Sources of variance in current sense of humor inventories: How much substance, how much method variance?

The present study investigates the relationship of self-report inventories of ''sense of humor'' and behavioral measures of humor as well as their location in the Eysenckian PEN system. 110 male and female adults ages 17 to 83 answered the following inventories: SHRQ (Martin and Lefcourt 1984), SHQZ (Ziv 1981), SHQ-3 revised (Svebak 1993), CHS (Martin and Lefcourt 1983), MSHS (Thorson and Powell 1993), HIS (Bell, McGhee, and Duffey 1986), 3 WD-K (Ruch 1983), CPPT (Kohler and Ruch 1993), TDS (Murgatroyd, Rushton, Apter, and Ray 1978), STCI-T (Ruch, Freiss, and Kohler 1993), and EPQ-R (Eysenck, Eysenck, and Barrett 1985). Reliability of the humor scales is examined and convergent and discriminant validity of homologous scales of humor appreciation and humor creation is determined Behavioral measures and self-report instruments yield only meager correlations. While humor appreciation and humor creation form distinct traits in the behavioral measures, they cannot be validly discriminated in the self-reports. Factor analysis of self-report inventories yields that the sense of humor is composed of the two orthogonal dimensions of cheerfulness and seriousness. Extraversion is predictive of cheerfulness, low seriousness, and quantity of humor production. Psychoticism is associated with low seriousness, wit and quality of humor production. Finally, emotional stability correlates with cheerfulness. All in all, the general state of the art in the assessment of the sense of humor and its components appears to be far from satisfactory.