PRELIMINARY VALIDATION OF A MULTIDIMENSIONAL MODEL OF WITTINESS

Past research on wittiness has found that (a) self-ratings and peer ra tings of wittiness are highly correlated, but neither type of rating i s appreciably correlated with measured humor production, and (b) socia bility is correlated with both types of wittiness ratings but not with humor production. An interpretation of these findings was provided by a multidimensional model of wittiness that conceptualizes wittiness a s a factorially complex dimension shaped by three component traits: hu mor motivation, humor cognition, and humor communication. We conducted three correlational studies to test the hypotheses, derived from the theory, that (a) wittiness ratings are influenced by humor motivation and humor communication, whereas humor production taps only humor cogn ition, and (b) sociability is positively correlated with humor motivat ion and humor communication but unrelated to humor cognition. Results were consistent across studies and generally confirmed the predictions .