Humor Styles Questionnaire

In a research by Martin et al. (2003), the development and validation of the Humor Styles Questionnaire was described. The Humor Styles Questionnaire assessed the four dimensions relating to individual differences in the use of humor, namely, affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-defeating humor. The researchers were of the opinion that in order to study the relationship between humor and psychological health, it is very important to examine the ways in which humor is used by individuals in their daily lives. One of the primary aims of the investigation was to study how an individual’s tendency to use humor as a coping strategy was related to different humor styles. For the purpose, humor styles were studied in relation to other

In addition, the Coping Humor Scale was also used to assess humor as a coping strategy. Data for the study was collected from a sample of four hundred and thirty five Lebanese residents. According to the researchers, Lebanon is a collectivist culture in which importance is given to harmony and affiliation whereas hurting someone is avoided (Kazarian, 2005). On the basis of previous findings in the Lebanese context, it was expected that coping humor would be positively correlated with affiliative and self-enhancing humor. It would be positively correlated with self-defeating humor to a lesser degree and would not be correlated with aggressive humor. The inter-correlational analysis revealed that coping humor was significantly and positively correlated with affiliative humor, self-enhancing humor and self-defeating humor. It was found to be uncorrelated with aggressive humor. Moreover, coping humor showed a stronger correlation with self-enhancing humor. The findings suggested that among Lebanese, affiliative humor, self-enhancing humor and to a lesser extent self-defeating humor represented the forms of humor used to cope with stress. According to the researchers, even though the overuse of aggressive and self-defeating humor styles are considered to be maladaptive, individuals may employ these maladaptive humor styles to temporarily enhance their feelings of well-being in stressful situations. Therefore, these results suggest that Lebanese are more likely to use self-defeating humor to enhance their sense of interdependence by permitting others to laugh at