Volume 34, Issue 1

The paper discusses Belarusian couples’ reflections on the role of humorous folklore in their daily family interactions. The interviewees generally regarded being humorous as a positive feature and identified (explicitly or implicitly) several functions of humor, such as framing group boundaries, offering criticism, and sharing ideas that would otherwise be difficult to communicate. A recurring distinction evoked by respondents was between “good” (benevolent) and “bad” (offensive) humor. However, interviews also revealed that the actual perception of humor, especially in the form of mocking and teasing, can be very context-specific, and the boundary between aggression and playfulness is not always clear-cut. The paper explores this ambiguity by examining self-reported instances of mocking and teasing, whereupon the producer and the recipient of humor need to resolve the tension between “having a good sense of humor” and using humor in an offensive or aggressive way. The couples’ attitudes towards family humor are discussed within the broader context of the value of humor in modern society. The paper also reflects on the limitations of using the interview as a data collection method for studying family humor.

Each day for two weeks participants described how often they had used four types of humor that day: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor. Each day, participants also described the events that occurred in their lives (positive and negative crossed with social and achievement), and they provided measures of their well-being. Multilevel analyses (days nested within persons) found that the daily use of affiliative and self-enhancing humor was positively related to daily positive events (social and achievement) and was negatively related to daily negative events (social and achievement). In contrast, the use of self-defeating humor was positively related to the occurrence of all types of events. Affiliative and self-enhancing humor was positively related to positively valent measures of well-being (e.g., self-esteem), and were negatively related to negatively valent measures of well-being (e.g., rumination). In contrast, relationships between well-being and the use of self-defeating humor were the mirror image of these relationships. The use of aggressive humor was unrelated to well-being. These results suggest that the use of humor is cued by the events that occur in people’s daily lives, social and achievement and good and bad, and that the use of humor is related to well-being, both positively and negatively.

Developmental studies on humor have historically approached a limited age range – from birth until early adolescence – and have mostly considered humor interpretation and the production of situational and verbal humor. Focusing on cartooning, a highly demanding cognitive and communication activity, in this paper we aim to provide empirical data drawn from a larger age span than usual – 10 to 18 years old – to better understand what adolescents find humorous and how they create humor. Our corpus comes from nine workshops of cartoon production and interpretation conducted between 2015 and 2018, in which a total of 63 girls and 72 boys participated. Based on a fine-grained cognitive and communication analysis, we distinguished six different profiles of texts depending on: whether and how a fictional situation (i.e. a humorous incongruity) was built, its relation to the referenced situation addressed (topic), and the author’s motivation. Simple Correspondence Analyses enabled us to identify that these texts varied according to the adolescents’ age and the cartoon’s format (single panel or strip). Greater cognitive sophistication was evidenced in single panel cartoons and among middle and late adolescents, who also showed a concern for social issues. Some gender variations were found.

Background Studies on children’s humor mainly focus on short-term effects of sense of humor and laughter. There is also evidence that children possess the predisposition to communicate humorously, labeled “Humor Orientation” (HO). All children possess some level of HO, but highly humor oriented children enact humor successfully and frequently, perceive situations more often as funny, and perform humorously across different interactions than low humor oriented children. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a short-form of the Child Humor Orientation Scale (Booth-Butterfield et al. 2011), a questionnaire assessing HO in children, and to analyze its relations to well-being. Methods After forward-backward-translation procedure, the CHO-Scale was validated in a sample of parents of 296 pre-school children (3–6 years). The CHO-Scale was shortened to 10 items on the basis of factor loadings and content-related aspects. Results Exploratory factor analysis of the CHO-10 revealed a two-factor solution. Reliability and Validity of the main score and the subscales are acceptable. Children with high HO show higher social competencies, emotion knowledge, quality of life, and lower trait anxiety. Discussion The CHO-10 Scale is suitable as a valid, reliable and economic measure of Child Humor Orientation.

This study examined whether different humor styles (adaptive vs. maladaptive) mediate the relationship between early maladaptive schemas (EMS) and current levels of resilience. Results from a sample of 511 college students indicated that individuals endorsing EMS were significantly more likely to engage in maladaptive humor and significantly less likely to engage in adaptive humor, both of which predicted decreased resilience. Interestingly, affiliative, self-enhancing, and aggressive humor styles each significantly partially mediated the relationship between EMS and resilience. The partial mediation suggests that lower levels of affiliative and self-enhancing humor and higher levels of aggressive humor may be mechanisms by which EMS influences resiliency. To the extent that clinical interventions can incorporate and explore one’s awareness of their usage of humor, individuals with maladaptive humor styles, particularly those endorsing EMS, may experience benefits from re-focusing on adaptive humor styles. This study highlights the clinical importance of assessing for and focusing on distinct humor styles when promoting overall wellness.

Depressogenic traits are personality dispositions that put individuals at a higher risk for developing depression. Measured by the Depressive Experience Questionnaire (DEQ), self-criticism and dependency are two personality traits that are closely related to depression. The current study explored humor styles as potential mediating factors in the relationship between depressogenic traits and depression. Study 1 : Given that the traditional Chinese version of the DEQ had not been validated psychometrically, we first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to determine the most appropriate DEQ scoring system among the existing ones. The results indicated that the reconstructed DEQ had the best psychometric properties for the traditional Chinese version of the DEQ. Study 2 : The potential mediating effect of humor styles in the relationship between depressogenic traits and depression was examined. Results showed that two benign humor styles, affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles, mediated the relationship between depressogenic traits (both self-criticism and dependency) and depression. The mediational strength was stronger for self-enhancing than for affiliative humor style. Malign humor styles, aggressive and self-defeating humor styles, did not emerge as mediators. Research and clinical implications for the findings were discussed.