Humor styles and five personality traits

Subject Areas : روان درمانگری

Hossein  Zareh ¹ (PhD Payam-e-Nour University)
Mahmoud  Kamali Zarch ² (PhD Payam-e-Nour University)
Fatemeh  Rezaei Nasab ³ (M. A. in General Psychology)

Received: 2015-06-05 Accepted : 2015-06-05 Published : 2009-12-22

Keywords: college student, five personality traits, humor styles,

Abstract :

In order to explain humor styles based on the personality traits, 221 female and 127 male university students completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin, 1998) and the Five Factor Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The results suggested that adaptive humor styles (including affiliative and self-enhancing styles) were correlated with Neuroticism (negatively) and with Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and conscientiousness (positively), while the maladaptive humor styles (included self-defeating and aggressive styles) were correlated with Neuroticism (positively) and with the four big traits (negatively). Step by step regression analysis showed that personality traits could explain the variances of the humor styles in the following ways: a) Neuroticism and Extraversion explained all four styles of humor (respectively average R 2 =0.17, average R2 =0.38); b) agreeableness explained self-enhancing and aggressive styles (average R2 =0.025); c) Openness explained self-enhancing style (average R2 =0.05) and d) Conscientiousness explained affiliative, self-defeating and aggressive styles of humor (average R2 =0.02). Results were discussed based on their relations with main personality traits.