Final-note expectancy and humor: an empirical investigation.

BACKGROUND: Melodic expectations were manipulated to investigate the nature of tonally incongruent melodic final notes that may elicit humor in listeners. To our knowledge, this is the first experiment aiming at studying humor elicitation in music with the use of empirical, quantitative methods. To this aim, we have based the experiment on the incongruency/resolution theory of humor and the violations of expectations in music. Our goal was to determine the amount of change, that is, the degree of incongruency required to elicit humor. METHODS: We composed two simple, 8-bar long melodies, and changed their final notes so that they could randomly finish on any semitone between an octave upwards and downwards with respect to the original, tonic final note. This resulted in 25 versions for both melodies, including the original final notes, for each semitone. Musician and non-musician participants rated each version of each melody on five 7-point bipolar scales according to goodness of fit, humor, beauty, playfulness, and pleasantness. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed that even a single change of the final note can elicit humor. No strong connection was found between humor elicitation and the level of incongruency (i.e., the amount of violation of expectation). Instead, changes to the major-mode melody were more likely to be found humorous than those to the minor-mode melody, implying that a so-called playful context is necessary for humor elicitation as the major melody was labelled playful by the listeners. Furthermore, final notes below the original tonic end note were also found to be less humorous and less fitting to the melodic context than those above it.

[Experiences with the validation of the Hungarian version of Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Brief Form: predicting personality disorders based on self-report inventory].

INTRODUCTION: The recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) provided a dimensional model of personality disorders grounded on the empirical validated concept of maladaptive personality traits. Accordingly, based on this model, the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Brief Form (PID-5-BF) enables the identification of maladaptive personality traits in 5 dimensions: Negative Affect, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition and Psychoticism. Former studies showed, that this self-report measure can reliably predict the likelihood of the development of personality disorders. AIM: We aimed to develop the Hungarian version of the PID-5-BF and to verify its construct-, concurrent-, predictive-, and discriminative validity. METHOD: Based on the results of former studies regarding PID-5-BF, we asked 379 participants to fill out several selfreport measures. Besides PID-5-BF, the Bipolar Rating Scale for the Big Five Personality, the Unconventionality subscale from the Openness scale of the HEXACO model and the Interpersonal Problems-Personality Disorders-25 were also administered. RESULTS: According to the original 5 factor version, the fit of our model was acceptable (CFI = 0,868; RMSEA = 0,061 [90% CI = 0,055 - 0,068]; Cronbach-alpha = 0,61-0,79). In our view, the results vindicate the reliability and validity of the Hungarian PID-5-BF. CONCLUSIONS: According to former studies along with our recent findings, the PID-5-BF can be seen as an effective and reliable self-report scale for clinical studies and at the same time, it may be useful for the psychiatric diagnostic process, mainly in the case of personality disorders. With more clinical data and knowledge, this inventory could be useful for psychiatrists and clinical psychologists in planning of clinical treatment.