A STUDY OF HUMOR DIFFERENCES IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS DOING AND NOT DOING SPORT

Abstract

This paper aimed to analyze humor style differences in the university students doing sport and not doing sport. The research group consisted of total 127 university students including 52 females, 75 males having education at the various departments of Sport Sciences Faculty. When using the personal information form in obtaining socio-demographical information, the Humor Styles Scale developed by Martin et al. [1] and adapted into Turkish by Yerlikaya [2] was used for determining humor style differences. The scale of 32 items involved four sub-dimensions including participating (KM), self-developing (KGM), aggressive (SM) and self-desructive (KYM) humor. While any statistical differences were not observed in humor styles based on the students’ age and income level factors, statistical differences were observed based on the sport and gender factors (p<0.05). The male students’ participating, self-desructive and total humor points were statistically higher than the females (p<0.05); they adapted self-humiliating humor style more although they had more humorous approaches about events. In the aggressive humor dimension, the female students had statistically higher points than the male students (p<0.05); this indicated that they used humor as an instrument of aggression. In general, the male students doing sport preferred more aggressive humor styles rather than the students not doing sport, this was a remarkable result since this was incompatible with feelings such as peace, friendship, brotherhood included in the nature of sport. This paper was considered to be important to keep light on different scopes and dimensions about sport and humor approach styles.