Humor Styles Research Articles

Humor supports creativity: evidence that personality traits moderate the effects of humor styles on divergent thinking

Humor supports creativity: evidence that personality traits moderate the effects of humor styles on divergent thinking

Language Styles, Recovery Strategies and Users’ Willingness to Forgive in General Artificial Intelligence Service Recovery: A Mixed Study

As the prevalence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the service sector continues to grow, the impact of the language style and recovery strategies utilized during service failures remains insufficiently explored. This study, grounded in the theory of social presence and dual-process theory, employed a mixed-method approach combining questionnaire surveys and event-related potential (ERP) experiments to investigate the effect of different language styles (rational vs. humorous) and recovery strategies (gratitude vs. apology) on users’ willingness to forgive during the GenAI service recovery process. It further delves into the chained mediating role of perceived sincerity and social presence in this process. The findings revealed that a humorous language style was more effective in enhancing users’ willingness to forgive compared to a rational style, primarily through the enhancement of users’ perceived sincerity and sense of social presence; recovery strategies played a moderating role in this process, with the positive impact of perceived sincerity on social presence being significantly amplified when the GenAI service adopted an apology strategy. ERP results indicated that a rational language style significantly induced a larger N2 component (cognitive conflict) in apology scenarios, while a humorous style exhibited higher amplitude in the LPP component (positive emotional evaluation). This research unveils the intricate relationships between language style, recovery strategies, and users’ willingness to forgive in the GenAI service recovery process, providing important theoretical foundations and practical guidance for designing more effective GenAI service recovery strategies, and offering new insights into developing more efficacious GenAI service recovery tactics.

The challenge of dissecting the frog: cartoonists analyze their creative process

Abstract This article delves into two intrinsic tensions present in humor and cartoons: funniness-seriousness and repetition-novelty. The focus is on the perspectives of cartoonists regarding the semiotic and rhetorical resources they put into play to create humor and satire. In this way, the study echoes a key question in semiotics, and particularly in multimodal studies: how image and words interplay in meaning-making. With that aim, a questionnaire was designed and filled out by 100 cartoonists from 22 different countries. The responses were analyzed applying mixed methods (content analysis, non-parametric statistical techniques, and network analysis). Based on the findings, four distinct profiles of cartoonists were identified, ranging from those who prioritize multimodality (the largest group) to those who favor the verbal mode. Cartoonists who prioritize the visual mode and skeptics to humor analysis fall in between. The article also discusses the various rhetorical resources that cartoonists declare to use to create humor, with irony and sarcasm being the most frequent ones, while puns are the least common. The results are examined in relation to the cartoonists’ conceptions of humor, satire, and the cartoon genre, as well as the different dimensions they considered when discussing their humor style. The study contributes to gaining a deeper understanding of the ways cartoonists use image and writing to create humor and satire and sheds light on an under-researched area in this field.

Dark Triad and Humor Styles: A Study on White Collar Workers from Türkiye

Humor plays a crucial role in psychological functioning, influencing goal achievement, emotional regulation, and interpersonal interactions. This study explores the effects of dark triad on humor styles and to inquire about the inconsistent relations previously reported between narcissism and self-enhancing humor within a Turkish sample. Utilizing the Humor Styles Questionnaire and the Dirty Dozen Dark Triad inventory, data were collected from 468 white-collar employees working in various companies through online questionnaire. The results indicated that Narcissism positively affects all humor styles, while Psychopathy significantly associated with aggressive, self-enhancing and self-defeating humor. In contrast, Machiavellianism shows a negative effect with self-defeating humor. These findings underscore the complex interplay between personality traits and humor, suggesting that while Narcissism may enhance both positive and negative humor styles, Psychopathy predominantly influences negative styles, and Machiavellianism appears less involved. The study discusses the implications of these results and provides suggestions for future research.

Dark Humour: The Associations Between Humour Style, Psychopathic Traits, and Empathy

This study investigates the relationship between styles of humour, facets of psychopathy, and three facets of empathy, aiming to discern whether these variables are interrelated and how. A sample of 884 undergraduate students completed a series of questionnaires online and results were analyzed via structural equation modelling and correlations. Key findings reveal a strong positive relationship between aggressive humour, psychopathic traits, and lack of motivational empathy and a strong positive relationship between affiliative humour, affective empathy, and motivational empathy. These findings reveal that empathy and humour are largely intertwined, and therefore humour styles consistent with a lack of empathy may be an important feature of psychopathy in non-clinical settings. For instance, negative humour may be utilized by non-criminal psychopaths to harm others without facing legal repercussions. This research contributes to the study of psychopathy and bridges the gaps in research by investigating the presentation of psychopathic traits outside of institutional environments.

