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This article was downloaded by: [92.80.83.231]On: 27 February 2013, At: 04:14Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

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The Effect of Humor on

Memory: Constrained by the

PunHannah Summerfelt

a, Louis Lippman

a& Ira E.

Hyman Jr.a

aWestern Washington University

Version of record first published: 29 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Hannah Summerfelt , Louis Lippman & Ira E. Hyman Jr. (2010):

The Effect of Humor on Memory: Constrained by the Pun, The Journal of General

Psychology, 137:4, 376-394

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The Journal of General Psychology, 2010, 137(4), 376394

Copyright C 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

The Effect of Humor on Memory:Constrained by the Pun

HANNAH SUMMERFELT

LOUIS LIPPMAN

IRA E. HYMAN JR.

Western Washington University

ABSTRACT. In a series of experiments, we investigated the effect of pun humor on memory.In all experiments, the participants were exposed to knock-knock jokes in either the originalform retaining the pun or in a modified form that removed the pun. In Experiment 1, theauthors found that pun humor improved both recall and recognition memory followingincidental encoding. In Experiment 2, they found evidence that rehearsal is not the cause ofthe humor effect on memory. In Experiments 3 and 4, the authors found that the constraints

imposed by puns and incongruity may account for the humor effects observed. Punsconstrain and limit the information that can fit in the final line of a joke and thus makerecall easier.

Keywords: constraints in reconstruction, humor, memory, memory reconstruction

DESPITE THE WIDESPREAD USE OF HUMOR as an intended memory aid,

the research on humors effect on memory is inconsistent. Humor is often used in

advertising (Spotts, Weinberger, & Parsons, 1997), and researchers have found that

consumer comprehension of and positive effect toward an advertisement increases

when humor is added to the content of an advertisement (Gelb & Pickett, 1983;

Madden & Weinberger, 1982; Weinberger & Gulas, 1992). Nonetheless, humor

does not always improve memory for advertisement information (Berg & Lippman,

2001; Krishnan & Chakravarti, 2003). In education, humor is widely encouraged as

a pedagogical tool, though primarily as a way to increase the positive associations

with the class (Powell & Andresen, 1985). In classes where humor use has been

controlled and manipulated, students show increased participation and interest

in the class but do not consistently show better memory for class information or

Portions of this research were conducted as part of Hannah Summerfelts MA thesis atWestern Washington University and have been presented at the Northwest Cognition and

Memory conference.Address correspondence to Ira E. Hyman Jr., Psychology Department, Western Washing-

ton University, 516 High St., Bellingham, WA 98225, USA; [email protected] (e-mail).

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Summerfelt, Lippman, & Hyman 377

higher final grades (Kaplan & Pascoe, 1977; LoSchiavo & Shatz, 2005; Ziv, 1988).

The inconsistent findings regarding humor and memory may reflect that humor

does not have a direct effect on memory. Instead, humor may work indirectlythrough other mechanisms, such as rehearsal, surprise, arousal, incongruity, or

constraints on the reconstructive process.

Humor effects may operate through rehearsal, a basic memory tactic. Humor

may trigger additional rehearsal of an item if participants enjoy repeating a joke or a

punch line, want to memorize it for later retelling, or think more about a humorous

item. However, Vella-Broderick, Jory, and Whelan (unpublished manuscript cited

in Schmidt & Williams, 2001) found an effect of humor on sentence recall both

in situations where participants were allowed to set their own pace (allowing

rehearsal), and in situations in which the researcher set the pace (controlling forrehearsal). Schmidt and Williams (2001) argued that while participants might

rehearse humor, rehearsal may not be the relevant mechanism for humors effect

on memory.

