Abstract
A good sense of humor has been implicated as a quality that could contribute to psychological well-being. The mechanisms through which sense of humor might operate include helping to reappraise threats, serving as a character strength, or facilitating happiness. The current research attempts to integrate these possibilities by examining whether a good sense of humor might operate globally by helping to maintain a more stable positive affect. Stable positive affect has been shown to facilitate more effective problem solving and to build resilience. However, not all humor is adaptive humor, so we also examine the roles that different styles of humor use might play. Individual differences in humor styles were used to predict stable levels of affect. Then, in a longitudinal design, humor styles and stable affect were used to predict subsequent resilience and psychological health. The results indicated that stable affect was related to resilience and psychological well-being, and that a sense of humor that involves self-enhancing humor, humor based on maintaining a humorous perspective about one’s experiences, was positively related to stable positive affect, negatively related to stable negative affect, and was mediated through stable affect in influencing resilience, well-being and distress. Thus, while a good sense of humor can lead to greater resilience and better psychological health, the current results, focusing on stable affect, find only self-enhancing humor provides reliable benefits.
Highlights
A good sense of humor has been implicated as a quality that could contribute to psychological well-being
Our primary purpose was to determine if a good sense of humor could contribute to maintaining stable positive affect and minimizing stable negative affect
Using the Humor Styles Questionnaire to distinguish among the different ways in which humor can be expressed as our sense of humor measure (Martin et al, 2003), we were able to assess whether any and all humor styles might help support positive affect, or if only some styles were relevant
Summary
Materials Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) — The HSQ was developed by Martin et al (2003) to measure the four styles of humor that had been identified in an extensive literature review of sense of humor as a personal quality. The internal consistencies for the 4 humor styles in the current samples were adequate (alphas: affiliative = .70, self-enhancing = .82, aggressive = .70, self-defeating = .81). The peak ratings of positive and negative affect for each day were averaged across seven daily ratings. The internal reliabilities for these ratings were .75 or higher across the 7 daily ratings in the current sample. Within the current sample the internal reliability for the full scale was very good, alpha = 0.90. For Phase 2, participants were asked to log into the web site on seven separate days to rate their peak emotions on the mDES. Participants received an email reminding them to log in to complete the last part of the study Those who returned completed the outcome measures again (SWL, DASS, and CD-RISC)
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