ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationship between anger and humor using an independent index of arousal, orally presented humor stimuli, and a measure of the effect of humor on aroused anger. It addresses following questions: What is the effect of humor on anger? What effect does anger have on a person’s appreciation of humor? Does the content of the humor make a difference? A comparison between the prehumor Mood Adjective Check List hostility cluster scores for the 30 experimental subjects and the 20 control subjects clearly indicated that hostility was aroused in the experimental groups. Rank-order correlations were computed between subjects’ humor ratings and their hostility-change scores. The correlation between hostile humor judgments and hostility-change scores was.04, and between judgments of nonhostile humor and hostility-change scores,.34. In terms of the effect that exposure to humor has on feelings of hostility and anxiety, the results indicate that humor significantly mitigates such feelings.
