Humor styles and personality: A systematic review and meta-analysis on the relations between humor styles and the Big Five personality traits

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Abstract

Health-promoting and health-endangering humor styles as measured with the Humor Styles Questionnaire have been repeatedly associated with personality traits. Yet, a comprehensive meta-analysis of all currently available studies on this topic as well as an exploration of the highly heterogeneous effect sizes found in this literature is still missing. We provide an updated overview of the literature, synthesize its results in a random effects model meta-analysis, and explore possible moderators. An extensive literature search identified 24 studies from 13 countries (N = 11,791). Health-promoting humor styles were positively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, and negatively correlated with neuroticism. Health-endangering humor styles were positively associated with neuroticism and negatively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness. Between-study heterogeneity ranged from I2 = 41% to 96% and could be only partially explained by moderator variables. The effects appear robust with respect to individual studies, publication bias, and measurement error, and appear mostly generalizable across sexes, sample composition, and continent. Further research is required to examine these associations in less developed countries, possible moderators for the high amount of effect size heterogeneity, and the development of these associations across the lifespan.

Introduction

Since the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists have examined the ways in which humor works, the functions it might fulfil, and how humor differs between individuals. While the first half of the century was dominated by Freudian theories (Freud, 1928; see Martin & Ford, 2018), the second half saw a rapid increase in empirical psychological research. Humor is reported to have a positive effect on persons’ social lives (Hay, 2000), well-being (Szabo, Ainsworth & Danks, 2005; Vilaythong, Arnau, Rosen & Mascaro, 2003), mental-health (Schneider, Voracek & Tran, 2018), and aspects of physical health (Lefcourt, Davidson, Prkachin & Mills, 1997, 1990; Stuber et al., 2009). Research from the field of psychoneuroimmunology suggests that humor influences the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system (Berk et al., 1989; Berk, Felten, Tan, Bittman & Westengard, 2001), thereby influencing resilience to stress.

In the past, humor mainly has been defined as a pleasant and pro-social phenomenon (Tanay, Roberts & Ream, 2013). However, recent studies suggest that certain aspects of humor can also be seen as malign phenomena, for example, as a form of aggression against oneself or others (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir, 2003). Due to the inherent interdisciplinary nature of humor research, many definitions of humor exist, and no single definition is accepted by all researchers. Most researchers agree that humor can be described as a relatively stable personality trait and a multi-dimensional construct (Ruch, 1998). However, no consensus has been reached with regards to their nature and number. For instance, Craik, Lampert and Nelson (1996) identified five bipolar humor styles related to everyday use of humor, Martin et al. (2003) identified four humor styles related to well-being, and Ruch, Heintz, Platt, Wagner and Proyer (2018) identified eight humor styles related to particular qualities of humor.

The currently most widely used scale to assess humor styles is the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003). Considering the potential influence of humor on wellbeing, the instrument distinguishes four trait-like humor styles. Two humor styles focus on a benign psychological function of humor—self-enhancing humor relating to intrapersonal processes and affiliative humor relating to interpersonal processes; two humor styles focus on a malign function of humor—self-defeating humor (intrapersonal) and aggressive humor (interpersonal) (Martin et al., 2003).

Self-enhancing humor refers to a humorous attitude towards stressful events and adversity in life. It functions as a coping strategy to regulate emotions and to reduce stress. Self-defeating humor entails humor which is directed against the own self in order to amuse others. Affiliative humor is used in a similar way to amuse others but is benign in nature. It aims at establishing and strengthening social bonds, and at reducing tension. Aggressive humor is used to downgrade other people via sarcasm and ridicule, and its underlying intent is to harm or expose other people (Martin et al., 2003).

A recent meta-analysis by Schneider et al. (2018) provides aggregate-level evidence that the affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles can indeed be considered as health-promoting. They may help to improve or maintain self-efficacy in a non-hostile way and aid in stress coping. In contrast, aggressive and self-defeating humor-styles can have health-endangering effects. They either endanger ties within one's social group or are directed against oneself. Thus, humor styles can be understood as either protective or risk factors and are associated with important life outcomes.

Furthermore, since the development of the HSQ, sex and age differences were reported in a consistent manner. Generally, men tend to obtain higher scores on all four scales (Martin et al., 2003), especially on aggressive humor (Stokenberga, 2008; Torres-Marín, Navarro-Carrillo & Carretero-Dios, 2018), which is also higher in younger people, and self-defeating humor, for which age differences appear to be inconsistent. Lower scores on affiliative humor in older people were attributed in previous research to a possibly decreased involvement in social activities of older adults (Martin et al., 2003; Torres-Marín et al., 2018).

Personality traits can be defined as patterns of cognitions, emotions, and behaviors that are relatively stable and consistent over time and across situations (Allport, 1961; McCrae & Costa Jr, 2003). Multiple theories have been proposed on the structure of personality (Drapela, 1995) but the five-factor model of personality has emerged as the most prominent model in modern psychology (Digman, 1990; Costa Jr & McCrae, 1989) and constitutes the most widely used framework for measuring and conceptualizing personality traits (Almlund, Duckworth, Heckman & Kautz, 2011; John, Naumann & Soto, 2008).