The narcissist’s sense of humor: a correlational and an experimental ego threat study on the links between narcissism and adaptive and maladaptive humor styles

Previous research has shown that narcissism is linked to both adaptive and maladaptive forms of interpersonally relevant behaviors, such as charm and aggression, respectively. One line of research that uses styles of humor as the outcome variable found that especially grandiose narcissism is positively related to both adaptive affiliative humor (strengthening interpersonal relationships) and maladaptive aggressive humor (making derogatory fun of others) alike. This seemingly contradictory finding may be explained in two ways. First, particular facets of grandiose narcissism may be related solely to adaptive or solely to maladaptive humor. Second, adaptive and maladaptive characteristics may be expressed by a person to varying degrees depending on their current narcissistic state (i.e., whether the self is faced with ego threats or in a relaxed state). To test these assumptions, the present study applied both a correlational approach with multiple measures of narcissism and an experimental approach that used an intelligence-based ego threat task. The correlational results showed that each facet of narcissism showed distinct correlational patterns with adaptive and maladaptive humor styles. The experimental results showed that ego threat moderated the relationships between narcissism and humor styles. For instance, grandiose narcissism was more strongly positively related to affiliative humor in the nonthreatening condition and was more strongly positively related to aggressive humor in the ego threat condition. These results clarify and explain the previous seemingly contradictory findings and support the importance of differentiating between the facets and states of narcissism, highlighting the complexity of the construct.

Challenging and Enhancing Legitimacy Through Humor: A Comparative Study of Candidates’ Use of Humor on Facebook before the 2019 and 2023 Finnish Parliamentary Elections

A prevalent aspect of contemporary digital campaigning is the use of humor to attract attention, elicit amusement, and mark group boundaries. This study investigates the humor in digital campaigns during two recent Finnish parliamentary elections, focusing on how different styles of humor are used to (de)legitimize political ideas and actors. Our original dataset consists of 125,604 posts by 1262 candidates on Facebook six months before the 2019 and 2023 election days. Using Facebook’s haha reactions and manual coding to annotate humor style, we focused on 729 posts with seemingly intentional humor by candidates. We show how different parties and individual candidates used humor to varying degrees and in different styles. Overall, the proportion of humorous posts was not high, but the populist radical right Finns Party candidates used humor by far the most, and their style was primarily aggressive, aimed at delegitimizing the incumbent government, political opponents, and their reference groups. Candidates from other major parties also used some humor, but overall the tone was more positive. Some of these candidates were profiled as “humor specialists” who produced similar combinations of ridicule and anti-elitism as the Finns Party candidates or, alternatively, focused on disseminating self-deprecating and affiliative humor. Affiliative and self-deprecating humor was used to foster closeness, ordinariness, and spontaneity, thus legitimizing oneself as a relatable candidate. The paper discusses how candidates use humor strategically to stand out in a competition for attention between candidates, and elaborates on the implications of using different humor styles in strategic political communication.

Belonging, Affirmation, Safety, and Efficacy (BASE): An Integrative Model for Shame Resilience, Social Support, and Humor in r/hemorrhoid

ABSTRACT The present study sought to understand how participants in r/hemorrhoid used three coping strategies to improve their health and wellbeing. Drawing upon Shame Resilience Theory (SRT), the typology of social support, and the classification of humor styles, a theory-driven approach to qualitative analysis resulted in the identification of the following themes: Belongingness (building authentic connections with others), Affirmation (asserting the value of own experiences), Safety (feeling able to express emotions and needs), and Efficacy (exchanging information and advice for recovery). The study presents a coping model (BASE) that can inform research on communication patterns in contexts beyond other health conditions. Practical implications are derived from users’ psychological distress and their reliance on diagnostics and treatment advice from peers, offering directions for supporting individuals with hemorrhoids.