Emotional aspects of humor have also been proposed as the manner through

which humor aids memory. For example, surprise can be an effective memory

aid because it creates a moment of focused attention and the potential for the

rehearsal of the surprising material. Unexpected humor can create a surprise

situation (Schmidt & Williams, 2001). In experimental settings, however, the

effect of humor through surprise is generally lessened or eliminated by informingthe participants that they will see humorous material or by labeling items with the

words humorous and non-humorous (Schmidt, 1994). Thus, although surprise may

aid memory for humorous material, it rarely is found to be the causal mechanism

in laboratory studies.

Similarly, moderate levels of arousal facilitate performance, and some re-

searchers have suggested that humor has an indirect effect on memory by creating

an effective level of arousal (Derks, Gardner, & Agarwal, 1998; Maher & Van

Giffen, 1988). Lippman and Tragesser (2005) suggested that a participants at-

tempt to understand a joke may lead to moderate levels of arousal and thusenhance memory. They reported an inverted-U relationship between the difficulty

of finding the humor in a joke and a humor response. Perceived funniness in a

joke increases as humor becomes less obvious and harder to find, until the effort

required to understand the joke becomes too much. Arousal resulting from a hu-

mor response should follow the same inverted-U pattern as the humor response,

but arousal as a result of the attempt to understand a joke should follow a steady

increase as a joke becomes more difficult and frustration increases.

Incongruity has also been suggested as a mechanism for the effect of humor

on memory. In the context of humor research, the term incongruity has been usedin two different ways. First is as a synonym for distinctiveness, as when a piece

of information is presented in such a way that makes it distinct within its context.

Distinctive items are remembered more easily (e.g., Pillsbury & Raush, 1943;

Wallace, 1965) and in certain circumstances, humor may further contribute to the

saliency of an already distinctive item. For example, Kintsch and Bates (1977)

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378 The Journal of General Psychology

asked students to remember verbatim phrases presented in a university lecture and

found that humorous sentences that were unrelated to the lecture were remembered

better than other sentences from the lecture.The second use of incongruity describes what often makes humorous material

funny. Appropriate incongruity happens when a situation or statement both does

and does not make sense simultaneously. When information is simply incongruous,

it makes no sense and may be confusing or frustrating. When the incongruity

is appropriate, the information is often found to be funny. Thus, appropriate

incongruity or internal incongruity are phrases that refer to the unexpected endings

that characterize most joke punch lines (Oring, 1989, 1995). The words or meaning

of a punch line often jar with the rest of the joke, creating internal incongruity

that leads to a brief moment of confusion and then an aha moment similar tosolving a puzzle. This internal incongruity in jokes ranges from simple expectation

violations to elaborate incongruity. Deckers and Devine (1981) argued that a

listener must have an incorrect expectation of how a joke will end to find the

joke funny. Incongruity may be considered appropriate incongruity when the

unexpected ending makes sense as a punch line, while also providing a meaningful

deviation from expectation.

A pun provides this appropriate incongruity because pun words often have

one meaning while alternate meanings are produced by different interpretations of

the sounds of the words. Puns, in particular, depend on this internal incongruity inthat their humor relies solely on wordplay. In some cases, appropriate incongruity

may explain humors effect on memory because participants may engage in an at-

tempt to understand the joke, thus focusing their attention on the humor. However,

Schmidt and Williams (2001) used non-humorous cartoons in which nonsensical

incongruous information was inserted. Participants had better memory for humor-

ous cartoons despite effort to understand the incongruities both in humorous and

non-humorous cartoons. Thus, appropriate incongruity creates humor, but it may

not explain increased memory for humorous material.

