What comic styles are there

As expected, the correlation between measured verbal intelligence and wit was indeed positive and significant, and it was the only significant correlation. The coefficient was rather low, but considering that ability and personality are rarely related, the size of the coefficient was as expected.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, there were more and higher correlations for self-rated intelligence. First, the correlation of self-rated verbal intelligence and wit was much higher, underscoring that using the same method self-reports yielded higher relationships than divergent methods self-reports, test. However, there were also positive correlations with humor, albeit smaller than for wit. The total intelligence score correlated most strongly with wit, followed by humor.

Additionally, there were also small correlations with nonsense, irony, and satire. Thus, in five of the styles, people who scored higher also assumed that they were higher in several of the intelligence scales and the total score. The differences between measured and rated intelligence are plausible but also striking, underscoring that there is method variance involved. However, it is also clear that the use of wit is also based on a higher measured verbal intelligence.

Comic styles tap differently into personality, ability and character, and each of the comic styles had a unique set of predictors, underscoring the necessity to be separated.

Wit requires an astute mind that allows to quickly read situations and nailing non-obvious matters to the point in a funny way. Obviously, ability in the verbal rather than numerical or figural domain provides the link between measured intelligence and wit. Future studies will need to show whether these predictors overlap, and whether performance measures of wit e.

Thus, this component of humor in the broad sense can indeed be seen as also drawing on individual differences in ability, a domain neglected in humor research. Character, the moral subdomain of personality, was demonstrated to be relevant as well, and the use of fine-grained measures of both character and humor allowed for a more comprehensive investigation. For once, the use of both sarcasm and cynicism was regulated by theological e. These components of the good character counteracted a frequent expression of mockery, while cognitive strengths and emotional strengths sarcasm only favored it.

Character was also involved in satire. While sarcasm and cynicism may be fueled by the joy of mockery without the involvement of a moral sense, in satire there are good intentions of correcting misdoings.

Focusing on the motivation for corrections i. Thus, the comparatively lower zero-order correlations for satire were the product of negative i.

Wit and humor were most highly correlated with humor as character strength, and these comic styles were well predicted by the individual character strengths and by the strength factors. Humor had only positive character correlates both at the level of the individual strengths and the strength factors and was hence the best indicator of good character.

Wit and fun had overwhelmingly positive correlates with character, but also a negative correlation with the strengths of restraint factor, which was based on individual strengths, namely, prudence fun and humility wit. Agreeableness, just as emotional strengths primarily loaded by strengths of humanity and courage , was also indicative of humor and negatively related to mockery.

As there was no simultaneous assessment of personality and character, it cannot be decided whether and where character provides incremental predictions of the virtuous comic styles over personality. There were distinct correlations of personality with comic styles, which fit well to predictions. Some strengths underlay all styles, some either the light or the dark, and other strengths additionally underlay some specific styles. Conscientiousness like strengths of restraint tended to yield low negative correlations with all styles, suggesting that this is a minor constant in engaging in humor at all.

Extraversion, emotional stability, and culture correlated higher with the light styles than with the others. While low agreeableness was related to the dark styles most strongly for sarcasm and cynicism and negative affect related to sarcasm and cynicism, both were also linked inversely to humor, suggesting that these traits were sensitive to the motivational difference between laughing at and laughing with.

Other traits also had humor on both sides of the dimension, namely extraversion cynics were introverted , emotional stability low in sarcasm and antagonism humor was agreeable. While these results confirm the lay psychologist view on humor and personality, future studies will emphasize the contemporary models of personality, character, and ability.

Overall, the present studies represent a starting point for research defining and measuring more narrow styles of humor in the broad sense , as they have been discussed for a long time in the literature, but have not yet been utilized in psychology.

These styles represent a broad variety of humor and tap into personality and character as well as ability.

The overlap in the scales allows aggregating the styles to more general styles, which, in turn, potentially might form a general factor of humor. This analysis, again, might be the basis for forming a hierarchical model with three levels that needs to be completed and evaluated in future studies. Individual differences in humor might be described by the general level concerning the overall humor potential of a person , by a profile in aggregated styles informing about engagement in specific domains of humor , and by a profile in specific styles that describes differences more fine-grained and is closest to behavior.

These levels will be useful for different types of studies. For example, humor trainings best address the lower level; relations to health or work-related variables might be most parsimoniously studied at a midlevel where the discovery of more general patterns will be sufficient. Again, if economy is important, the overall humor potential might be sufficient. However, the list of styles is not yet exhaustive and hence more research is needed in order to build a comprehensive model.

This allows showing whether the assumption of a general factor is tenable or not. In particular, for a more complete description of the domain of humor, components of the ineptness in humor use or forms of humorlessness are needed.

As the present studies replicated the results found with prior markers Ruch, , the validity of the three-factor structure was substantiated. Hence, the major level of analyses should still be the level of styles. Further research will show what the unique contributions of the individual styles are and where aggregation is meaningful. In an EEG study of 52 participants, potential brain mechanisms underlying different types of humor were investigated Papousek et al.

It provided evidence for the unique status of humor among the light styles, and the overlapping effects of sarcasm, cynicism and irony among the mocking comic styles. The results support the view that typical comic styles develop in accordance with the rewarding values of their implicit outcomes e.

As in the structural analyses, the dark styles were more homogeneous, yet satire i. Other studies also provided preliminary validation; for example, Ruch et al. Further validation studies of the CSM will add knowledge to the uniqueness and common core of the different styles. One obvious limitation is that in a first step the measurement of the styles was restricted, and there are other comic styles that could be considered for inclusion, such as black gallows, sick humor or absurd humor.

