ABSTRACT
THE study of humor has spanned more than a dozen centuries 1 and has drawn the interest of researchers from a wide variety of fields: anthropology, communication, philosophy, experimental social psychology, education, and sociology. The use of humor and the humor response has been suggested to be related to a variety of social and communication functions (for example, therapy, education, persuasion, and social influence). 2 However, despite the interest in and the suggested social importance of humor, we are no closer to developing a generalized theory of humor than we were in the first century A. D., when Quintilian complained that no one had yet explained what laughter was, though many had tried (Morreall, 1983).
