Psychology of Humor

Introduction
Various research has been done on the relation
between the Big Five and Humor. Lowis and
Nieuwoudt (1995) used cartoons to measure
humor and Mendiburo-Seguel et al. (2015) and
Plessen et al. (2020) used the Humor Styles
Questionnaire to measure humor. This study
aims at replicating the previous studies applied
in a more everyday approach, using videos Figure 2
from the social media to measure humor
preferences Correlations between Aggressive Humor
and Each of Agreeableness and
Research question: How are the big five Conscientiousness
personality traits related to different types of Note. *P < .05, in line with hypothesis 3
humor?

Hypotheses
1. Self-enhancing humor is negatively
correlated with neuroticism and positively
correlated with extraversion and openness.
2. Self-defeating humor is positively correlated
with neuroticism and negatively correlated with Figure 3
conscientiousness. Correlations between Affiliative Humor and Each of
3. Aggressive humor is negatively correlated Extraversion and Openness
with agreeableness and conscientiousness.
4. Affiliative humor is positively correlated
with extraversion and openness.

Method
Participants
⁃ N=156
⁃ 40.4% men and 57.1% women, 2.5% other Figure 4
Average Funniness Rating of Each Video
Materials
⁃ Big Five Inventory, 44 statements on a 7 point
Likert scale
⁃ Questionnaire containing videos, funniness
rating on a 7 point Likert scale

Statistical analysis
⁃ two-tailed correlation test: Bivariate normal
model

Results:
Figure 1
Correlations between Self-enhancing Humor and
Each of Neuroticism, Extraversion and Openness
Figure 6
Correlations between Self-defeating Humor and
Each of Neuroticism and Conscientiousness
Note. *P < .05, in line with hypothesis 2
Discussion:
• As expected, neuroticism seems to predict a
preference for the self-defeating type of humor, and
conscientiousness seems to predict aversion to
aggressive humor.
• Unexpectedly, neuroticism seems also to predict a
preference for the self-enhancing type of humor. A
possible explanation might be that neurotic
individuals use self-enhancing humor as a
comforting mechanism as it is negatively associated
with measures of anxiety (Bilge, & Saltuk, 2007)
and global distress (Chen, & Martin, 2007).
• Why were only three out of nine correlations
replicated?
• That might get attributed to the low variance
in the funniness rating of the videos.
• That might indicate that, in everyday
settings, the associations between the Big
Five personality traits and the four types of
humor become less meaningful when the
stimuli are not intensely funny.