Coping humour, stress, and cognitive appraisals.

Abstract

This study investigated relationships between sense of humour and cognitive appraisals and reappraisals of a potentially stressful event. Cognitive appraisals for an academic examination were obtained at several points in time. Consistent with our predictions, individuals with high scores on the Coping Humour scale appraised the exam as more of a positive challenge than did low humour individuals. In their reappraisals, high humour subjects' ratings of importance and positive challenge were positively related to performance on the exam, whereas for low humour subjects this relationship was negative. In predicting their performance on the next exam, high humour subjects adjusted their expectations on the basis of performance on the previous exam, whereas low humour subjects did not. In addition, humour was negatively related to both perceived stress and dysfunctional standards for self-evaluation. Overall, these results support the proposal that a sense of humour may facilitate coping and adjustment. Resume L'etude en question portait sur Ies relations entre le sens de l'humour et Ies appreciations et reappreciations cognitives d'une situation pouvant engendrer du stress. Les sujets ont fourni a plusieurs moments des appreciations cognitives d'un examen qu'ils devaient passer dans le cadre de leurs etudes. Comme nous l'avions predit, Ies sujets ayant obtenu des scores eleves dans l'echelle de mesure de l'humour face ii I'adaptation consideraient davantage l'examen comme un defi positif quc nc le faisaient les sujets ayant moins le sens de l'humour. En cc qui concerne la reappr£ciation, les points attribues a I'importance de l'examen ct au defi positif par Ies sujets ayant un grand sens de l'humour ctaient correles positivement au resultat de l'examen, alors que la correlation etait negative dans le cas des sujets ayant moins d'humour. Pour predire leur rendement au prochain examen, les sujets ayant un grand sens dc l'humour ont ajuste leurs attentcs en fonction du resultat de l'examen precedent, ce que n'ont pas fait les autres sujets. De plus, l'humour etait correle negativement au stress pergu par les sujets et aux normes dysfonctionnelles dans le cas de l'auto-evaluation. tin general, les resultats confirment l'idee que le sens de l'humour peut faciliter I'adaptation.

Contact With Nature, Sense of Humor, and Psychological Well-Being

“…Martin (2001) correctly notes that results from studies investigating the stress-moderating effect of sense of humor have been inconsistent. However, it is worth noting that some of the studies in this domain have found a main effect of sense of humor, a direct negative relation between sense of humor and self-reported stress (e.g., Abel, 2002;Kuiper, Martin, & Olinger, 1993;Svebak, Götestam, & Jensen, 2004;Trice & Price-Greathouse, 1986). Moreover, Dixon's (1980) seminal analysis of the theoretical relation between humor and stress clearly indicates that there should be a main effect: Humor should reduce stress.…”

Coping With Stereotype Threat: Denial as an Impression Management Strategy.

“…The current evidence implicates both types of strategies. On the intrapersonal side, women who are threatened with the stereotype that they are poor at math do not show typical performance deficits if they are high in coping sense of humor (Ford, Ferguson, Brooks, & Hagadone, 2004), suggesting that one manner of coping with stereotype threat is by using humor to reinterpret the situation as a challenge rather than a threat (see Kuiper, Martin, & Olinger, 1993). Stereotype threat has also been shown to lead to behavioral self-handicapping (reduced practice prior to a performance; Stone, 2002) as well as claimed self-handicapping (claiming external factors that disrupted performance; Keller, 2002), both of which could be employed for either intrapersonal or interpersonal purposes (see Arkin & Oleson, 1998).…”

Estilos de humor en universitarias dominicanas

“…Desde este continuo fueron identificados dos estilos de humor positivos y dos negativos: (a) Humor de afiliación, características del individuos que dice cosas graciosas o chistes para facilitar las relaciones interpersonales de manera benigna; (b) autodesarrollo del humor o humor de mejora personal, involucra una mirada humorística de la vida para alegrarse uno mismo (Kuiper et al, 1993); c) humor agresivo, relacionado con el uso del sarcasmo, la ridiculez y de molestar a los otros para destacarse a costa de ellos; y (d) humor de auto-defensa descalificador personal o autodescalificador, centrado en la intención de divertir a otros mientras se auto ridiculiza (Martin et al, 2003). Evidencia sobre esta estructura del humor de cuatro dimensiones ha sido recabada en diferentes culturas y poblaciones: canadiense (Martin et al, 2003), argentina (Lillo, 2006), libanesa (Taher, Kazarian & Martin, 2008); italiana (Sirigatti, Penzo, Giannetti & Stefanile, 2014), austriaca y alemana (Stieger, Formann, & Burger, 2011), israelita (Zeigler-Hill & Besser, 2011, china (Yue et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2012Zhao et al, , 2014, o taiwanesa (Chiang, Sheng, Wu, & Yen, 2014).…”