PREDIKSI GAYA HUMOR TERHADAP KECENDERUNGAN SELF-COMPASSION PADA MAHASISWA

College students need effective coping strategies to optimize their performance and achieve their goals. One promising approach is self-compassion, which can help students navigate the challenges of college life. Self-compassion can be influenced by daily experiences, including humour style. Humour is often seen merely as a source of entertainment, but it can significantly impact self-compassion.This study examines the relationship between different humour styles and self-compassion. A total of 245 college students from various universities across Indonesia participated, selected through a convenience sampling method. The Humour Style Questionnaire and the Skala Welas Diri were used to measure humour styles and self-compassion, respectively. To analyze how different humour styles predict self-compassion, multiple regression analysis with the enter procedure was employed.The results showed that among the four humour styles (self-enhancing, affiliative, aggressive, and self-defeating), only self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humour significantly predicted self-compassion. Self-enhancing humour had the strongest predictive power, followed by aggressive humour and then self-defeating humour.

Humor, Self-Esteem, and Spite: Unraveling the Dynamics in Romantic Relationships

The tendency to display transgression for individuals we consider close is higher than those we consider distant. And not always there is a "forgive and forget" in such interpersonal dynamics. This revenge-seeking may emerge as spitefulness in romantic relationships, in subtle forms of humor, and is linked with self-esteem. The present research aims to study whether humor and self-esteem increases or de-creases spitefulness among couples. A total of 100 participants (73 female, 27 male) from Mumbai and Bengaluru were asked to fill out a Google form consisting of the Humor Styles Questionnaire, Collective Self-Esteem Scale, and Spitefulness Scale respectively. The statistical tools used were – Pearson's product-moment correlation, two-way ANOVA, and one-way ANOVA. Highlights of the results section revealed there is a significant correlation between aggressive humor and spitefulness, and humor and self-esteem. Spitefulness was unrelated to other humor styles as well as self-esteem. Additional one-way ANOVA revealed difference in humor due to gender and relationship status, while self-esteem and spitefulness have little impact due to gender and relationship status. The study also high-lights the need for a new scale for measuring spitefulness and suggests future studies for a deeper understanding of the underplaying factors associated with spitefulness among couples. The study concludes by suggesting current romantic partners to develop higher self-esteem and benign humor styles to enhance romantic relationship.

L’humour pour faire bloc, étude mixte par devis séquentiel explicatif. Utilisation de l’humour par les infirmiers de bloc opératoire du nord de la France

Wouldn't humor and laughter be one of the keys to happiness? Do our communication patterns differ when we address people with a higher functional position with humor?The use of humor requires trust in the other and the trust of the other, allowing for cohesion in the health care team. In practical terms, team cohesion is what makes a group of people have a "potential" greater than the sum of the "potentials" of each of the team members. Humor would be a kind of glue.What style of humour would be predominant in the operating room for operating room nurses (IBODE)?If humor is useful to facilitate relationships, if it is a pacifying, leveling instrument and favorable to a group dynamic, it can also be a critical weapon reinforcing hierarchies, stereotypes and even domination.

The mediating effects of moral disengagement and aggressive humor style: Dark Triad traits and schadenfreude.

While schadenfreude is commonly experienced in interpersonal relationships, it is generally considered immoral. Although previous research has explored the factors relating to schadenfreude, including certain personality traits, moral disengagement, and humor styles, our understanding of these factors remains limited. The present study examined the mediating effects of moral disengagement and aggressive humor style in the relationship between the Dark Triad traits and schadenfreude. In this study, a sample of 693 Iranian students (69.4% female), was recruited using a convenient sampling method, consisting of 330 undergraduate, 230 graduate, and 133 Ph.D. students. The trait schadenfreude scale, the short Dark Triad, the moral disengagement scale, and the aggressive humor style scale were measured through an online survey. The study found that Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy were positively related to schadenfreude, aggressive humor style, and moral disengagement. Additionally, aggressive humor style and moral disengagement mediated the relationship between Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy with schadenfreude. This study provides insights into the complex relationships between Dark Triad traits, moral disengagement, aggressive humor style, and schadenfreude. The findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of Dark Triad traits may be more likely to experience pleasure from others' misfortunes. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of moral disengagement and aggressive humor style as potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between Dark Triad traits and schadenfreude. Further research should be done to explore the motivational factors influencing schadenfreude in specific settings, thereby elucidating these connections.

