Toughmindedness

Freudian (1905 Wien; Der Witz und seine Beziehung sun VnbewuJten. Deuticke) and Salience (Goldstein, Sub and Anthony, 1972; The Psycho/ogy of Humor. Academic Press, New York) theory make opposite predictions about the effects of attitudes to sex and sexual behaviour on appreciation of sex humour. Male and female students (N = 115) answered a questionnaire of attitudes toward sex, a sexual behaviour inventory (Eysenck, 1976; Sex orid Personality. Open Books, London) and a humour test. The results generally supported a positive correlation between appreciation of sex humour and the sex scales (sexual libido, satisfaction, experience and pleasure), although the resulting pattern was very complex. Separation of sex humour according to the jokes structure yielded different predictor patterns. Funniness of humour based on nonsense correlated most frequently and most highly with the sex scales libido, experiences and pleasure. Low sexual satisfaction, low permissiveness, and prudishness were correlated with aversiveness of all types of humour. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that these variables are better predictors of enjoyment of sexual humour than the more general factors of conservatism and tough-mindedness (T) which turned out to be potent predictors in a recent study (Ruth and Hehl, 1986; Person. individ. 01% 7,861-874). It turned out that the predictive sex scales were located on the toughmindedness axis and were thus as predictive of sex humour as T itself. A refinement of the salience hypothesis was undertaken.

We examined, over 4 years, the interrelationships between changes in teachers’ ratings of student behav-iorand changes in students’ self-reports of their personality. Participants were Australian high school stu-dents in Grades 8–11 (Ns were 891, 763, 778, and 571, respectively). Teachers evaluated students’behavioral problems and overall adjustment, whereas students reported on their levels of Eysenckianpsychoticism (P), a personality trait relevant in the school setting. We found some evidence of bidirec-tional influences between P and evaluations of adjustment and behavioral problems. These results arediscussed with reference to transactional models of personality change.

There are certain 'hard cases' of weakness of will that seem to occur, indeed to be common, but are very difficult to give a non-paradoxical account of.  It is just not clear how they are possible.  This paper is largely an attempt to get them in focus.  What conditions must such weak-willed actions satisfy?  In what sense must they be intentional, for example?  And must the weak-willed agent thinks his action objectively worse than some alternative action open to him?  And must that alternative action actually be open to him?  The paper concludes by considering the condition that a clear case of weakness of will must be in certain sense non-procrastinatory and this turns out to be particularly difficult to satisfy.  Other explanations, ones that do not postulate weakness of will (though they may involve paradoxes of their own), always seem to be available.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused of talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

(I am sorry if Part Three seems rather fragmentary - a handful of questions left over from previous sections.  It really needs some kind of conclusion to draw the threads together, but for the moment inspiration eludes me.)

It was attempted to locate dimensions of sense of humour in the
attitude space. While previous results suggest that appreciation of jokes based on the incongruity-resolution structure is mainly a function of conservatism, the present paper examined the role of toughmindedness, as the second dimension in the attitude space. Subjects were 115 male and female students. Four conservatism questionnaires (C Scale: Wilson and Patterson, 1970; POI: Eysenck, 1976; MK: Cloetta, 1983; 16PF Q1: Schneewind, Schröder and Cattell, 1983), the 16PF scales E, G, I and M, the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey 'Study of Values' scales (Theoretical, Economic, Aesthetic, Social, Political and Religious interest), toughmindedness, capitalism, machiavellianism, disinhibition, rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity were used as marker variables in a factor analysis to identify the two major dimensions of the attitude space, conservatism and toughmindedness. An item factor analysis of 158 attitude items served as a second means to establish a frame of reference for the location of the humour scales. The results showed that funniness of jokes based on the incongruity-resolution structure was located on the conservative side, while funniness of nonsense jokes was located on the liberal side of the C-axis. Appreciation of sex as a salient content in jokes was predicted by toughmindedness. Accordingly, incongruity-resolution sex jokes were located in the toughminded/conservative quadrant, but nonsense sex jokes were located on the T-axis. All rejection scores were located on the tenderminded side. The correlation with conservatism depended on the joke's structure, e.g. rejection of incongruity-resolution jokes was located in the tender/liberal quadrant, while rejection of nonsense jokes was located in the tender/conservative quadrant. The hypotheses were tested at the level of single jokes and also at a higher order level.