An additional mechanism for explaining the effect of humor on memoryconcerns how constraints in jokes and punch lines guide accurate reconstruction

of a joke. A piece of information is constrained to the extent that characteristics

cannot be changed without the information losing meaning. To recall a line in a

poem correctly, a person must preserve the meaning in the line, the poetic rhythm,

and the rhyme scheme (Rubin, 1995). Multiple constraints lead to accurate memory

through reconstruction. For example, if a person needs to remember a word and

knows that the word is one syllable, is a body part, and rhymes with red, these

multiple constraints would make head come to mind quite easily compared to

having fewer constraints concerning the word. Constraints can include restrictionson meaning, rhyme scheme, rhythm, storyline plot expectations, melody, and in

some cases physical movements. Rubin (1995) argued that multiple constraints

have more than an additive effect: Each additional constraint makes correct recall

more likely. For ballads or epic poems, constraints on meaning, structure, rhyme

scheme, storyline, and melody contribute to a singers memory in such a way

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that the structure of the ballad is followed very closely. Multiple constraints act

together to provide strong memory cues for the words in a song leading to generally

accurate recall and errors that are consistent with the constraints (Hyman & Rubin,1990; Wallace & Rubin, 1991).

Very short poetic pieces may be so tightly constrained that they change very

little in transmission from person to person over a long period of time (Rubin,

1995). Counting-out rhymes (short verses recited by children to determine roles in

an activity) can have a continued existence upwards of 150 years with no significant

change, as Eenie Meenie Miney Mo has had in the United States (Rubin, 1995).

These verses are constrained by consistent and distinct rhythms, rhymes, move-

ments, and meaning patterns. Short jokes follow a similar pattern of constraints,

limited by the structure of the joke, acoustic properties (with puns and other wordplay), rhythm (i.e., limericks), and meaningful content. These constraints guide

one toward the punch line. With these constraints, short jokes should be more

memorable than similar pieces of information that do not follow joke form.

To investigate the effects of humor on memory, researchers have used cartoons

(Schmidt, 2002; Schmidt & Williams, 2001), jokes (Schmidt, 1994; Thompson,

2001), and short pun statements (Lippman, Bennington & Sucharski, 2002; Lipp-

man & Dunn, 2000; Lippman, Sucharski, & Bennington, 2001). Although much

shorter than ballads or songs, short-form humor may also rely on constraints, be-

cause in a short joke, humor is lost with even a slight deviation from the original.Meaning, structure, and sound patterns must all be preserved for a pun joke to

retain its humor. A cartoon must match the meaning of the picture and caption. A

joke of moderate length requires a nearly verbatim re-telling of at least the punch

line and a pun requires verbatim recall of the pun words.

The four experiments in this paper were designed to investigate the effect of

humor on memory. University undergraduates were tested for incidental memory

of knock-knock jokes. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that the names used

in knock-knock jokes with puns were better remembered than rewritten jokes

without puns. In Experiment 2, we found that the improved memory observed inExperiment 1 most likely is not the result of increased effort or rehearsal produced

by humorous items. In Experiment 3, we found that puns improved the ability

to reconstruct the entire punch line, supporting the constraints as contributing to

humor effects on memory. In the final experiment, we found that the distinctive

form of incongruity also contributes to the effect of humor on memory.

EXPERIMENT 1

Because humor effects on memory have not been found consistently, thepurpose of our first experiment was to test for a humor effect using simple puns.

To accomplish this goal, original and rewritten knock-knock jokes were presented

to university students. Knock-knock jokes were rewritten by removing the pun

(and the humor) while retaining the original format. Knock-knock jokes were

used because of their simplicity, familiar form, and manipulability. Additionally,

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the final sentence in each item contained a common human name, providing a

convenient and consistent memory target.

Method

Participants

Participants were 107 introductory psychology students at Western Washing-

ton University. Participants volunteered for a choice of studies as a partial fulfill-

ment of a class requirement. Mean age was 21.03 years (SD = 5.27). Twenty-four

participants were male, 83 were female.

