Basic personality traits (e.g., extraversion) have been found to be associated with the humor styles that individuals employ. In the present study, we were interested in determining whether pathological personality traits were also associated with humor styles. We examined the associations between the pathological personality traits captured by the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (PID-5) an...

BACKGROUND In contrast with an early implicit "facilitative hypothesis" of humor, a revised specificity hypothesis predicts that the benefits of humor depend on the specific style of humor used. Information on predictors of these humor styles in turn enhances the ability to predict the effect on well-being. METHODS We examined the relationships between interpersonal competence, self-esteem, a...

Titze (Humor and Health Journal 5:1-11, 1996) concluded from individual case studies that gelotophobes do not experience humor and laughter as a shared enjoyment but rather as a threat. Two studies examined whether gelotophobes are less humorous in general or whether this is true only for certain components of humor. In study I, three samples (N = 120 and 70 students; N = 169 adults) filled in ...

Humor is a hallmark of human discourse. People use it to relieve stress and to facilitate social bonding, as well as for pure enjoyment in the absence of any apparent adaptive value. Although recent studies have revealed that humor acts as an intrinsic reward, which explains why people actively seek to experience and create humor, few have addressed the cognitive aspects of humor. We used event...

The aim of the present study was to examine whether humor styles mediated the associations between the pathological forms of narcissism (grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism) and self-esteem in a sample of Israeli undergraduates (N = 200). Grandiose narcissism was positively associated with the use of adaptive humor (i.e., self-enhancing humor and affiliative humor), whereas vulnerabl...

Studies examining humor in psychiatric disorders have elucidated the affective and cognitive components that are essential in understanding and appreciating humor. Both cognitive executive functioning (e.g., verbal fluency, set shifting) and the ability to mentalize dramatically impact the ability to understand and appreciate humor. Emotional components, such as mood states and traits, which af...

The Humor Styles Questionnaire and Interpersonal Reactivity Index were given to 103 (28 men, 75 women) undergraduates in a community college in the Midwestern United States. As predicted, significant positive correlations were found between affiliative humor and empathic concern (r = .23, p < .05) and between self-enhancing humor and perspective-taking empathy (r = .28, p < .01). Also, as predi...