Mood and comic style predictors of irony use in the Story-Based Irony Task

After its initial psychometric validation, we introduce the Story-Based Irony Task (SBIT) to measure self-reported irony use. The Comic Style Markers (CSM) and the state version of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI-S-PL) (validated psychometrically on a separate sample) were used to measure its darker comic style (satire, cynicism, irony, and sarcasm) and humor-related states predictors (cheerfulness, bad mood, and seriousness). The results from a sample of 211 participants showed that although satire, cynicism, irony, and sarcasm were intercorrelated, they formed different predictor patterns for the SBIT irony scores, with satire predicting face saving and frustration diffusion scores, and cynicism predicting embarrassment diffusion scores. Additionally, in a two-wave design (including the STCI-S-PL and the SBIT, with N = 231 at Time 1, and N = 211 at Time 2), changes in state cheerfulness, bad mood, and seriousness did not explain a large proportion of variance in the SBIT scores, indicating the stability of the relationship as well as providing additional evidence for the SBIT’s reliability.