This study explores the use of humor among bloggers coping with cancer. Framed by health communication literature on stress and coping and literature on humor styles, I analyzed the use of humor by individuals coping with various types of cancer. Using content analysis, I investigated 600 blog posts from 85 cancer bloggers for humor use. I adapted the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), a scale assessing four different uses of humor, into a codebook to use for content analysis within the blog posts. The different styles of humor included affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating. Individually, I tested the relationships between the style of humor a blogger used and the blogger’s gender, age, type of cancer, and point in the cancer trajectory. I also tested the relationships between the frequency of humor use within each blog post and the blogger’s gender, age, type of cancer, and point in the cancer trajectory. Every humorous remark was categorized into at least one of the four humor style categories. Overall, I found no significant relationships among the variables tested. However, each of the humor styles was used multiple times throughout the sample. This study provides future researchers with a new way to operationalize humor use based on the HSQ and with relevant examples from cancer blogs. The findings also suggest that humor is a common communicative device among those coping with cancer, and further research into how humor is used among more specific samples of cancer patients may provide more significant results. / text

No description available.

The majority of instructional communication literature has historically focused on the positive outcomes of incorporating humor into the classroom. However, despite the clearly documented instructional benefits of humorous communication, the literature tends to focus solely on instructor-enacted humor. However, humor is not a homogenous concept; therefore, it is imperative to examine it from a number of contexts, including student-enacted humor. Although the Instructional Humor Processing Theory (IHPT) has made a number of theoretical advances in exploring humorous communication in the classroom, it still lacks adequate explanatory power, particularly when examining student-enacted humor. Thus, four expansions to IHPT are proposed: to incorporate (a) the interpersonal attraction experienced toward the sender, (b) the humor orientation of the receiver, (c) the enacted humor style of the sender, and (d) the receiver’s perception of the classroom climate. Results indicate that the aforementioned expansions are theoretically pertinent to examining student-student humorous communication and warrant future research for inclusion to IHPT. The study also discovered sex differences regarding the message sender, along with interaction effects between the sex of the sender and receiver. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed, and directions for future research are provided.

Researchers have examined psychosocial risk variables (e.g., hostility) related to high resting blood pressure (BP), with the majority of findings suggesting that hostility is associated with increased resting BP. Additionally, it has been proposed that constructive verbal anger expression is a protective factor for hypertension (Davidson, MacGregor, Stuhr, Dixon, & MacLean, 2000; Davidson, MacGregor, Stuhr, & Gidron, 1999), while others have hypothesized that humor promotes physical health (i.e., the humor-health hypothesis) (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003; McClelland & Cheriff, 1997). The primary purpose of the present study is to examine the relations between hostility, humor styles, constructive verbal anger, and resting BP, with an emphasis on the humor-health hypothesis. One hundred and ninety nine undergraduate university participants had six resting blood pressure measurements taken at three-minute intervals. Participants then completed the following questionnaires online in a randomized order: Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (CMH), Constructive Anger Behaviour-Verbal Scale (CAV), Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), and a health and demographic questionnaire. A series of hierarchical regressions were conducted to test the hypotheses with resting systolic BP (SBP) and resting diastolic BP (DBP). Two health and demographic variables, age and body mass index (BMI), were entered into step 1 of all the regressions analyzed as covariates. In step 2 of each regression model, the respective psychosocial variables were independently entered. Comparisons were conducted between the various psychosocial variables entered into step 2 to determine which variable accounts for the most unique variance in resting SBP and DBP. Small to moderate positive correlations were observed between age and resting BP, as well as BMI and resting BP. Regarding psychosocial variables, small positive correlations were observed between affiliative humor and resting SBP, and between self-enhancing humor and resting BP. Multiple regression analyses revealed that after controlling for age and BMI, adaptive humor styles uniquely predicted higher resting SBP, while no psychosocial variables predicted resting DBP. The present investigation provides evidence suggesting that psychosocial risk factors are not associated with resting BP while also contradicting the humor-health hypothesis, suggesting that adaptive humor is associated with increased resting BP.

