Humor Types Show Different Patterns of Self-Regulation, Self-Esteem, and Well-Being

Abstract

Humor styles have been found to be associated with well-being, however, no study has addressed the distinct well-being associations of combinations of humor styles, that is, humor types, yet. The present study thus aimed at investigating which combinations of humor styles exist and to which extent these humor types are associated with well-being. In an online questionnaire, the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ, Martin et al. J Res Pers 37: 2003), self-regulatory strategies, self-esteem, and well-being instruments were administered to a German sample. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses replicated the underlying structure of the HSQ. With hierarchical clustering, we found evidence for three humor types (endorsers, humor deniers, and self-enhancers), which differed in group means for self-esteem, self-regulatory strategies, and well-being. Findings provide further evidence for the positive well-being correlates of self-enhancing humor, and distinctly address the positive correlates of aggressive and self-defeating humor being absent. It is discussed that humor styles cannot be conceptualized as beneficial or detrimental per se, but have to be regarded in context.

Flexible humor styles and the creative mind: Using a typological approach to investigate the relationship between humor styles and creativity.

“…Previous research studies have mainly focused on the direct effect of humor styles on creativity, finding little connection between humor styles and creativity. Using the recent humor styles typology approach (Galloway, 2010;Leist & Müller, 2013), we first confirmed four types of humor styles in a large sample of young adolescents, including general humor endorsers, humor deniers, positive humor endorsers, and This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.…”

“…The fourth type participants were identified as negative humor endorsers because they used the negative styles more than average and the positive styles less than average. Another study conducted by Leist and Müller (2013) also replicated three types of humor styles: general humor endorsers, humor deniers, and positive humor endorsers (which they called humor enhancers). They found that positive humor endorsers had the highest well-being and self-esteem, whereas humor deniers had the lowest and general humor endorsers fell in between.…”

“…We will investigate the relationship among four humor styles (i.e., affiliative humor, self-enhancing humor, aggressive humor, and self-defeating humor) with creative performance via the correlational analysis, and then compare individuals' creative performance based on their humor types of cluster analysis (i.e., general humor endorsers, humor deniers, positive humor endorsers, and negative humor endorsers). Therefore, our first aim was to replicate the previous findings on humor styles clusters (Galloway, 2010;Leist & Müller, 2013). We hypothesized that there would be three or four humor types, including general humor endorsers, humor deniers, positive humor endorsers, and negative humor endorsers.…”

Relationship between types of humour and stress response and well‐being among children in Japan

“…In recent years, researchers have begun to take individuals’ humour combinations into account (Fox et al., ; Galloway, ; Leist & Müller, ). These studies have applied cluster analysis to classify participants into several groups based on individual humour scores; this was done in an attempt to investigate the relationship that humour has with psychological health and well‐being.…”

Ways of Using Humor in Interpersonal Relationships: An Analysis Between Turks and the Spanish

“…Aggressive humour successfully completes the same function of humour by increasing the value of self and by establishing a social hierarchy (Leist and Müller, 2013;Ozyesil, 2012). Aggressive humour may damage the good conduct and may prevent the individual from remembering his entire individuality.…”