A hierarchical integration of dispositional determinants of general health in students: The Big Five, trait Emotional Intelligence and Humour Styles
Introduction
Over the past decades a number of potential mechanisms that might link personality and health have been proposed (Smith, 2006), including mediation models in which the relation between traits and health is mediated by other variables (e.g. health behaviours). However, few studies have empirically tested these mechanisms. Smith (2006) recently noted that research on these mechanisms is largely premature and that only few studies have used formal tests of mediation.
Thus, this study sets out to argue for, and initially validate an integrated multistage approach in which lower-order, proximal traits mediate the impact of higher-order, distal traits on health. This approach is based on conceptualizations of multiple levels of influence that describe distal attributes as non-task or non-situation specific and stable over time (Hough & Schneider, 1996). Proximal variables, in contrast, are assumed to have more immediate effects, are more situationally bound and more malleable (Bandura, 1997). The assumption is that combinations of proximal and distal predictor variables are better at predicting an outcome than additive or independent contributions of multiple single predictors (Zaccaro, 2007).
The current research aims to test this approach by examining the role of trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI; Petrides & Furnham, 2003) and humour styles (Martin, Larsen, Puhlik-Doris, Gray, & Weir, 2003) as mediators of the paths between the Big Five (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2005) and General Health (GH, conceptualized in terms of self-perceived mental health and well-being; Goldberg & Williams, 1988). The Big Five personality dimensions (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) were used as higher-level distal variables because they are a widely used taxonomy of personality traits that have been assumed to assess personality at the highest level of description (McCrae & Costa, 1995). The relations between the Big Five and mental health are widely researched (Enns et al., 2001, Goodwin and Friedman, 2006, Jerram and Coleman, 1999, Kirmayer et al., 1994), and Conscientiousness (as a positive predictor) and Neuroticism (as a negative predictor) show the most consistent and strongest relations to mental health and well-being.
The rationale for including trait EI and humour styles as proximal mediator variables is that they are two lower-level dispositional factors that have been shown to be of interest in relation to health. Moreover, whilst previous research has established a robust negative relationship between trait EI and mental health problems (Dawda and Hart, 2000, Mavroveli et al., 2007), Saklofske, Austin, Galloway, and Davidson (2007) recently noted that there are few studies on the relationship between trait EI and other health-related dispositional measures. Indeed, little is known about the relations between humour and trait EI and more attention should be drawn to this neglected relationship, as both constructs are salient in positive psychology (although maladaptive sides to humour and trait EI have also been acknowledged; Martin et al., 2003, Sevdalis et al., 2007).
Trait EI is conceptualized as a personality trait located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies (Petrides, Furnham, & Mavroveli, 2007). High trait EI individuals exhibit good stress management skills and an ability to appraise, express and manage their emotions (Petrides, 2001). A number of studies have shown that trait EI is a protective factor with respect to mental health and psychological well-being, showing for instance a negative association with depression (Dawda & Hart, 2000) and psychosomatic complaints (Mavroveli et al., 2007). Further, deficits in trait EI have psychopathological implications; for instance low trait EI has been associated with psychopathy (Malterer, Glass, & Newman, 2008), Machiavellianism (Austin, Farrelly, Black, & Moore, 2007), dysfunctional attitudes and almost all personality disorders of ICD-10 and DSM-IV (Petrides et al., 2007).
Although there is evidence for a positive relationship between germane forms of humour and health or well-being, findings have often been inconsistent and have accounted for only a small proportion of the variance in health (Martin et al., 2003). Martin et al. (2003) view this inconsistency as a result of researchers using measures that assess humour as a thoroughly positive concept, whilst widely neglecting the less desirable, “dark” sides of humour, such as sarcasm. Thus, in order to widen the predictive scopes of humour measures, Martin et al. (2003) introduced the Humour Styles Questionnaire (HSQ). The HSQ distinguishes between two styles of adaptive humour: affiliative humour (the use of humour to enhance one’s relationship with others) and self-enhancing humour (the use of humour to enhance the self) and two styles of maladaptive humour: aggressive humour (the use of humour to enhance the self at the expense of others) and self-defeating humour (the use of humour to enhance one’s relationship with others at the expense of oneself). Martin et al. (2003) found the positive humour styles to be beneficial to several aspects of psychological health (including anxiety and depression), whereas self-defeating humour was found to be detrimental to psychological health. Evidence for a link between aspects of mental health and aggressive humour was weak.
H1a: Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness will have a direct positive impact on trait EI, whereas H1b: Neuroticism will have a direct negative impact on trait EI.
H2a: Trait EI will negatively and directly impact on maladaptive humour; and H2b: will positively and directly impact on adaptive humour styles.
H3a: The adaptive humour styles will have a direct and health-enhancing impact on GH; whereas
H3b: self-defeating humour will have a direct and deleterious effect on GH.
H4: The relationship between the Big Five and GH will be fully mediated by both, trait EI and humour styles.
H5: The relationship between the Big Five and humour styles will be fully mediated by trait EI.
H6: The relations between trait EI and GH will be fully mediated by humour.
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 1038 (300 male, 738 female) university students aged between 17 and 48 years (M = 24.15, SD = 6.29 years). The sample was mainly white (41% white – UK; 33.2% white – other than UK).
Measures
The Big Five Inventory (BFI; John & Srivastava, 1999) comprises 44 short statements that are responded to on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from “disagree strongly” to “agree strongly”. Evidence for the convergent and discriminant validity of the BFI can be found in John and Srivastava (1999).
The
Descriptive statistics
Although the received incentive may have attracted an unrepresentative sample of respondents, means and SDs were in line with previous studies. All Cronbach’s α fell in the moderate to high range (see Table 1).
Zero-order correlations
Table 2 shows Bonferroni-corrected Pearson correlation coefficients for all measures.
The correlation matrix revealed that the Big Five, trait EI and the positive humour styles were significantly related to higher levels of GH. The correlation between GH and aggressive humour was
Discussion
This study tested a hierarchical model for the integration of proximal and distal determinants of GH. Trait EI and humour styles fully mediated the paths from the Big Five to GH, though in the case of Neuroticism and GH the mediation was partial. Thus trait EI and humour styles seem to be protective factors regarding health, but only partially buffer the negative impacts of Neuroticism on GH. Additionally, trait EI partially mediated the relations between the Big Five and humour styles, which,
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank musician Phil Ryan for creating the song for the prize draw.
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