One very early finding that was quite easy to make, because it was common to all my subjects, was that their sense of humor is not of the ordinary type. They do not consider funny what the average man considers to be funny. Thus they do not laugh at hostile humor (making people laugh by hurting someone) or superiority humor (laughing at someone else's inferiority) or authority-rebellion humor (the unfunny smutty joke).

Characteristically what they consider humor is more closely allied to philosophy than to anything else. It may also be called the humor of the real, because it consists in large part in poking fun at human beings in general when they are foolish, or forget their place in the universe, or try to be big when they are actually small. This can take the form of poking fun at themselves, but this is not done in any masochistic or clown-like way. Lincoln's humor can serve as a suitable example. Probably Lincoln never made a joke which hurt anybody else; it is also likely that many or even most of his jokes had something to say, had a function beyond just producing a laugh. (They often seemed to be education in a more palatable form akin to parables or fables.)

On a simple quantitative basis, our subjects may be said to be humorous less often than the average of the population. Punning, joking, witty remarks, gay repartee, or persiflage of the ordinary sort is much less often seen than the rather thoughtful, philosophical humor which elicits a smile more usually than a laugh, which is intrinsic to the situation rather than added to it, which is spontaneous rather than planned, and which very often can never be repeated. It should not be surprising that the average man, accustomed as he is to joke books and belly laughs, considers our subjects to be rather on the sober and serious side.