The present study examines the question of whether certain humor styles predict self-esteem. Men and women in 15 countries (NTOTAL = 4701) completed self-report measures assessing self-esteem and the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-defeating, and self-enhancing. Each of the country samples had self-esteem averages at or above the midpoint of the scale, but did vary. The samples from Colombia and Serbia had the highest self-esteem values and Russia had the lowest. For all of the country samples, with the exception of Russia, the multiple regression results demonstrated that a greater level of the self-enhancing humor style positively predicted higher self-esteem scores. As the self-enhancing humor style involves improving one’s mood with humor, the results suggest that for the majority of the participants, self-enhancing humor styles also help to increase self-esteem. The results are discussed both within countries and across the samples. In particular, the unique finding that not a self-enhancing humor style but an aggressive humor style predicts self-esteem in the Russian sample is discussed. The chapter ends with a discussion of how humor styles correlate with mental health indicators and how the understanding of humor style profiles are related to well-being across countries adds to the global understanding of individual differences.

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The relationships between self-report loneliness and the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-defeating, and self-enhancing were investigated in 15 countries (N = 4,701). Because loneliness has been suggested to be both commonly experienced and detrimental, we examine if there are similar patterns between humor styles, gender, and age with loneliness in samples of individuals from diverse backgrounds. Across the country samples, affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles negatively correlated with loneliness, self-defeating was positively correlated, and the aggressive humor style was not significantly related. In predicting loneliness, 40.5% of the variance could be accounted. Younger females with lower affiliative, lower self-enhancing, and higher self-defeating humor style scores had higher loneliness scores. The results suggest that although national mean differences may be present, the pattern of relationships between humor styles and loneliness is consistent across these diverse samples, providing some suggestions for mental health promotion among lonely individuals.@en

The present study examines the question of whether certain humor styles predict self-esteem. Men and women in 15 countries (NTOTAL = 4701) completed self-report measures assessing self-esteem and the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-defeating, and self-enhancing. Each of the country samples had self-esteem averages at or above the midpoint of the scale, but did vary. The samples from Colombia and Serbia had the highest self-esteem values and Russia had the lowest. For all of the country samples, with the exception of Russia, the multiple regression results demonstrated that a greater level of the self-enhancing humor style positively predicted higher self-esteem scores. As the self-enhancing humor style involves improving one’s mood with humor, the results suggest that for the majority of the participants, self-enhancing humor styles also help to increase self-esteem. The results are discussed both within countries and across the samples. In particular, the unique finding that not a self-enhancing humor style but an aggressive humor style predicts self-esteem in the Russian sample is discussed. The chapter ends with a discussion of how humor styles correlate with mental health indicators and how the understanding of humor style profiles are related to well-being across countries adds to the global understanding of individual differences.@en

Responses to a measure of the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-enhancing, and self-defeating from the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(1), 48–75, 2003) were collected from individuals (N = 8361) in 28 countries encompassing 21 different languages. The purpose of this global collaboration was to examine both differences and similarities of humor styles across nations at the descriptive level. Across the countries, typically the highest scores were for the affiliative humor style. When each humor style was examined, some country samples demonstrated differences in mean scores. For example, the samples from Hungary, Indonesia, South Africa, and Serbia had high self-enhancing scores and Japan scored the lowest. In contrast to mean differences, almost all of the countries demonstrated positive inter-scale correlations, similar sex differences, and similar correlations with age, suggesting more similarities than differences. As discussed, some of the samples had low internal consistency values and poorly fitting factor structures for the humor style scales, suggesting that those results should be interpreted with caution.@en