Humor and conceptual flexibility in later life.

摘要

The cognitive theories of humor indicated that humor relies on problem-solving abilities including shifting frames of reference and reorganizing information. These abilities fall under the domain of conceptual flexibility. Aging research suggested a maturational decline in conceptual flexibility in later life. More recently, this decline was found to be education- and health-related and not age-associated. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between conceptual flexibility and humor in later life.; A correlational design was used to investigate the association between demographics, age, education, and health, conceptual flexibility and humor. Seventy-six community-residing individuals ranging in age from 62 to 90, with diverse diseases participated in the study. Criteria for exclusion included evidence of neurological or severe psychiatric impairment. The research instruments consisted of a survey of demographic data, and measures of situational humor, humor comprehension, spontaneous flexibility, classification and shifting sets. Data were analyzed by Pearson product-moment correlations and hierarchical multiple regressions.; Findings indicate no significant correlations between age and conceptual flexibility or humor. Education level, however, is positively related to all facets of humor and flexibility. Relationships between health and conceptual flexibility or humor depend on the way health is conceptualized. When health is divided into three groupings, no adverse medical conditions, stable, and unstable disease states, a significant negative correlation is found between increasingly poor health and spontaneous flexibility. When the variable is dichotomized by combining the healthy and medically stable groups, significant negative correlations are found between health, spontaneous flexibility, classification and humor comprehension.; The findings of the multiple regression analyses indicate that humor comprehension is best predicted by conceptual flexibility, in particular spontaneous flexibility, and education. Situational humor is associated with education and an age by education interaction. Additional analyses undertaken to further differentiate the two types of humor suggest that health (stable versus uncontrolled disease) explains significant variance in humor comprehension, whereas activity level accounts for unique variance in the situational humor equation. These results suggest that humor comprehension is related to cognitive elements, whereas the propensity towards amusement may be associated with life experiences. Implications of these findings for future research were discussed.