These should be identified and examined in future studies to see if they entail elements that are not yet covered by the CSM. Furthermore, this approach will not lead to the description of the various forms of ineptness in humor, as these are typically not described in the literature. Hence, this is not a complete model of humor, and it needs to be supplemented by forms of humorlessness e. Second, as the concepts of interest are complex by nature, they also require several elements to be present in the items to capture them adequately e.

Still, future research could develop different assessment strategies to tease apart these elements in separate items and test if they also mark the eight comic styles. Third, many of the findings were based on self-reports, and future studies should employ several assessment methods. Fourth, the samples employed were mostly well-educated, and thus replications with samples with a more varied educational background are needed.

In two studies, we presented and tested the Comic Style Markers CSM , a set of 48 marker items that represent individual differences in eight comic styles: Fun, humor, nonsense, wit, irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism.

Both studies supported the construct validity of the CSM. Specifically, the eight comic styles were shown to be theoretically and empirically distinguishable and to relate to different outcomes personality, character strengths, and intelligence.

The CSM thus provides a starting point for more fine-grained investigations of humor-related styles, ultimately aiming at identifying a comprehensive list of narrow and specific comic styles that can be enacted, trained, and modified.

All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript, read it critically and gave consent to its publication. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The authors thank Jessica Milner Davis and Alexander Stahlmann for commenting on an earlier version of this manuscript. Amthauer, R. Google Scholar. Attardo, S. Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Self-other agreement and construct validity of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Putting a spotlight on daily humor behaviors: dimensionality and relationships with personality, subjective well-being, and humor styles.

Kenny, D. Effect of the number of variables on measures of fit in structural equation modeling. Modeling 10, — Lauer, W. Bern: Huber. Martin, R. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. McCrae, R. Widiger and P. Costa Jr. Milner Davis, J. Farce , 2nd Edn. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishing. Humor and strengths of character. Papousek, I. The use of bright and dark types of humour is rooted in the brain.

Peterson, C. Koocher, J. Norcross, and S. Proyer, R. Intelligence and gelotophobia: the relations of self-estimated and psychometrically measured intelligence to the fear of being laughed at. Humor 22, — R Core Team Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Raskin, V. The Primer of Humor Research , Vol. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Rosseel, Y. Ruch, W. Raskin Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter , 17— The German version of the Humor Styles Questionnaire: psychometric properties and overlap with other styles of humor.

The virtue gap in humor: exploring benevolent and corrective humor. Issues Psychol. The state-of-the art in gelotophobia research: a review and some theoretical extensions. Humor 27, 23— Humor Int. Humor Res. Values in action inventory of strengths VIA-IS : adaptation and validation of the German version and the development of a peer-rating form.

Humor, the PEN model of personality, and subjective well-being: support for differential relationships with eight comic styles. Towards the end of the 19th century, publishers and artists began experimenting with the structure of the strips, making them shorter and featuring them in daily newspaper.

By the end of the s, their continuing stories in genres like adventure and drama became immensely popular, particularly following the success of Zig et Puce in [2]. In , the world saw the first edition of The Adventures of Tintin , which became an icon of comics in both France and Belgium, where it continued to flourish.

A few years later, Tintin and Le Journal de Mickey introduced the art form as an affirmed one, giving way to full-color album printing. Their popularity rose with the ukiyo-e woodblock prints from the Edo period, but it was perhaps Hokusai himself who introduced the manga form as we know it with his Hokusai Manga. After World War II, serialized cartoon became regular, starting with Sazae-san by Osamu Tezuka and continuing with magazines over a hundred pages thick, creating a giant international market for the art form.

Although the comic art phenomenon found its large audience in Europe and Japan, it is the American comics that have had the biggest influence on popular culture. Because they were so beloved, their history in the New Continent had to be divided into entire Eras.

Least shaken by World War II, the US were able to enjoy comic books and their war-inspired scenarios, available for a cheap price too. What followed was the least popular Bronze Age , running from the early s through the mid s, finally introducing The Modern Age , which we still live in today. Since its earliest examples, comics were conceived as sequences of panels containing imagery, text and other visual information.

Each of these images subsequently features a segment of action, a part of a bigger picture, often surrounded by a border to distinguish it from other images. The reader puts the pieces of the story together by using background knowledge and an understanding of panel relations to combine panels mentally into events [5].

The characters are accompanied by the legendary speech balloons , showing a dialogue or thought stream, in case of thought balloons , explanatory captions, and sound effects that describe actions using onomatopoeia particularly emphasized in manga.

Traditionally, the cartoons are created using India ink with dip pens or ink brushes, although today we witness those executed in mixed media and digital technologies.

An example of a fantasy comic book that has had widespread success is the Conan the Barbarian series. Rather, they are everyday people experiencing a conflict. Most of the characters, however, are detectives or police, and the story focuses on their battles against criminals.

Horror comic books feature characters such as zombies, monsters, and vampires. These comic books tend to be gruesome and often include nudity and profanity. Horror comic books also generally contain dark themes. They are not strictly funny, as a comic strip found in the Sunday newspaper would be. Horror comic books often cross over into many different genres of comic books.

Romance comic books involve stories about love and relationships. A hero does heroin, and the drug is featured boldly right on the cover. Pencilers dropped their cartoony style and brought realism to comics. Sin City, the epitome of a dark comic, reinvented the crime noir tale with a style of detailed characters, minimal color and a world of ambiguous black and white shapes.

Spawn is often depicted as entombed in his own costume—chains on his arms and his cape wrapping his body. The influence of horror can be seen in Venom, with his unhinging jaw of razor teeth and body of black goo. In Spawn, comics literally went to hell, not surprising with character names like The Violator. This pivotal comic traces their path through heartbreak and alienation with enough horror imagery to make David Cronenberg flinch. This comic invited readers to consider how a society that favors men might crumble, if they all just up and died.

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