This study explored relationships between sense of humor, stress, and coping strategies. Undergraduate students (N=258) from introductory psychology courses completed a perceived stress scale, an everyday problems scale, a state anxiety inventory, a sense of humor scale, and a scale assessing their preferred coping strategies. High and low sense of humor groups were determined by selecting participants with self-reported sense of humor at one standard deviation above and below the overall mean on the sense of humor scale. The high sense of humor group appraised less stress and reported less current anxiety than a low sense of humor group despite experiencing a similar number of everyday problems in the previous two months. The high humor group was more likely to use positive reappraisal and problem-solving coping strategies than the low humor group. A weaker relationship existed between appraisal of stress and number of problems in the low humor group because this group perceived greater stress at low and average number of everyday problems than the high humor group. The results were discussed as supporting the role of humor in restructuring a situation so it is less stressful, and the relationship of humor to both emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies.
This study is an examination of the interaction of humor and gender in moderating relationships among perceived stress, anxiety, and physical symptoms. Introductory psychology students (70 women, 61 men) completed self-report scales measuring perceived stress, humor, and symptomology. Multiple regression analyses revealed a moderating effect for humor between stress and anxiety, but only for men. When humor was low, a positive relationship was obtained between stress and anxiety; no relationship existed when humor was high. No gender differences were found in the significant moderating effect of humor between stress and physical symptoms. When humor was low, stress was related to physical symptoms; no relationship was found when humor was high. Overall, the findings supported humor as a moderator of stress; gender differences also existed for some outcomes.
Using an experimental design, male (n=41) and female (n=46) undergraduate students in the southeastern USA evaluated an identical written lecture by a male and female professor on pay disparities between men and women in the workforce suggesting sex discrimination. Regardless of the students' sex, the male professor and his lecture was rated more positively and less sexist than the female professor. Moderated multiple regression analysis indicated that more traditional and gender stereotypical attitudes toward women in male students were related to greater sexism ratings of the female professor compared to the male professor whereas; no differences on ratings of sexism between the male and female professor were found for male students with more liberal attitudes.
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