Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS)

Abstract

The Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS) is a widely recognized psychometric assessment instrument developed by James A. Thorson and F. C. Powell (1991, 1993a) to operationalize sense of humor as a complex, multifaceted individual difference construct. Designed to overcome the theoretical and structural limitations of early unidimensional instruments, the MSHS conceptualizes humor not merely as a passive appreciation of amusement, but as an integrative psychological system combining cognitive, behavioral, coping, and social components. The instrument consists of 24 self-report items evaluated on a 5-point Likert response format ranging from 0 (Strongly disagree) to 4 (Strongly agree), yielding a total possible score between 0 and 96, where higher scores indicate a more fully developed sense of humor.

Extensive factor-analytic investigations establish that the MSHS measures four primary dimensions: (1) Humor creativity and uses of humor for social purposes (production, social expressiveness, and interpersonal utility), (2) Uses of coping humor (instrumental deployment of wit to moderate stress and master challenging life circumstances), (3) Appreciation of humorous people (attitudes toward and valuation of comic peers), and (4) Appreciation of humor (receptive enjoyment and recognition of comedy and jokes). Psychometric evaluations consistently confirm high internal consistency, with total scale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding .90 across diverse demographic groups, clinical cohorts, and cross-cultural adaptations. Construct, convergent, and discriminant validity have been confirmed through significant associations with subjective well-being, optimism, self-esteem, extraversion, and resilience, alongside inverse relationships with depressive symptomatology, trait anxiety, and death anxiety. Today, the MSHS remains a benchmark assessment within personality psychology, positive psychology, psychogerontology, and behavioral medicine.

Keywords

Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, MSHS, humor measurement, coping humor, humor production, humor appreciation, psychometrics, psychological well-being, stress buffering, personality assessment

Authors

The Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale was authored by James A. Thorson, Ed.D., and F. C. Powell, Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

• James A. Thorson, Ed.D.: Served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Gerontology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dr. Thorson contributed foundational scholarship spanning thanatology, aging, life satisfaction, and the health benefits of adaptive humor across the adult lifespan.
• F. C. Powell, Ph.D.: Faculty member and research methodologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, specializing in psychometric instrumentation, statistical modeling, behavioral measurement, and longitudinal gerontological survey research.

Institutional affiliations during development: Department of Gerontology and College of Public Affairs and Community Service, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, United States.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale is to provide researchers and clinicians with a reliable, empirically grounded, and theoretically robust measure of individual differences in humor. Before the development of the MSHS in the early 1990s, existing scales typically isolated single facets of humor. For example, early instruments focused almost exclusively on humorous response tendencies, such as mirth and laughter (e.g., the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire; Lefcourt & Martin, 1986), or narrowed their focus strictly to cognitive coping defenses (e.g., the Coping Humor Scale; Martin & Lefcourt, 1983). Thorson and Powell recognized that individuals could possess a high degree of passive joke appreciation without possessing the social competence to generate humor, or conversely, could actively generate wit while failing to utilize it as a cognitive buffer in times of psychological distress.

The MSHS was constructed to bridge these conceptual divides by providing an omnibus, multidimensional assessment framework that captures humor as an active social skill, a cognitive restructuring mechanism, and an affective orientation. In research settings, the tool enables scholars to investigate how distinctive humor facets influence cardiovascular health, immune functioning, psychological resilience, occupational burnout, and interpersonal attraction. In clinical, counseling, and gerontological contexts, the MSHS serves as a strengths-based diagnostic tool to evaluate an individual’s coping repertoire, emotional adaptability, and psychological resources when dealing with chronic illness, bereavement, aging-related transitions, and affective disorders.