Materials and Procedure

At the start of the experiment, all participants were given a packet including

a consent form, a demographics page asking for age and sex, a page for rating

joke funniness, a 160 problem multiplication distracter task, and a blank page for

free recall. Participants were given vocal instructions to not turn pages unless they

were told to do so. Instructions for each section were both written in the packet

and read aloud by the experimenter. Additionally, at the end of each section in the

packet, large print capital letters repeated the instruction to not turn the page. After

completing the consent form and demographics, participants were informed thatthey would watch a PowerPoint slideshow of 30 jokes and were given instructions

to rate each joke for humor. Each slide showed one knock-knock joke and slides

changed automatically every 10 seconds. Participants gave each joke a funniness

rating from 1, not at all funny, to 5, extremely funny. These funniness ratings were

used to ensure that participants attended to each slide, and the ratings additionally

served as a manipulation check to determine whether participants viewed original

knock-knock jokes as funnier than the rewritten jokes in the slideshow.

To provide a humor difference in the jokes, a new punch line was written for

each joke by removing the pun. Rewritten knock-knock jokes retained the form andappearance of the original knock-knock joke. Each rewritten punch line matched

the original punch line in approximate length and number of syllables, and all

punch lines (original and rewritten) used a name as the first or second word. Two

examples of original and rewritten knock-knock jokes can be found in Table 1.

In each of eight slideshows, 15 original jokes were intermingled with 15

rewritten jokes. The eight rotations varied the order of names and presentation

with or without a pun to eliminate serial position bias and the chance that a certain

name might be more memorable than others. Each slideshow used the same 30

names, shown only once. Across the eight slideshows, each name was in both anoriginal knock-knock joke and a rewritten item, so that each name was presented

both with and without a pun.

After the slide show ended, participants were instructed to turn the page and

were told to complete the arithmetic task as quickly and accurately as they were

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TABLE 1. Examples of Knock-Knock Jokes

Original joke using Oswald Rewritten joke using Oswald

Knock knock! Knock knock!Whos there? Whos there?Oswald. Oswald.Oswald who? Oswald who?Oswald my chewing gum! Oswald eats vegetables!

Original joke using Harlow Rewritten joke using Harlow

Knock knock! Knock knock!Whos there? Whos there?Harlow. Harlow.Harlow who? Harlow who?Harlow can you go? Harlow likes to party!

able. After five minutes, participants were asked to stop and begin the recall task,

regardless of the number of math problems completed. Participants were givenfive minutes to write all the names they could remember from the slideshow.

Next, the experimenter handed out the materials for the recognition memory

task. The recognition test consisted of a list of 60 names, 30 names that had

appeared in the slideshow mixed with 30 new names. Each of the 30 new names

was a counterpart to one old name, matched on the starting letter, whether it was

a male or female name, and approximate number of hits when typed into the

Google search engine (for example, Greg and Gary, Lena and Leah, and Carmen

and Carla). Participants were given 5 minutes to indicate whether the names were

old or new. Finally, participants were debriefed concerning the purpose of theexperiment. Only a few participants completed the math distracter task in less

than 5 minutes, and all participants indicated completion of the memory tasks

before the 5 minutes for each task had expired.

Results

Participants found the original jokes to be more humorous (Mean humor

rating = 2.15, SD = 0.51) than rewritten items (M = 1.13, SD = 0.19), t(106) =

20.71, p < .001, Cohens d = 2.91. However, since participants gave the originaljokes a mean rating per item of two out of five, they did not find even the unmodified

knock-knock jokes to be particularly funny. Additionally, a satiation effect was

found showing that participants rated the first 10 items presented as funnier (M =

1.71, SD = .37) than the last 10 items (M = 1.48, SD = .32), t (106) = 6.924,

p < .001, Cohens d = 0.67. The counterbalancing of humor and names in the

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slideshows and rotated presentation sequences means that the satiation trend was

obtained across humorous and non-humorous materials alike.

