Coping humor in early adolescence

Adolescent Humor and its Relationship to Coping, Defense Strategies, Psychological Distress, and Well-Being

“…In particular, affiliative and self-enhancing humor were negatively correlated with depressive symptoms and positively correlated with personal adjustment, while self-defeating and aggressive humor evidenced the opposite pattern. These findings are congruent with the adolescent literature [33,44,48]. Seven of the eight contrasts between Martin et al [9] adult sample and the adolescent sample correlations with different but convergent measures were not significant, suggesting that the nature of responses to the humor scales and the relationship of these responses to measures of depressive symptoms and well-being were relatively similar for adults and adolescents.…”

“…Contrary to the literature, we found no significant gender differences between humor [9,33] and coping composites [25,26,28]. Our finding of no gender effect for defense composites was similar to previous research with adolescents [61].…”

“…For example, Fuhr [33] found a significant increase in the use of humor in uncertain situations between the ages of 11 and 12. This parallels the coping literature wherein age impacts available resources, breadth, capacity, and flexibility to alter or ameliorate stressful situations [34].…”

“…In terms of gender differences in approach and avoidance coping, several studies have found that girls use significantly more approach coping strategies, and boys rely more consistently upon avoidance coping techniques [25,26,28]. Furthermore, a study with adolescents found that boys used aggressive and sexually related humor strategies more, whereas girls reported that humor had a greater ability to cheer them up [33].…”

Sense of humour and adolescents' cognitive flexibility

“…In addition, humour correlates negatively with signs of psychological stress, such as depression, anxiety, aggression and a negative self-image. [23][24][25] Therefore, a healthy sense of humour is connected with good quality of life. 22 …”