Psychological Construct

The MSHS operationalizes “sense of humor” as an integrated psychological architecture comprising cognitive, behavioral, affective, and social dimensions. Factor-analytic studies by Thorson and Powell (1993a, 1993b) demonstrate that this overarching construct differentiates into four primary components:

1. Humor Creativity and Uses of Humor for Social Purposes

This dimension reflects active humor production, expressive wit, and the functional deployment of comedic remarks within social environments. It taps into an individual’s confidence in their ability to generate amusement, crack jokes, entertain others, and employ humor to influence, lead, or ease group dynamics. Prototypic items include: “Sometimes I think up jokes or funny stories” (Item 1), “I’m confident that I can make other people laugh” (Item 3), and “I can actually have some control over a group by using humor” (Item 21). High scores on this subscale reflect high social competence, creative verbal agility, extraversion, and low social anxiety.

2. Uses of Coping Humor

This subscale assesses the cognitive and behavioral utilization of humor as an adaptive coping strategy to master adversity, reframe acute stressors, and alleviate negative affect. Grounded in cognitive appraisal models of stress, this component evaluates whether an individual treats humor as a legitimate problem-solving and emotion-regulation tool rather than a frivolous distraction. Representative items include: “Uses of wit or humor help me master difficult situations” (Item 2), “I can ease a tense situation by saying something funny” (Item 7), “Humor helps me cope” (Item 16), and the reverse-scored “Humor is a lousy coping mechanism” (Item 13). Individuals with high coping humor scores demonstrate emotional stability, constructive cognitive reappraisal, and psychological hardiness.

3. Appreciation of Humorous People

This factor evaluates social attitudes toward others who generate humor, assessing the degree of interpersonal tolerance, admiration, and comfort one experiences around humorous peers. It distinguishes individuals who welcome comedic interactions from those who find comedic behaviors irritating, distracting, or socially intrusive. Prototypic items include: “I appreciate those who generate humor” (Item 14), alongside reverse-scored items such as “People who tell jokes are a pain in the neck” (Item 8), “Calling somebody a ‘comedian’ is a real insult” (Item 11), and “I’m uncomfortable when everyone is cracking jokes” (Item 17).

4. Appreciation of Humor

The fourth factor taps into direct, receptive humor appreciation—the basic hedonic capacity to enjoy jokes, comic media, and lighthearted content. Although structurally closely tied to Factor 3, it isolates the individual’s baseline liking of comedic material independently of social interaction. Items include: “I like a good joke” (Item 10) and the reverse-scored “I dislike comics” (Item 4). While having fewer items, this facet establishes an essential baseline of aesthetic comedic responsiveness.

Theoretical Framework

The construction of the MSHS is anchored in three primary theoretical traditions within psychology:

Cognitive Appraisal and Transactional Stress Theory

The coping humor dimension is grounded in the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping developed by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984). According to this perspective, psychological stress occurs when external demands exceed an individual’s appraised coping resources. Humor functions as a sophisticated secondary appraisal mechanism: by viewing an adverse situation through a humorous or ironic lens, individuals achieve cognitive restructuring, de-catastrophize perceived threats, distance themselves from acute emotional distress, and foster a sense of personal mastery. Items such as “Coping by using humor is an elegant way of adapting” (Item 19) directly operationalize this reappraisal process.

Psychoanalytic and Ego Psychology Perspectives

Sigmund Freud (1928) identified humor as one of the highest and most mature defense mechanisms, contrasting it with neurotic defenses like repression or denial. In Freud’s view, humor allows the ego to acknowledge reality without succumbing to suffering, asserting the invulnerability of the self through the production of comic pleasure. Later ego psychologists like George Vaillant (1977) sustained this concept, classifying humor as a mature adaptive coping strategy associated with superior psychosocial functioning, career success, and life satisfaction across adulthood.

Trait Theory and Positive Psychology

The social and creative dimensions of the MSHS draw from trait psychology and personality theory, notably the Five-Factor Model (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Humor generation and social utility reflect elevated Extraversion, Assertiveness, and Openness to Experience, whereas humor appreciation and low cynicism align with Agreeableness. Concurrently, modern positive psychology frameworks—such as Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory (2001)—suggest that positive emotional experiences induced by humor broaden cognitive awareness, dissolve negative cardiovascular reactivity, and build enduring psychosocial resources over time.