Humor is likely to serve as signals of fitness in potential partners. Less is known about how different styles of humor affect partner attractiveness. This study aimed to test the attractiveness of the four different humor styles proposed by Martin et al. (2003) categorized according to being benign (affiliate, self-enhancing) or detrimental (aggressive, self-defeating). Participants were presented with a series of potential partners, much like on a dating site. Each partner was described by a portrait picture and a vignette, which included examples of one of the four humor styles. The participants’ task was to rate a number of items about partner preference (date, intercourse, shortand long-term relationships) and mate value (intelligence, health, social status and parenting skill). A total of 170 women and 81 men between 18-40 years of age completed the experiment. The results showed significant effects on all measurements of partner interest and mate value for women with the aggressive humor style being rated as less attractive and lower in mate value than the other humor styles. For men there was a significant effect on two measurements on mate value (social status, parenting skill), showing that the self-defeating style was rated less attractive. The results support the notion that humor is used as a fitness signal, that this is used to a substantially greater extent by women, and that women find the aggressive humor style to be particularly unattractive in potential partners.

No description available.

Humor is a multifaceted construct commonly used in daily life. For centuries philosophers, healers, and religious figures have extolled humor as the “best medicine” for both the body and the mind. Recent research has shown humor can be adaptive or maladaptive (i.e., contribute to or subtract from well-being; Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003). Empirical evidence supporting these claims for humor and physical health has been inconsistent; however, new evidence suggests there may indeed be a connection (Martin, 2001; Martin et al., 2003). At the same time, previous research has consistently supported the notion that using humor is related to psychological health. Findings such as these have implications beyond one’s physical and mental health; these findings also have implications on one’s quality of life. Much like the notion of humor, quality of life is a difficult concept to define succinctly. Quality of life contains several domains including physical health, mental health, social status, and environmental elements (Skevington, Lotfy, & O’Connell, 2004). Previous research has suggested a link between humor and quality of life. Adaptive humor is positively correlated with indicators of psychological health, e.g. self-esteem (e.g., Stieger, Formann, & Burger, 2011) while maladaptive humor has been positively correlated with indicators of psychological distress, e.g. depression (Hugelshofer, Kwon, Reff, & Olson, 2006). To date, researchers have not studied humor and quality of life directly so the primary purpose of this study was to explore how well humor styles predict quality of life. To explore this predictive relationship, students from an introductory psychology class at a mid-size university were recruited to participate in this study. It was hypothesized that the adaptive humor styles would positively predict quality of life while the maladaptive humor styles would negatively predict quality of life. Stepwise regression models found partial support for the hypotheses. Implications and future directions are discussed.

The present thesis will provide an overview of how the four humor styles, affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor, are connected to different brain areas. The thesis will also include an overview of how humor in general, and especially three factors of humor including, processing, appreciation, and comprehension is connected to different brain areas. The present study found a connection between these three factors of humor and activation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). The four humor styles were all connected to activity in the midbrain and nucleus accumbens (NAc), though they were found to differ in other parts of the brain. Affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor are humor styles found to share activation of similar brain areas, whereas self-enhancing and aggressive humor was found to the least extent share activation of the same brain areas. No neural differences in relation to the four humor styles have been found between men and woman, or between cultures.

The aim was to examine whether measurements of creativity as a domain general trait can explain possible connections between a domain general creative performance and one of the creative domain specific areas, humor. Another aim was to examine whether the maladaptive humor styles can explain possible differences in creative performances. An Internet-based survey was used on 281 students from a Swedish university. The survey was composed of three parts consisting of three separate measuring instruments – Sense of Humor Questionnaire (SHQ-6) was used to measure the respondents’ sense of humor, Humor Style Questionnaire (HSQ) measured the respondents’ humor style and Alternate Uses Test (AUT) gave the respondents an opportunity to account for their creative performances. The results showed no significant correlations between the respondents’ sense of humor and their creative performances. Neither could the maladaptive humor styles explain any significant differences in creative performances. However it was found that a low degree of self-defeating humor style had a significant interaction effect on differences in elaboration between low and high degrees of aggressive humor style.