Sentiment Analysis of Public Responses on Social Media to Satire Joke Using Naive Bayes and KNN

This study examines the use of Satire Joke as a humorous communication style in conveying criticism of the government through social media. Satire Joke is often used to depict the government's inability to address important social issues, such as slow bureaucratic processes and unfulfilled political promises. The aim of this research is to analyze public sentiment towards Satire Joke expressed on the YouTube social media platform. The methods used in this study are Naïve Bayes and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) due to their effectiveness in data classification. The results of this study are expected to help gain an understanding of social issues for the community and public knowledge. This research is also expected to contribute to the development of sentiment analysis methods in the future. The analysis results show that 400 data have neutral sentiment, 850 data have negative sentiment, and 947 data have positive sentiment. Based on testing, both Naive Bayes and KNN methods show good performance. The Naive Bayes method achieved the best accuracy of 90.29%, while the KNN method achieved an accuracy of 60.75%.

Israeli Nonsense: humor, globalization and vegetables during the early nineties

Abstract Offering an inaugural analysis of Israeli Nonsense, this article explores humor, globalization, and Israeli identity since the early 1990s. Israeli Nonsense, a particular form of humor, emerged during Israel’s rapid shift towards neoliberal privatization and globalization. Influenced by the growing popularity of standup comedy and the rise of new commercial television channels, it became a distinctive humor style in an era marked by optimism and “normalization.” It quickly formed nostalgic classics, leaving a lasting impact on contemporary Israeli humor. Through interviews, newspaper excerpts, and sketch analysis, we identify five key attributes of Israeli Nonsense: (1) improvisation, (2) linguistic humor, (3) physical humor, (4) nostalgia, and (5) non-politicization. By challenging existing interpretations of 1990s Israeli culture and nonsense as “elitist” with anti-national and non-ideological tendencies, we highlight the popular manifestations of Israeli Nonsense to demonstrate that this distinct humor did not adopt a consciously critical and cynical stance towards society and culture but embodied an optimistic and empathetic attitude toward local identity in the age of globalization.

Humor Styles in Healthcare Professionals: A Correlational Study.

Using humor as a caregiving strategy can help professionals perceive daily and work-related events from a more optimistic and light-hearted perspective. The main objective of this study was to analyze humor styles among health care professionals. A cross-sectional and correlational design was employed. Data were collected using the Humor Styles Questionnaire, which measures four humor styles: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor. Health care professionals scored higher in positive humor than negative humor. Age exhibited a negative correlation with positive humor. Significant differences were observed between marital status and affiliative and self-enhancing humor, professional category and hospital unit with aggressive humor, shift work and self-enhancing humor, and type of contract and experience with affiliative humor. Health care professionals employ various humor styles based on their social and work contexts. It is crucial for health care professionals to receive training in the use of positive humor to consciously avoid humor styles that can hinder well-being.

UGC’s self-deprecation humor and sustainable brand support attitude on social media: expansion of the perspective of affective events theory

ABSTRACT Utilising User Generated Content (UGC) on social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook can establish genuine connections between content creators and their audience. However, managing and maintaining long-term brand development remains a significant challenge. Research on the mechanisms behind sustainable brand support attitudes towards UGC is limited. This paper explores whether a self-deprecating style of humour affects audiences’ sustained brand support attitudes towards social media content creators. Theoretically, this study combines Affective Events Theory (AET) and Intergroup Emotion Theory (IET) to explore how individual attitudes extend to group reactions and the sustainability of personal brands. It aims to thoroughly investigate, in the context of social media, the cognitive and emotional changes in individuals towards themselves and their groups under the stimulus of UGC self-deprecating humour, as well as the process of forming sustainable brand support attitudes. Methodologically, this study employs a covariance-based structural equation model to establish the path mechanism of self-deprecating humour expression on sustainable brand support attitudes at both individual psychology and group attitude levels. Additionally, it analyzes the limitations of self-deprecating humour in UGC, considering users with varying levels of need for cognition. Lastly, the paper discusses the theoretical contributions and practical implications of this study.