We found an effect of humor on memory on both the recall and recognitiontasks. Participants had better recall for names that were in original jokes (M =

3.73, SD = 2.07) than names that were in rewritten jokes (M = 2.20, SD =

1.75), t (106) = 6.994, p < .001, Cohens d = 0.80. In addition, participants

had better recognition for names that were in original jokes (M = 11.79, SD =

2.12) than names that were in rewritten jokes (M = 10.19, SD = 2.38), t (106) =

7.28, p < .001, Cohens d = 0.71. Signal detection analysis using d scores,

which were determined using a table created by Hochhaus (1972), indicated good

discrimination between old and new names in the recognition task for both names

associated with a pun (M = 1.81, SD = 0.75) and names from rewritten punchlines (M= 1.38, SD = 0.89). Participants had better d scores for names associated

with a pun than names in rewritten items, t (106) = 5.61, p < .001, Cohens d =

0.52. The recognition hit rate for names from original jokes was M = 11.79, and

the false alarm rate for original joke name counterparts was M= 3.19. The hit rate

for names from rewritten items was M = 10.19, and the false alarm for rewritten

item name counterparts was M = 3.48. Being associated with a pun not only

improved the participants ability to recall a name, but to distinguish the name

from the false counterpart more accurately.

Discussion

We found that although there was a humor difference between original and

rewritten jokes, the original jokes were not particularly funny to participants. For

this reason, we ruled out arousal as an explanation for the humor effect in this

experiment. It is unlikely that the slightly funny humor rating created the optimum

level of arousal in participants to cause better memory of the names.

Even so, participants were better able to remember the names from the original

jokes. Humor may improve memory, but in Experiment 1, the memory effect

cannot be satisfactorily explained by the humor-created arousal in original jokes.

It is more likely that something else about the original jokes facilitated memory.

One possibility is differential rehearsal of original and rewritten items (Schmidt &

Williams, 2001). Participants may think about or rehearse a humorous item more

than a rewritten one, perhaps because it makes sense, is enjoyable to think about,

or because they wish to remember it for future retelling. Thus, in Experiment 2,

we examined rehearsal patterns for the items.

EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Participants

Participants were 39 (10 male, 29 female) introductory psychology students

at Western Washington University who had not participated in Experiment 1.

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Participants volunteered as in Experiment 1. Mean age was 20.26 years (SD =

1.09).


We used four slideshow rotations from Experiment 1. Slides changed auto-

matically every 20 seconds to give participants time to rate each knock-knock joke

on four statements regarding rehearsal. Each statement was rated on a 1 to 5 scale

from disagree to agree. The first statement was that it took effort to interpret the

final sentence. The participants then rated whether they tended to re-read the final

sentence. The third statement was that they tended to repeat the final sentence,

and the fourth statement was that they repeated the name in the punch line.

Results

For two of the ratings, we found a difference between original and rewritten

jokes that was the opposite direction as predicted by the rehearsal hypothesis.

Participants reported that it took more effort to interpret rewritten jokes (M =

2.71, SD = 1.13) than jokes in their original form (M = 1.69, SD = 0.54),

t (35) = 4.905, p < .001, Cohens d = 1.22. Participants also reread the punch

lines of rewritten jokes (M = 2.41, SD = 0.89) more than the punch lines of

jokes in their original form (M = 1.74, SD = 0.52), t (35) = 3.70, p = .001,Cohens d= 0.95. This is the opposite pattern of what would be expected if humor

promoted attention or repetition. Participants reported thinking harder about and

more frequently rereading punch lines when they contained no pun than when

they contained a pun.

Although the other two response items did not meet standard statistical signif-

icance, there were trends in the same direction of moderate effect size. Participants

reported repeating the punch lines of rewritten jokes (M= 2.29, SD = 0.87) more

than jokes in their original form (M = 1.94, SD = 0.69), t (35) = 1.976, p =

.056, Cohens d = 0.45, and they reported repeating the names used in rewrittenjokes (M = 2.40, SD = 0.87) more than the names from jokes in their original

form (M = 2.04, SD = 0.83), t (35) = 1.985, p = .055, Cohens d = 0.42. The

presence of pun humor did not lead to more rehearsal.