Den ökade globaliseringen har resulterat i att många organisationer stiger in på denkonkurrenskraftiga internationella marknaden. Detta har influerat organisationer att spridaderas budskap globalt – oftast genom marknadsföring. Tv-reklam är en mediekanal som anseseffektiv när man tillämpar humor som en kommunikationsstrategi då den enligt tidigareforskning genererar högt medvetande hos konsumenterna. Dock, finns det ett behov av attbelysa de kulturella skillnaderna när reklamen riktas internationellt eftersom humor uppfattasolika beroende på kultur, vilken kan generera negativa effekter. Eftersom att de kulturellaskillnaderna i humoristisk reklam tenderar att bli bortsedda så fokuserar denna kvantitativestudie på att belysa dessa skillnader med hjälp av Hofstedes kulturdimensionsteori. Dennakvantitativa studie fokuserar därför på att belysa karaktärerna av de kulturella skillnaderna ihumoristisk reklam, genom att använda Hofstedes kulturdimensionsteori, eftersom de tenderaratt bli översedda. Länderna Sverige och Kina jämfördes genom att betona kulturen motreaktionerna gentemot de olika humorstilarna i tv-reklam kopplat till uppfattade känslor. Föratt kunna identifiera humortyperna, användes Rod Martins fyra humorstilar affiliative humor,self-enhancing humor, aggressive humor och self-defeating humor.Syftet med studien var att upplysa hur viktiga aspekterna av de kulturella skillnaderna är ihumoristisk reklam med betoning på kultur och hur känslor mottas i svensk och kinesiskkultur. Detta för att se hur humor kan tillämpas effektivt i reklam över internationella gränser.Enkäten utfördes på svenska och kinesiska universitetsstudenter vilket genererade i detinsamlade empiriska materialet. Resultatet visade att affiliative humor och aggressive humorapplicerad i reklamfilm tas emot likadant känslomässigt i både kinesisk och svensk kultur ochpåverkar även köpintentionerna på samma sätt. Medan, self-defeating humor och selfenhancinghumor tas känslomässigt emot likadant i båda kulturera, men de kinesiskakonsumenterna är mer villiga att köpa produkten. / The growth of globalization has resulted in more organizations entering the competitiveinternational market which has influenced organizations to disseminate their message globally- commonly through the use of advertising. Television commercial is a media channelconsidered to be highly effective if applied with humor as a communication strategy. Theeffectiveness of this strategy generates in high awareness according to previous studies.However, there is a need of highlighting the cross-cultural distinctions when promoting acrossinternational boarders as humor is perceived differently depending on culture, which cannegatively affect the results. As the cultural characteristics in this matter tend to beoverlooked, this quantitative research is focusing on highlighting the cross-culturalcharacteristics in humorous advertising, through the use of Hofstede’s framework of nationalculture. The countries Sweden and China were compared with emphasize on cultureassociated to the reaction toward different humor styles in television commercials linked toperceived emotions. For identifying the humor types, Rod Martin’s four humor stylesaffiliative humor, self-enhancing humor, aggressive humor, and self-defeating humor, wereused.The purpose of this research was to disseminate the importance of cross-cultural aspects inhumor advertising with emphasize on culture and how emotions are perceived in Swedish andChinese culture. The importance relied within how to effectively apply humor in commercialsover cross-cultural boundaries. The questionnaires were performed by Swedish and Chineseuniversity students that generated in the collection of the empirical chapter. The researchfindings indicated that affiliative humor and aggressive humor used in commercial is equallyperceived emotionally in both Chinese and Swedish culture and also affects the purchaseintention similarly. Whereas self-defeating humor and self-enhancing humor are emotionallyequally perceived in both cultures, but the Chinese consumers are more willing to purchasethe product.