o Does humor impact relationship satisfaction?

o Four different styles of humor (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003)

Humor which enhances/protects the self

• Self-enhancing: tolerant, accepting; humorous perspective in the face of stress

• Aggressive: ridicule, sarcasm; humor without regard for impact on others

Humor which enhances relationships with others

• Affiliative: jokes, spontaneous humor; occasional putting down of oneself (while maintaining acceptance)

• Self-defeating: excessively self-disparaging; allowing oneself to be the target of ridicule to gain approval

o Self-enhancing and affiliative humor will result in greater relationship satisfaction

o Aggressive and self-defeating humor will result in lower satisfaction

o Humor style assessed through 32-item questionnaire adapted from Martin et al. (2003)

• Participants asked to rate their partner’s sense of humor as opposed to their own

o Relationship satisfaction measured using 7-item questionnaire from Hendrick and Hendrick (1997)

o Asked not to consult partners while taking surveysExample Items – Humor

Styles

oSelf-enhancing

• “If my partner is feeling depressed, he/she can usually cheer himself/herself up with humor”

oAffiliative

• “My partner enjoys making people laugh”

oAggressive

• “If someone makes a mistake, my partner will often tease them about it”

oSelf-defeating

• “My partner lets people laugh at him/her or make fun at his/her expense more than he/she should”

Example Items – Satisfaction

o“How well does your partner meet your needs?”

o“To what extent has your relationship met your original expectations?”

Love to Laugh, Laugh to Love: Humor Styles and Relationship

SatisfactionGabe Persons, Jake Gorman, & John Buri, Faculty Advisor • Dept of Psychology, University of St.

Thomas

o Scores were obtained for humor (8 items corresponded to each)

o A bivariate correlation was used to compare satisfaction scores with the 4 humor scores

o 70 participants – 18 years of age or older

• 21 males; 49 females

o Recruited online through University of St. Thomas Sona Systems and Facebook

o Positive correlation between self-enhancing humor and satisfaction when responses were pooled

• Females approached significance

o Males who reported having partner with aggressive humor showed higher self-reports of relationship satisfaction• Female results inverse of this• Neither were significant

o Future research would benefit from comparing self-ratings of humor to those ratings made by partner

o Individuals more satisfied with relationships tend to report higher positive humor use and lower negative humor use (Butzer & Kuiper, 2008)

o Perception of a partner’s humor style predicts relationship satisfaction (Cann, Zapata, & Davis, 2011)

• Positive forms of humor predict higher levels of relationship satisfaction

Background

Present Study

Participants

Methods

Results

Aggressive Humor

Self-Defeating

HumorSatisfactio

n (all)r = -.121p = .318

r = .116p = .340

Satisfaction (males)

r = .080p = .729

r = .251p = .273

Satisfaction

(females)

r = -.247p = .088

r = .054p = .710Self-

Enhancing Humor

Affiliative Humor

Satisfaction (all)

r = .269p = .024

r = .187p = .122

Satisfaction (males)

r = .224p = .287

r = .233p = .310

Satisfaction

(females)

r = .256p = .076

r = .160p = .271

Discussion

References• Butzer, B., & Kuiper, N. A. (2008). Humor use in romantic

relationships: The effects of relationship satisfaction and pleasant versus conflict situations. Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 142(3), 245-260.

• Cann, A., Zapata, C. L., & Davis, H. B. (2011). Humor style and relationship satisfaction in dating couples: Perceived versus self-reported humor styles as predictors of satisfaction. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 24(1), 1-20.

• Hendrick, S. S., & Hendrick, C. (1997). Love and satisfaction. In Satisfaction in close relationships. (pp. 56-78) New York, NY, US: Guilford Press.

• Martin, R. A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J., & Weir, K. (2003). Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the humor styles questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(1), 48-75.

Hypotheses