Study of Undergraduates’ Preferred Positive Humor Styles

Study of Undergraduates’ Preferred Positive Humor Styles

Laughing when the Lights Go Out: Humour and the Electricity Crisis in South Africa

As a dire consequence of complex problems, the centralised, state-owned power utility in South Africa, Eskom, has implemented so-called “loadshedding.” This is the name for a regime of scheduled power-cuts that has persisted since 2007, causing significant economic and psychological damage among South Africans. Nevertheless, despite the severity of the Eskom debacle, South Africans have produced an unending stream of social media humour in response to it. In this article, we ask what such humour might tell us about the nature of the collective South African psycho-social mindset. We collected 380 humorous items relating to the portrayal of Eskom in South African popular culture. These took the form of comic strips, comical memes, and satirical reels from various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, Twitter, and YouTube. The humorous responses, primarily in English as South Africa’s lingua franca, were produced by a range of content creators—from celebrities like Trevor Noah and other regular content creators to unknown beneficiaries of virality—representing a diversity of cultures, humour styles, contexts and audiences. We created a comprehensive list of all the humorous items that readily lent themselves to interpretive analysis in terms of an anthropomorphic portrayal of Eskom as the abuser in an ongoing abusive relationship with the South African citizenry suffering from a victim mentality. The main aim of the article is to demonstrate the pervasiveness of this portrayal, the significance of which lies in its capacity to open up avenues for further philosophical reflection and sociological research.

Exploring the Influence of Emotional Competence on Humor Styles and Personality Traits

This research aims to uncover the complexities of the dynamics that regulate human behavior and connection with others by investigating the relationships between humor styles, emotional competence, and personality factors. Using a wide range of literature review and empirical research, this study examines how individuals' humor styles, defined by their tendency to affiliate, self-enhance, be aggressive, or dislike themselves, interact with emotional competence and personality characteristics. As a transdisciplinary construct, humor provides various psychological functions and shapes people's emotional experiences and social relationships. The affiliative style, which uses humor to strengthen social ties and relieve tension, has been linked to increased emotional intelligence and extraversion. Conversely, aggressive humor, which includes sarcasm and derision, is associated with weaker emotional competence and greater degrees of neuroticism. Emotional competence, which provides for emotional awareness, management, and expression, is critical in balancing the impacts of various humor styles on psychological well-being and interpersonal interactions. Individuals with greater emotional competence prefer to use adaptive humor styles, which promote good emotions and social cohesiveness. In contrast, individuals with lower emotional competence may use maladaptive methods, such as self-defeating humor, as a coping strategy. Furthermore, psychological qualities like extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience influence people's humor preferences and usage habits. Extraverts, for example, are likelier to engage in affiliative humor, whereas neurotic persons may use self-defeating humor as a defense strategy. This study adds to a better understanding of human behavior by illuminating the interaction between humor styles, emotional competence, and personality factors. It also gives insights into how to promote psychological well-being and efficient interpersonal communication.”

Leadership humour style: role of self-disclosure and perceived similarity for employee’s thriving at work and burnout

Purpose The purpose of this study is to understand the leadership humour style and the mechanism through which leadership humour style transforms into follower’s workplace positive and negative outcomes such as thriving at work and burnout. It uses comprehensive elaboration theory and relational process theory to explore self-disclosure and perceived similarity as two new constructs to assess their relation to intrapsychic (self-enhancing and self-defeating) and interpersonal (affiliative and aggressive) leader’s humour style, respectively. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory qualitative study through semi-structured interviews was conducted with 10 leaders to understand the different aspects of leadership humour and their outcomes. Based on these dimensions, a questionnaire was created and sent to 200 respondents, and 158 responses were received. The empirical analysis of data was done by building structural equation modeling using smart partial least square. Findings The empirical study has shown that self-enhancing leadership humour is related to self-disclosure, and both affiliative and aggressive leadership humour styles are related to perceived similarity. When looking at the two critical outcomes of leadership humour, both perceived similarity and self-disclosure were related to social intimacy and thriving at work. The mediation effect showed that self-enhancing humour leads to self-disclosure which increases social intimacy leading to improving thriving at work and aggressive humour leads to norm violation which further leads to burnout. Originality/value The study has used the mixed methodology to understand leadership humour and its outcomes by conducting in-depth interviews with leaders and also provides empirical evidence related to leadership humour style by using the survey to collect data from the followers capturing their perceptions. And very critically, it has explored self-disclosure and perceived similarity as two new constructs to see their relation to leadership humour style and positive and negative outcomes at the workplace.