Mindfulness and self-compassion as predictors of humor styles in US and Russia

Abstract

Mindfulness and self-compassion are increasingly coming into mainstream psychological research in the Western world as they correlate with and predict various aspects of mental health and positivity. However, little is known about their relationship to another construct that is also associated with well-being, that is, humor. The unique contribution of the present study is in exploring whether mindfulness and self-compas- sion would predict the use of adaptive and maladaptive humor styles and whether this prediction will be the same across cultures. 90 U.S. and 106 Russian college students responded to a survey consisting of three measures: Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003), Self-Compassion Scale-Short Form (SCS-SF; Raes, Pommier, Neff, & Van Gucht, 2011), and Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003). Our findings suggest that mind- fulness and self-compassion can serve as predictors of humor styles, that is, more mind- ful and self-compassionate participants tended to use more adaptive humor styles and less maladaptive styles. However, the contribution of these two variables to the vari- ance in humor styles depended on the culture.

Differential Relationships of Light and Darker Forms of Humor with Mindfulness

“…Finally, ability-related forms of humor (wit) were positively related to mindfulness. The current results go beyond existing evidence (Khramtsova and Chuykova 2016;Özyesil et al 2013), as we utilized a variety of important and comprehensive scales for measuring the sense of humor and replicated our results in two samples. We thus gave first empirical evidence, especially for our first proposed link between humor and mindfulness, with both grounding in benevolence, and shared cognitive processes among the two constructs (of humor, nonsense, wit, irony, and satire with observing and describing).…”

“…Based on descriptions of humor and mindfulness outlined by mindfulness experts and initial correlational evidence (Khramtsova and Chuykova 2016;Özyesil et al 2013), we have put forward the HMRM. This model can be considered a starting point for research on the relationships, interactions and interventions on humor and mindfulness.…”

“…Mindfulness correlated positively with the two Badaptive^styles, affiliative and self-enhancing, but negatively with the aggressive and self-defeating humor styles (small effect sizes). Furthermore, Khramtsova and Chuykova (2016) related the MAAS and the Humor Styles Questionnaire in two samples of college students from the U.S. (N = 90) and from Russia (N = 106). In the U.S. sample, they found positive correlations between the affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles and mindfulness, and negative correlations of the aggressive and self-defeating humor styles with mindfulness.…”

“…In short, we hypothesize that light forms of humor and mindfulness complement each other in several ways and mutually foster one another, as both ground on a benevolent view on the world. While some correlational findings and ideas on the relationship of humor and mindfulness already exist (see Khramtsova and Chuykova 2016;Özyesil et al 2013), we introduce a preliminary theoretically grounded model that shows the relationships of mindfulness and aspects of humor (the Humor Mindfulness Relationship Model, HMRM). We also propose ideas for potential mechanisms and for the assumed capacity of humor and mindfulness to mutually foster each other.…”

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“…Gelkopf (2011) dan Papousek (2018) menekankan bahwa selama sekian dekade humor memberikan keuntungan bukan saja untuk kesenangan, namun juga berpotensi meningkatkan kesehatan fisik maupun psikis. Humor berkaitan dengan kebahagiaan, kepuasan hidup dan resiliensi (Khramtsova & Chuykova, 2016). VOLUME 5, NOMOR 1, 2021 : 39-56 Humor biasanya dinyatakan dalam bentuk tertawa (Ruch et al, 2019).…”