Abstract:
We examined the relations between humor and social cognition in early development. In Study 1, 84 3- to 47-month-olds completed social cognition and humor lab tasks. Parents completed the Early Social Cognition Inventory and the Early Humor Survey. Once age was controlled for, there was a positive relation between the parental surveys, but no relation between the lab tasks. Study 2 (N = 573) extended the surveys to a large diverse sample, finding this relation held for children under 1 year, and 1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds; and within gender, socio-economic status (parent education; household income), country (UK, USA), and ethnicity (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic ethnicity, White ethnicity). In Study 3, 214 parents from Study 2 repeated the surveys six months later. Humor predicted social cognition, but not the reverse. Social cognition and humor may be related in day-to-day life, but this relationship is difficult to capture in the laboratory.
Description:
We thank parents and children for participating. We thank Eloise Prouten for helping with data collection. This project was funded by a PhD studentship from the Ministry of Education in Turkey, awarded to Burcu Soy Telli. Burcu Soy Telli was the primary author, and analyzed the data. Elena Hoicka edited and gave feedback on the manuscript, both in terms of content and analyses. We thank Dr. Claire Fox and Dr. Claudia von Bastian for valuable feedback on the manuscript. We would like to disclose that Elena Hoicka owns the website www.babylovesscience.com with which we collected most of the survey data. Data for this study are available by emailing the corresponding author.
