Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous studies found that humor and empathy are associated with interpersonal relationships. Particularly, Hampes (2001) reported that humor styles and empathy had a positive correlation in adults. The purpose of the study is to explore the link between empathy and humor use in teenagers and to investigate if gender differences exist as well. 115 adolescents between 11-12 years old participated the study and filled out The Empathy Quotient and Taiwanese Adolescent Humor Instruments. We found that empathy and the sense of humor had a significant correlation both in boys and girls. However, the scenarios of humor using and the purposes of humor using only had a positive correlation with empathy in girls. The findings offer a supplementary evidence for the developmental link between empathy and humor. The implications of the study shed light on the developmental discrepancies between genders in adolescents.