To be or not to be humorous: Does it make a difference?

Humor is thought to be a social instrument or a social skill afibct's the outcomes oJ'social interactions. The purposes of the present study were (l) to address the question whether within a peer group, humor and social distances are related to a particular social status such as popularity, neglection, and rejection and (2) to replicate sherman's (1988) crosssectional sturiy. For these purposes, 225 children and adolescents divided over three age groups (9-, I2-, and l5-year olds) with three complete classrooms tuithin each age group participated in this study. All subjects \)ere presented with measures assessing humor, funniness, social distance, play and work preferences, and social status. The results shotv that (a) from the age of 12, children evaluate their peers' humorousness on the hasis of increasingly more detailed and specified social and personality characteristics; ( b ) already at the age of 9, females perceive humorousness diferently and perhaps more realistically than males; ( c ) being humorous or fun is apparently not a sffic'ient characteristic to erplain smQller social distances; (d) only controversial children obtained a meaningt'ul relation between perceivecl humorousness and social distance; and (e) despite dffirences in strength, the patterns oJ' interrelationships among perceived humorousness and social tlistance in the present study and those reported by Sherman (1985) showed a remarkable similarity. Already in early philosophical views, humor is perceived as an ingredient of human existence and a positive attribute makes man good company (Aristotle, qtd. in Thomson 1966:134). According to McGhee (lg7g), humor exists only in the minds of people and not in the real world. Despite these views of humor and its evolutionary and social