Discussion

Contrary to what would be expected if rehearsal drives humor effects, we

found more rehearsal and more effort was reported for the rewritten items than the

original humorous items. In retrospect, these rehearsal patterns make sense. Whenparticipants encountered an item with no pun, they reread and thought harder in

an attempt to understand the joke.

Because the participants for this experiment were from the same population

and saw the same slideshows as those in Experiment 1, their rehearsal and effort

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behavior should be highly similar. Therefore, even though participants spent more

time and effort interpreting the rewritten items, they still remembered the names

from the original, humorous jokes better than the rewritten items. Rehearsal maybe an effective memory aid, but it appears not to be the explanation for the effect of

humor on memory we observed in Experiment 1. It is important to note, however,

that these rehearsal patterns probably resulted from a violation of the expectation

of humor (participants expected to see a pun). Individuals should be less likely to

rehearse a non-humorous item if it appeared in a context in which the participants

do not expect humor. Nonetheless, these rehearsal patterns are important for our

research because they rule out the possibility that rehearsal is responsible for the

memory effect in our experiments.

EXPERIMENT 3

In Experiment 3, we investigated how the constraints of a pun guided memory

construction for knock-knock jokes. Rubin (1995) argued that constraints aid in

the reconstruction of verbal materials. The punch line of a knock-knock joke has

several constraints: At minimum, there must be at least one pun, based on the word

or phrase uttered in response to Whos there? Additionally, there are usually

other words in the punch line that are semantically associated with the pun, but

not necessarily acoustically associated (the punch line makes sense as a complete

sentence, but not all words need to play off the pun). For many knock-knock jokes,

a third constraint on the meaning of the punch line relates to the action of knocking

on a door or the question of, Whos there? (e.g., Lena little closer and Ill tell

you! or Shirley you know me by now!).

In this experiment, we tested whether the pun acts as a constraint to guide

reconstruction of the entire punch line. Following incidental encoding, participants

were asked to remember the entire last sentence (punch line) in addition to the

name from each joke. If the pun is an important constraint, then participants should

have better memory for all the words in an original punch line, because the names

participation in a pun should cue the semantically related words in the rest of the

punch line. We tested this prediction by using both free recall of the entire punch

line and cued recall when given the pun name.

Method

Participants

Participants were 121 introductory psychology students at Western Washing-

ton University who had not participated in Experiments 1 or 2. Participants volun-

teered as in prior experiments. Mean age was 19.29 years (SD = 1.64). Thirty-one

participants were male, 89 were female (one participant did not respond).

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Procedure and materials were identical to those used in Experiment 1, includ-ing the rotations of names and humor in the eight slideshows and the use of the

5-minute math distracter task. In Experiment 3, we used two additional memory

tasks. Following the free recall task in which participants were instructed to write

down as many names as possible, participants were asked to write the entire last

sentence of as many items as they could remember on a separate blank sheet of

paper. Participants were encouraged to guess. The recognition task used in Exper-

iment 1 was next, followed by a cued recall task in which all 30 names used in

the slideshow were listed with a large blank box next to each name. Participants

were asked to write down all the punch lines from the slideshow using the namesas memory cues.

Scoring

Participants responses to the two new memory tasks were typed and presented

to three independent judges to score for quality. Judges were three psychology

graduate students at Western Washington University. A list of correct punch lines,

alphabetized by name, was provided so that they could compare participants

responses with the correct punch line.Judges were first given practice materials consisting of examples of two joke

punch lines that were not in these experiments, in both original form and rewritten

form with no pun. Under each of the punch lines were 6 to 10 fabricated sample

participant responses as if generated by participants attempting to remember that

punch line. These were typed into a form that looked the same as the real judging

form. Fabricated participant responses were designed to be similar to participant

responses.

