W. Larry Ventis

William & Mary | WM · Department of Psychology

Over 85 empirical articles investigating the fear of being laughed at have been published. Still, the question “why bother with another inter-individual differences variable?” arises. This quantitative paper based on 240 people, aims to show why gelotophobia has been widely neglected in therapeutic settings and why therapists may not have come acro...

The present work theorizes that the experience of humor relies on distinct roles for each of the two thought modes identified by Kahneman (2011): Intuitive and Reflective Thought. A listener's Intuitive Thought early in a joke is hypothesized to increase the probability of experiencing incongruity. Reflective Thought is hypothesized to be the mecha...

This research assessed the extent to which humor moderates the relationship between retirement stress, including hassles, and health. Two hundred sixty-five retirees over the age of 55 years responded to an on-line survey, completing the RAND 36-Item Health Survey and the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Stress was measured using the Self Perceived Stre...

The logical tension between humanistic views and traditional deity-centered religious beliefs represents an important psychological conflict for many traditionally religious individuals. Because this conflict can generate anxiety, many people may avoid it, and only encounter the issues unconsciously. We created a Christian Humanist Implicit Associa...

In observations from clinical practice, the origin of gelotophobia, the fear of being laughed at, was traced back to traumatizing experiences of being laughed at in childhood. Because gelotophobia is assumed to be mediated by a personal sense of shame, this hypothesis was tested using a group of gelotophobes (N = 99), a shame-based clinical group (...

Effectiveness of systematic desensitization for fear reduction, using humorous hierarchy scenes without relaxation, was tested. Participants were 40 students highly fearful of spiders. Using a 24-item behavioral approach test with an American tarantula, participants were matched on fear level and randomly assigned to 1 of 3 treatment groups: (a) sy...

Previous research has shown that exposure to grotesque death has been associated with posttraumatic stress disorder and higher levels of stress have been associated with mortuary workers who anticipated handling remains than those who did not. Additional research is presented here to further clarify the nature of the anticipated stress of handling...

In addition to the direct psychological effects of disaster stressors, anticipation of stress can itself be debilitating. We examined the relationship between the anticipated stress of handling the dead and gender and experience. Experienced persons had lower anticipated stress than inexperienced persons. Inexperienced, females had higher anticipat...

This chapter begins with a discussion of prominent characteristics of therapy with children and issues relevant to the use of humor in children's therapy. Applications of therapeutic humor are presented and discussed in the contexts of: (a) psychodynamic psychotherapy, (b) the use of humor in behavioral treatments, predominantly of child phobias, (...

Hood and Morris's critique of our work on the quest dimension seems to rest on two basic points: They claim, first, that we define the quest dimension as involving process but not content, while our operational measure of this dimension is not totally independent of content. They claim, second, that we argue that "quest is best." A review of what w...

Previous studies have revealed quantitative differences between delinquents and nondelinquents in the strength of Murray needs. To provide clarification and elaboration of such past findings, need associations derived from the Picture identification Test were analyzed by t test and discriminant analysis for a group of 112 male prisoners and 112 mal...

A 20-year-old coed complained of distressful anxiety about attending a banquet later the same day. Systematic desensitization was used, but due to the shortage of time and her inexperience with relaxation the process was altered to elicit laughter at the anxiety-provoking scenes. She found the scene presentations humorous and attended the banquet w...

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Tennessee.