當禁忌和攻擊變幽默——青少年幽默因應中的禁忌與語文攻擊表現

Taboos and Aggression in Humor: Taboo Violation and Verbal Aggression as Teenager Coping Strategies

研究目的：過去研究多支持幽默的正向心理作用，近期學者則主張幽默同時包含正向與負向的特性，目前卻少有研究探討幽默中的禁忌與攻擊，本研究係探討不同年級、性別的青少年在人際因應作業中的一般應答與幽默應答，分析其禁忌與攻擊的表現，提供教師、研究者對幽默中禁忌與語文攻擊的理解。研究方法：經由學生日常生活常遇到的人際困境作業，蒐集一般應答與幽默應答的資料，分析學生在幽默因應中的禁忌內容和語文攻擊強度。研究結果：在禁忌表現上，經卡方考驗得知青少年在幽默應答比一般應答使用更多的禁忌內容，國中男生組比國中女生組、國小女生組、國小男生組在幽默應答中使用更多的禁忌內容；在語文攻擊表現上，國中小學生在「幽默應答」的語文攻擊程度均高於「一般應答」的語文攻擊程度，男生的語文攻擊程度顯著高於女生。研究結論：青少年期是邁向成熟幽默的過渡階段，尤其國中男生，在幽默因應中使用更多禁忌和語文攻擊技巧，建議師長應先瞭解學生使用這些技巧的動機，適時介入，藉由溝通、分析，引導學生運用好的幽默，避免不良幽默的「負」作用。

Purpose: A number of studies have provided evidence for the positive effects of humor. More recently, it has been suggested that humor includes negative as well as positive characteristics. To date, however, few studies have investigated the negative aspects. This study explored verbal aggression and taboo violation in humor through an examination of the ordinary and humorous responses made by teenagers. Methods: Participants were 198 elementary school students (104 males and 94 females) and 287 junior high school students (148 males and 139 females) sampled from 14 classes in Taipei City and Taipei County. The total sample consisted of 252 males and 233 females (Mean age = 12.6). Participants provided ordinary and humorous responses to 20 common scenarios depicting embarrassment to others, each of which included a picture and a description. These responses were analyzed in terms of the intensity of verbal aggression and the content of the taboos violated in the responses, with results compared by gender and age. Results: Humorous responses were found to contain more violations of taboos and a greater degree of verbal aggression than ordinary responses. An ANOVA revealed that the level of verbal aggression in the responses of junior high school boys was significantly higher than that of girls. Conclusions: The teen years mark a period that occurs prior to the development of mature humor. Teenagers, particularly boys, are relatively more likely to violate taboos and employ verbal aggression in their humor. One suggestion to emerge from our research is that teachers first seek to understand the motivation behind teen humor before attempting to intervene. Teachers are also encouraged to promote more positive uses of humor in their students.