According to the Big Five, it is assumed that personality consists of five dimensions: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience (John & Srivastava, 1999; Costa Jr & McCrae, 1989). Individuals who score high in extraversion tend to prefer stimulating environments, report overall greater activity, and seek social interactions, while individuals who score low in extraversion do so to a lesser extent. People who score high in neuroticism tend to be less emotionally stable, are more vulnerable to stress, experience more anxiety, sadness, and self-consciousness than individuals who score low in neuroticism Agreeableness refers to the tendency to get along with others. Individuals who score high in agreeableness are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, and considerate, while those who score low on agreeableness are perceived as cold, selfish, and lacking empathy. Highly conscientious individuals tend to be perceived as competent, orderly, dutiful, self-disciplined, and deliberate compared to low conscientious individuals. Individuals scoring high in openness to experience tend to be more open to feelings, emotions, imagination, aesthetic experiences, and liberalism (Costa Jr & McCrae, 1992; John et al., 2008; Costa Jr & McCrae, 1989, 1999; Strus, Cieciuch & Rowiński, 2014).

To this date, the most comprehensive literature review on associations between the Big Five and crucial life outcomes suggests that interpersonal relationships, intrapersonal concepts (like self-concept, well-being, and psychopathology) as well as longevity and physical health are highly associated with personality traits (Kotov, Gamez, Schmidt & Watson, 2010; Ozer & Benet-Martínez, 2005; see also Soto, in press). Additionally, personality traits have been found to be reliably associated with occupational interests, occupational involvement, and academic success (Poropat, 2009). Therefore, certain personality traits appear to be associated with desirable life outcomes as either protective factors or risk factors.

Since the inception of the HSQ, personality traits were found to be associated with humor styles (Martin et al., 2003). In their initial study, Martin et al. (2003) reported correlations between the four humor styles and all personality dimensions (as measured with the NEO-PI-R), except openness to experience. Extraversion correlated positively with the benign humor styles, whereas neuroticism correlated positively, and agreeableness and conscientiousness negatively, with the malign humor styles.

Understanding these associations is highly relevant for multiple reasons: First, investigating the relationship between humor and personality might improve our understanding of factors influencing well-being, stress-resilience, pain management, and coping strategies for patients with and without mental illnesses. Second, a deepened understanding of this relationship might improve psychological interventions targeting adverse life outcomes. Third, understanding the associations of humor styles and personality traits might benefit fundamental psychological research on personality, emotion, cognition, and behavior. Ideally, this might help to distinguish between the effects that humor styles and personality traits may have on crucial life outcomes.

A previous meta-analysis by Mendiburo-Seguel, Páez and Martínez-Sánchez (2015) explored the link between humor styles, as measured by the HSQ, and personality. The authors found moderate to weak associations for several of the humor styles and personality traits. Affiliative humor correlated most strongly with extraversion (r = 0.42), and openness to experience (r = 0.20). Self-enhancing humor was most positively associated with extraversion (r = 0.29) and correlated most negatively with neuroticism (r = −0.24). Aggressive humor was negatively correlated with agreeableness (r = −0.33) and conscientiousness (r = −0.20), and self-defeating humor was most strongly correlated with neuroticism (r = 0.23).

Yet, the authors neither explored the observed effect size heterogeneity, nor assessed possible sources of bias, i.e. publication bias or low study quality.

The aim of the present study was to extend previous research by (1) evaluating the relationship between extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience with benign (self-enhancing and affiliative humor) and malign (self-defeating and aggressive humor) humor styles; (2) exploring possible moderating effects of sample characteristics (sex, age, proportion of students, origin) and of different scales used for the measurement of the personality traits; (3) identifying individual studies which contributed disproportionally to the previously reported effect size heterogeneity; (4) examining publication bias and study quality in this field of research; and (5) correcting for measurement error.

Section snippets

Literature search

We conducted an exhaustive literature search based on the guidelines of the PRISMA statement (Moher et al., 2009), using multiple databases, including PsycInfo, Psyndex, Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar, [database blinded for the anonymity of review], and the preprint archive of the Open Science Framework. We searched with two sets of keywords, the first group of keywords referring to humor: humor styles OR humor OR humor styles questionnaire; and the second group to personality: big five

Study selection and study characteristics

We identified 4314 studies in our systematic literature search and 12 additional records through forward and backward search strategies. In total, 28 effect sizes from 24 studies were included in the meta-analysis for quantitative data synthesis. See Fig. 1 for a PRISMA flow chart of the study selection process.

Substantial aggregated sample sizes could be obtained for the correlations of humor styles with each personality trait dimension. The total sample size was N = 11,791. The sample sizes

Summary of evidence

The present study systematically examined the associations between humor styles, as described by Martin et al. (2003), and personality traits. Aggregating the data of 24 studies with 11,791 healthy adults we found that the benign humor styles self-enhancing humor and affiliative humor were positively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, and negatively correlated with neuroticism. The malign humor styles self-defeating humor and aggressive humor were

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    Please find our scripts (R Markdown) and data to reproduce all analyses on the Open Science. Framwork: https://osf.io/6mhe4/.

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