Exploring the consistency and value of humour style profiles

Abstract

Establishing generalisable humour style profiles promises to have significant value for educational, clinical, and occupational application. However, previous research investigating such profiles has thus far presented inconsistent results. To determine the generalisability and value of humour style profiles, a large and geographically diverse examination of humour styles was conducted through a cross-sectional questionnaire methodology involving 863 participants from across three world regions. Findings identify inconsistencies in the humour style profiles across countries tested and the extant literature, possibly indicative of cultural differences in the behavioural expression of trait humour. Furthermore, when directly compared, humour types, rather than humour styles, consistently provide the greatest predictive value for friendship and wellbeing outcomes. As such, with respect to both consistency and value, capturing humour style profiles appears to represent a relatively reductionist approach to appreciating the nuances in the use and consequences of humour.

Beyond humor styles: the nature of humor types and differences in basic personality traits from Zuckerman’s Alternative Five-Factor Model

“…In conclusion, Study 1 confirmed that the examination of humor types enables a more comprehensive insight into the common core of humor style profiles and allows for a more precise understanding of associations with personality and possible neural processes underlying personality traits. The identified clusters of humor found correspond to the findings from Galloway (2010), Leist and Müller (2013), and Evans et al (2020), supporting the stability of humor types generated from humor styles. In addition, the number of identified humor types is closely linked with the criterion of selection within the cluster analysis.…”

“…Investigating humor types, as patterns of humor styles, allows better insight into the nature of humor. Studies that analyze clusters of humor styles show some similarities in results, but not all the clusters are replicated ( Evans et al, 2020 ). Certain types of humor emerged consistently, while some are confirmed only within specific contexts ( Evans & Steptoe-Warren, 2015 ).…”

Humor Styles, Bullying Victimization and Psychological School Adjustment: Mediation, Moderation and Person-Oriented Analyses

“…Similarly, the variable-oriented examination of the effects of humor styles has recently been characterized as reductionist, and it has been recommended that effects of humor styles should be complemented by person-oriented approaches that analyze typical humor style configurations (i.e., profiles of concurrent humor styles use) rather than single humor styles [ 48 ]. For example, individuals scoring high on self-defeating humor and low on the other three humor styles were identified to have the lowest score of psychological adjustment compared to other humor style profiles [ 23 ].…”

“…For example, individuals scoring high on self-defeating humor and low on the other three humor styles were identified to have the lowest score of psychological adjustment compared to other humor style profiles [ 23 ]. When directly compared with humor styles, humor profiles were shown to have consistently greater predictive value for friendship and well-being outcomes [ 48 ]. Therefore, in addition to the variable-oriented analyses of individual humor styles (in the form of mediation and moderation models), the current study will also examine person-oriented differences between latent profiles of combined humor style use.…”

Are Stories and Anecdotes an Underused Pedagogic Technique in Undergraduate Medicine? A Qualitative Study

“…Several authors have written on the role of humour in health care for instance in palliative care (32, 33) and more explicitly in higher education (34,35). Jones (4) helpfully adapted Dean and Gregory (32) cautions and guidelines on the use of humour which is presented in Fig.…”