Captioned and Non-Captioned Cartoons: Effects of Structural Properties on Ratings of Humor

Abstract

Humor ratings by 80 college students were obtained on non-captioned cartoons for comparison to whole-captioned cartoons and to independent ratings of the pictures and captions of the whole-captioned cartoons. Whole-captioned cartoons were rated significantly funnier than the independent ratings of pictures or captions. The non-captioned cartoons were not rated significantly different from pictures, captions, or whole-captioned cartoons. A significant interaction was found between the three forms of captioned cartoons and whether the cartoons were pictorial or caption-dependent. Subjects rated strictly pictorial non-captioned cartoons significantly funnier than non-captioned cartoons with writing in the pictures. These results support some previous findings and suggest control for cartoons' structure in studies of humor.

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