Validity

The MSHS has been evaluated across multiple validation paradigms, establishing robust construct, criterion, convergent, and discriminant validity across general adult, collegiate, and clinical populations.

Convergent Validity

Thorson and Powell (1993b) demonstrated significant positive correlations between total MSHS scores and recognized measures of psychological health. In their validation cohorts, MSHS scores correlated positively with:

• Optimism: Moderate to strong positive correlations (r = .40 to .52, p < .001) with the Life Orientation Test (LOT; Scheier & Carver, 1985).
• Self-Esteem: Statistically significant correlations (r = .34 to .47, p < .001) with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.
• External Humor Scales: High convergence (r = .60 to .72) with Martin and Lefcourt’s (1983) Coping Humor Scale (CHS) and the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ), confirming that the MSHS captures existing humor constructs while expanding upon them.
• Extraversion: Meaningful associations with the Extraversion dimension of the NEO Personality Inventory (r = .45 to .58).

Discriminant and Criterion Validity

Evidence for discriminant validity is demonstrated by robust negative correlations with measures of distress and anxiety:

• Depression: Statistically significant inverse correlations (r = -.30 to -.44, p < .001) with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).
• Death Anxiety: Thorson and Powell (1993b) documented meaningful inverse associations (r = -.25 to -.38) with the Revised Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS), supporting the hypothesis that a well-developed sense of humor acts as a buffer against existential dread.
• Neuroticism: Negative relationships with trait neuroticism and social introversion across multiple independent validation trials.

Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the MSHS is well-documented in the humor assessment literature:

Internal Consistency

In the original scale validation study involving 397 participants (Thorson & Powell, 1993a), the full 24-item scale yielded an overall Cronbach’s alpha of .92. Subsequent investigations across diverse international cohorts consistently report alpha coefficients ranging between .90 and .93 for the total instrument, indicating excellent internal consistency. Subscale reliabilities typically demonstrate:

• Humor creativity / social utility: Cronbach’s α = .88 to .91
• Uses of coping humor: Cronbach’s α = .82 to .87
• Appreciation of humorous people: Cronbach’s α = .68 to .74
• Appreciation of humor: Cronbach’s α = .65 to .72 (lower coefficients reflect the small number of items in this subscale).

Test-Retest Stability

Test-retest reliability evaluations over intervals ranging from 3 to 8 weeks have demonstrated Pearson correlation coefficients between r = .80 and .88, indicating high temporal stability. The instrument reliably assesses humor as a stable individual difference trait rather than a transient, state-dependent mood fluctuation.

Factor Analysis

The structural composition of the MSHS was initially determined using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) employing principal components analysis with varimax orthogonal rotation on a developmental sample of 422 adults (Thorson & Powell, 1991), refined in their 1993 investigation of 397 participants.

Initial Factor Structure and Loadings

The analyses revealed a robust four-factor solution accounting for approximately 45% to 52% of total variance across diverse iterations:

• Factor 1 (Humor Creativity / Social Use): Comprises 11 items (Items 1, 3, 5, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24). Factor loadings for this primary factor range from .48 to .76, accounting for the largest proportion of common variance (~29%).
• Factor 2 (Coping Humor): Comprises 7 items (Items 2, 6, 7, 13, 16, 19, 20). Item factor loadings range between .46 and .74, capturing roughly 11% of the common variance.
• Factor 3 (Humorous People): Comprises 4 items (Items 8, 11, 14, 17), with loadings ranging from .42 to .68.
• Factor 4 (Humor Appreciation): Comprises 2 items (Items 4, 10), with loadings exceeding .50.

Cross-Cultural and Confirmatory Analyses

Cross-cultural examinations—such as the Portuguese validation by José, Parreira, Thorson, and Allwardt (2007) with 510 adults—confirmed structural equivalence with minor variations, identifying comparable four-factor configurations via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; RMSEA = .058, CFI = .91, TLI = .90). Similarly, comparative psychometric work by Kohler and Ruch (1996) evaluated the MSHS against alternative European humor inventories, confirming that the MSHS possesses a clear underlying structure with distinct variance contributions from humor production versus coping and appreciation.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale is administered as a structured, paper-and-pencil or computerized self-report questionnaire.