Judges were trained to use a 5-point scale with the practice materials. Judges

scored each response based on how closely a participants response matchedverbatim accuracy. Criteria for accuracy can be found in Table 2. Spelling and

punctuation were not considered important as long as the meaning of the words

TABLE 2. Judging Criteria for Experiment 3

5 = Perfect, verbatim.4 = Almost perfect, no more than 2 words are missing, different, or out of place.

3 = Pretty good recall, more than a couple of words may be incorrect, but thegist of the sentence is intact.2 = Some gist is present but it is not very close; not as good as a 31 = Barely recognizable

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did not change (for example, comin around the mountain and coming around

the mountain were considered to be equivalent). For the lowest three ratings,

if words were missing or out of place in a response, judges were instructed todecide how important the incorrect words were and to judge memory accordingly.

After each judge rated the fabricated responses individually using the 15 scale,

the rating for each item was discussed, and judges agreed on the rating for each

response. Judges did not discuss scores for the real participant responses. Each

judge rated each participants response for both punch line memory tasks.

Memory ratings were averaged across the three judges. When any judge left

a response rating box blank, that response was omitted from analysis. Intraclass

correlation (a measure of judge agreement on a set of scores) for the three judges

was calculated using the method explained by Howell (2001). Intraclass correlationwas .86 for the free recall task, and .85 for the cued recall task.

Generally, if participants recalled a punch line, they did so with near verbatim

accuracy. In the free recall task, the memory rating for original punch lines (M =

4.15, SD = 1.07) was not different from the memory rating for rewritten punch

lines (M = 4.13, SD = .87), t (379) = .197, p = .844, Cohens d = 0.02. In the

cued recall task, memory ratings for original punch lines (M = 4.23, SD = .98)

were not better than for rewritten ones (M = 4.20, SD = .87), t(576) = .291, p =

.771, Cohens d = 0.03.

Results

As in Experiment 1, participants found the original jokes to be more humorous

(M = 2.18, SD = 0.58) than rewritten items (M = 1.18, SD = 0.27), t (120) =

19.20, p < .001, Cohens d = 2.35. Participants again rated the first ten items

presented as funnier (M = 1.71, SD = 0.39) than the last ten items (M = 1.55,

SD = 0.40), t (120) = 6.63, p < .001, Cohens d = 0.41.

Participants had better recall for names in original jokes (M = 3.36, SD =

1.74) than in rewritten items (M = 1.73, SD = 1.23), t (120) = 9.27, p < .001,Cohens d = 1.10. Participants also had better recognition memory for names

in original jokes (M = 11.79, SD = 2.02) than names in rewritten items (M =

10.41, SD = 2.26), t (120) = 6.03, p < .001, Cohens d = 0.64. Signal detection

and d scores indicated good discrimination between old and new names in the

name recognition task, both for names associated with a pun (M = 1.73, SD =

.84) and for names from rewritten punch lines (M = 1.41, SD = .73). Again,

participants had better d scores for names associated with a pun compared to

names in rewritten items, t (120) = 4.47, p < .001, Cohens d = 0.41. Hit rate

for names from original jokes was M = 11.79, with a false alarm rate for originaljoke name counterparts of M = 3.46. Hit rate for names from rewritten items was

M = 10.41, with a false alarm for rewritten item name counterparts of M = 3.40.

These recall and recognition results replicate the results of Experiment 1, showing

a consistent humor effect on memory.

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To obtain a score for the total number of recalled punch lines, a response was

counted if it was given a memory rating of at least 1 by the judges, which meant

the response was at least barely recognizable as a punch line from the slideshow(as previously noted, most were scored as a 4 or 5). In the free recall task for

punch lines, participants were more likely to recall an original punch line (M =

2.17, SD = 1.46) than a rewritten punch line (M = 0.84, SD = 1.05), t (120) =

10.13, p < .001, Cohens d = 1.06.

In the cued recall task, participants also recalled more original punch lines

(M= 4.28, SD = 2.55) than rewritten (M= 0.69, SD = 1.15), t(120) = 16.92,p

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