A Study on Humor Styles of Teacher Candidates

Bayram Aşılıoğlu

doi:10.5539/ies.v14n3p138

Abstract

A teacher should have adaptive humor styles as well as knowledge, skills and attitudes about their profession. Humor styles affect many behaviors; from the relationships that teachers establish with their students to their characteristics. For this reason, this research was carried out to determine the humor styles of teacher candidates. 491 Teacher candidates have participated in this study, who were 3rd and 4th grade students in the faculty of education at 2 universities in Turkey. The researcher used the general survey model for the study. Data were collected using the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) developed by Martin et al. (2003). Findings showed that teacher candidates with the affiliative humor style had the highest average, those with the aggressive humor style had the lowest average. The averages of those with self-enhancing and self-defeating humor style were moderate. It was interpreted as positive that the average of those with self-enhancing humor style was high, as negative that the average of those with self-defeating humor style was moderate, and as positive the average of those with self-defeating humor style was low.

Highlights

Since ancient times, people have laughed at some events they have experienced; they try to understand the reason for laughter
The highest average belongs to the affiliative humor sub-dimension of the scale among the humor styles of the teacher candidates
Since affiliative humor increases interpersonal harmony and attractiveness, it can be interpreted as a positive result for teacher candidates to have a high level of humor style in terms of fulfilling the requirements of the profession

Summary

Introduction

People have laughed at some events they have experienced; they try to understand the reason for laughter. The desire to understand the reasons for laughter has led to the emergence of three different theories about humor; superiority theory, relief theory and incongruity theory. According to the superiority theory, humor is explained by behaviors related to superiority and humiliation. Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Hobbes explained humor with a sense of superiority. Humor is a situation that emerges due to the sense of superiority an individual feels over other people and results in laughter (Morreall, 1997). According to the relief theory, most societies have taboos that prohibit the expression of impulses such as sexuality and violence. If someone breaks taboos and articulates prohibited behaviors, people who correlate with these behaviors release some of the psychic energy they have accumulated. The perception of disharmony that occurs when this order is disturbed creates a humorous situation and causes laughter (Attardo, 1994; Munde, 1997)

Methods

Results

Conclusion