• Test Format: Standard self-administered Likert rating scale.
• Number of Items: 24 declarative statements.
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale:
  • 0 = Strongly disagree
  • 1 = Disagree
  • 2 = Undecided
  • 3 = Agree
  • 4 = Strongly agree
• Reversed Items: Six items are negatively worded and must be reverse-scored prior to calculating subscale and composite totals: Items 4, 8, 11, 13, 17, and 20 (Scoring: 0 → 4, 1 → 3, 2 → 2, 3 → 1, 4 → 0).
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Total Score: Sum of all 24 items (following reverse-scoring). Range: 0 to 96. Higher total scores denote a richer, more active, and multifaceted sense of humor.
  • Factor 1 Score (Creativity & Social Use): Sum of Items 1, 3, 5, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24 (Range: 0–44).
  • Factor 2 Score (Coping Humor): Sum of Items 2, 6, 7, 13*, 16, 19, 20* (Range: 0–28).
  • Factor 3 Score (Appreciation of Humorous People): Sum of Items 8*, 11*, 14, 17* (Range: 0–16).
  • Factor 4 Score (Appreciation of Humor): Sum of Items 4*, 10 (Range: 0–8).
• Estimated Completion Time: 5 to 10 minutes.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 15 and older) across clinical, educational, community, and occupational environments.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale was initially introduced in preliminary form in 1991 and fully validated and standardized in 1993 through peer-reviewed articles published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Reports. The instrument is accessible in the public domain for academic, clinical, and non-commercial scientific research purposes. Scholars and clinicians may utilize the scale without purchasing licensing agreements or obtaining formal written permissions, provided proper academic attribution is credited to Dr. James A. Thorson and Dr. F. C. Powell. The instrument is cataloged in the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS) Test Bank and reproduced in clinical reference sourcebooks (e.g., Simmons & Lehmann, 2013).

References

• Batten, S. (2002). A preliminary investigation of sense of humor and purpose in life (Student Work Paper 187). University of Nebraska at Omaha. https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/studentwork/187
• Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
• Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218
• Freud, S. (1928). Humour. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 9, 1–6.
• José, H., Parreira, P., Thorson, J. A., & Allwardt, D. (2007). A factor-analytic study of the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale with a Portuguese sample. North American Journal of Psychology, 9(3), 595–610.
• Kohler, G., & Ruch, W. (1996). Sources of variance in current sense of humor inventories: How much substance, how much method variance? Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 9(3–4), 363–397. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1996.9.3-4.363
• Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company.
• Lefcourt, H. M., & Martin, R. A. (1986). Humor and life stress: Antidote to adversity. Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4902-3
• Martin, R. A., & Lefcourt, H. M. (1983). Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(6), 1313–1324. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.6.1313
• Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1985). Optimism, coping, and health: Assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies. Health Psychology, 4(3), 219–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.4.3.219
• Thorson, J. A., & Powell, F. C. (1991). Measurement of sense of humor. Psychological Reports, 69(2), 691–701. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1991.69.2.691
• Thorson, J. A., & Powell, F. C. (1993a). Development and validation of a multidimensional sense of humor scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 49(1), 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-4679(199301)49:1%3C13::AID-JCLP2270490103%3E3.0.CO;2-S
• Thorson, J. A., & Powell, F. C. (1993b). Sense of humor and dimensions of personality. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 49(6), 799–809. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-4679(199311)49:6%3C799::AID-JCLP2270490606%3E3.0.CO;2-S
• Thorson, J. A., & Powell, F. C. (2013). Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale. In C. A. Simmons & P. Lehmann (Eds.), Tools for strengths-based assessment and evaluation (pp. 211–213). Springer Publishing Company.
• Vaillant, G. E. (1977). Adaptation to life. Little, Brown and Company.

Items of the Scale