Humor styles as markers of personality facets: An examination of the personality structural foundation of humor

Abstract

Although numerous studies have explored the association of humor with personality, research has not yet considered conceptual similarities and differences across a breadth of humor styles that may point to shared personality trait foundations. We examined ways in which different humor styles, proposed in four popular inventories, map to the Big-Five circumplex framework using methodology proposed by Woods and Anderson (2016). Survey findings (N = 404) indicate that over 75% of humor styles tap primarily into Extraversion or Agreeableness, highlighting predictable primary loadings for positive and negative humor styles across scales. We note interesting patterns of clustering in the circumplex space across all humor scales, and contextualize these findings in light of extant research.