less happiness), and higher scores are aligned with lower di¤erence scores
(i.e., less di¤erence between the two types of scenarios).
5. Discussion
The present study tested the assumption that gelotophobes cannot enjoy
good-natured forms of laughter and thus will misinterpret the playful
background of teasing. Rather than enjoying teasing, they will respond
emotionally to playful teasing similarly to situations where laughter
occurs in the context of ridicule, mockery, or bullying. This reaction is
presumably because of their past experience with humor and laughter
120 T. Platt
University of Hull
INSTRUCTION: Now you have thought about your intense emotional states,
will you read the following statements and pick an emotion, which would
Emotional responses 123
represent your feelings most closely. Again on a scale of 0 being least intense to 8
being most intense, rate how strongly you would feel in the described scenario.
Rate every emotion. Do not omit any.
1) You are included in a game of tag but are always chosen to be the chaser be-
cause the others tell you that you are too fat to catch them and they will have
more chance to get away. When they are proven correct they laugh at you.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of people)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising that got the lines wrong)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. What if I forget my lines again and I get laughed at)
Other (please state) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2) When you were in school a teacher picked up a piece of your work and showed
it to the class as an example of how NOT to do the work, and the other kids all
laughed at it.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of your friends)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising that your teacher said those things)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. What if I my work is really bad and I do it again and I get laughed
at)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3) You are sat on a park bench waiting for someone when a group of youths
walking past burst out laughing and point at the hat you are wearing.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of your friends)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising that people would laugh at your hat)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
124 T. Platt
Fear (e.g. What if I wear the hat again and I will get laughed at)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4) You di¤er from the people in your peer group. They always laugh and
prefix your name with something that emphasizes this, e.g. mini (small) tank
(large) etc.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of your peers)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising that people would say such things)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. What if when I am with people laugh at my di¤erences)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5) After lunch with a group of friends, one tells you that you have your jumper on
inside out. All of the group laugh and make joking comments to you.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of your friends)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising that you put your jumper on incorrectly and
didn’t notice)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. What if I wear the jumper inside out again and I get laughed at)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6) You decide to change your hair color to blonde at a visit to the hairdressers.
When you return, your friends laugh and call you a ‘‘dumb blonde’’.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your hair)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of your hair)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of your friends)
Surprise (e.g., your hair is great! How can they laugh?)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. Everyone is going to laugh until my hair goes back to normal)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Emotional responses 125
7) Your peer group sends you on a fool’s errand into the local shop for some
elbow grease. The shopkeeper tells you o¤ for wasting his time and on your return
to your friends they think it is very funny. Every time your friends see you in the
next few weeks they ask if you found any elbow grease.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of your friends)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising that I was caught out)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. What if I get fooled again and I get laughed at)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8) You are invited to the wedding of someone you just met. At the evening cele-
brations, the bride grabs your hand and pulls you on the dance floor to join in
a dance that everyone else seems to know the steps apart from you. You make
everyone laugh because you get it wrong.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of people)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising they laugh when you don’t know the steps)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. What if I get up to dance and I get laughed at again)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9) You have been practicing for a concert for ages. However, on your perfor-
mance you mess up your lines. The audience laugh at your mistake, and after-
wards people will not let you forget it and mimic the error time and again.
Please rate how strongly you would expect to feel the following emotions 0 least
to 8 most intense
Happiness (e.g., feel included in the group fun and join in with the teasing)
Sadness (e.g., that they make fun of your mistake)
Anger (e.g., how dare they make fun of you)
Disgust (e.g., you expected better of people)
Surprise (e.g., how surprising that got the lines wrong)
Shame (e.g., how could you have been so stupid to do such a thing and cause
everyone to laugh at you)
Fear (e.g. What if I forget my lines again and I get laughed at)
Other (please state). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
126 T. Platt
You have now completed the questionnaire. Thank you for taking the time to
complete it. Please check that you have answered all the questions fully and accu-
rately before you hand it back.
Notes
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