Humor and Death

Abstract

To explore the relationships among death factors as measured by Kalish's Attitude on Social Issues Test and O'Connell's Story Test, the latter was shortened to 12 items judged to have high-death and low-death themes. For each item, Ss reported preference for humor, hostile wit, and resignation endings. Scores for 96 college Ss were correlated with Kalish's 20 death factors. High-death humor, Freud's example of maturity, correlated negatively with death anxiety and humanism. Gallows humor appreciation also correlated negatively with an ad hoc own death cluster consisting of the factors of death anxiety, dread of an ugly death, fear of burial, and not wanting to know of one's death in advance. Those who approved of suicide did not appreciate high-death hostile wit, and low-death hostile wit brought displeasure to those with death anxiety. Low-death resignation had significiant negative correlations with dread of an ugly death, avoidance of contact with the dead, and destructive impulsivity. Those who valued an ostentatious funeral for themselves scored highly on all Story Test categories excepr high-death humor and low-death resignation. These two jest constructs might reflect relative maturity at different developmental stages.