Relationship between humor styles and alternative five factors of personality
Introduction
Personality traits that originate from psycho-biological personality models are far less examined regarding relationship with humor styles than those from lexical personality models. This study helps to fill this gap and considers humor styles within Zuckerman's (Zuckerman et al., 1993) Alternative Five-Factor Model of personality. Zuckerman's model can be a useful framework for examining the biological basis of humor styles and expanding knowledge acquired within the studies that employed lexical personality models. It is reasonable to expect that the use of this model can provide a deeper insight into the investigation of humor styles by including into account individual differences in optimal cortical arousal, following excitement and inhibitory processes between cortex and visceral brain, and hormonal processes associated with personality traits.
A well-received model of humor is Martin's conceptualization that was developed on the basis on an intensive review of the literature on the relationship between humor and well-being (Martin et al., 2003). Humor styles demonstrate how individuals use humor in their everyday life and they are defined by two underlying dimensions. One dimension represents intrapersonal vs. interpersonal function, which is also referred to as to enhance oneself vs. to enhance relationships with others. The other dimension refers to benign vs. detrimental use of humor. The combination of these two dimensions provides four humor styles: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating.
The affiliative humor style includes benign humor used to enhance relationships with others. By using affiliative humor, a person increases group cohesion and preserves a positive self-image. Self-enhancing humor style represents humor used to enhance the self. By using a humorous view of negative events one copes with stressful situations. The aggressive humor style refers to detrimental humor used to harm and expose others, and includes insulting, teasing, sarcasm, and the use of humor as a manipulation strategy. The self-defeating humor style is a harmful way one relates to self, to gain approval from others and includes making jokes about personal characteristics in order to be accepted by others.
The robustness and validity of Martin's conceptualization of humor styles were already examined. A study conducted in 28 countries (Schermer et al., 2019) demonstrated that there are more similarities than differences in humor styles across cultures and their relationship with Big 5 personality traits. As a corresponding instrument, Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003) has shown to have acceptable psychometric properties across many countries (Silvia & Rodriguez, 2020), while measures of humor styles showed a good predictive power of positive humor styles for life-satisfaction (Edwards & Martin, 2014), psychological well-being (Dyck & Holtzman, 2013) and coping mechanisms (Rnic, Dozois & Martin, 2016).
The AFFM (Zuckerman et al., 1993) has a strong foundation in the biological and behavior genetic studies on personality. The AFFM emerged from the series of research on temperament and physiological aspects of personality and emphasizes five basic personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Sensation Seeking, Aggressiveness and Activity) that have a hierarchical structure and a series of facets underlying each trait. Zuckerman denied isomorphism between personality traits and neuro-psychological systems, and emphasized interaction instead of independent influence of brain systems on behavior. Each AFFM personality trait is supported by complex neuro-psychological systems and each neuro-psychological system contributes to the manifestation of more than one trait (Zuckerman, 1991). Zuckerman postulated eight different levels of personality traits and their specific behavioral manifestations. Psychometrically operationalized traits are on the first level. They are based on the consistent patterns of behavior and cognitive reactions in certain situations which represent the second level, and are further based on the learning and conditioning processes from the third level. Individual differences in cortical physiology that present the fourth level and that are the basis for the differences in conditioning and learning processes, are dependent on the biochemical systems. Neurotransmitters, enzymes and hormones, as biochemical systems, are on the fifth level and they rely on neurological systems that represent the sixth level. Seventh level includes information on the genetic structure of each personality trait. Thus, each level of basic personality traits influences the upper ones and contributes to some extent to expressions of certain behavioral manifestations.
The assessment questionnaires, the 200-item ZKA-PQ (Aluja, Kuhlman, & Zuckerman, 2010) and the 80-item ZKA-PQ-SF (Aluja et al., 2019), have shown good psychometric characteristics and research has confirmed the generalizability of the AFFM personality traits across cultures (Rossier et al., 2016). Studies on the relationship with widely used psychological constructs, such as psychological well-being (Jovanović, 2011) or emotional intelligence (Blanco, García, & Aluja, 2016) have shown good predictive power of the AFFM personality traits.
Studies have shown a consistent relationship between AFFM traits and personality dimensions from other physiological personality models such as Eysenck's and Gray's (Aluja et al., 2013) or Cloninger's model (Zuckerman & Cloninger, 1996). Comparison with Five Factor Model (Garcia, Escorial, Garcia, Blanch & Aluja, 2012) showed significant overlapping between Neuroticism and Extraversion factors and facets from both models, robust negative relationship between Aggressiveness and Agreeableness, and a positive relationship between Activity and Conscientiousness. Also Sensation Seeking was found positively correlated with Openness and Extraversion and negatively with Consciousness, the author highlighted it as poorly presented within the FFM. The authors also emphasized differences at the facet level.
Furthermore, the AFFM and FFM are also in partial conflict related to Zuckerman's (1991) four criteria that basic personality dimensions should meet: (1) to be reliably identified across different samples and using different methods; 2) to show moderate heritability; 3) to be recognized in non-human species; and 4) to be associated with significant biological markers. According to Zuckerman (1991) both models provide evidences for the first two criteria while the AFFM closely meets the third and fourth criteria.
The first study that considered humor styles and relations with personality traits (Martin et al., 2003) revealed multiple correlations between humor styles and Big Five personality dimensions. Extraversion was positively correlated with affiliative and self-enhancing styles. Neuroticism was positively linked with aggressive and self-defeating, and negatively with self-enhancing humor style. Agreeableness and Consciousness were negatively correlated with negative humor styles, while Openness to experience positively correlated with both positive humor styles. Relations between humor styles and lexical models of personality traits were well examined within the studies that followed (Plessen et al., 2020) providing similar findings. A study with the HEXACO model revealed positive associations of Honesty/Humility with benign and negative with detrimental humor styles (Veselka et al., 2010), while a general factor of personality derived from the NEO-FFI (McCrae & Costa, 2004) was found positively correlated with affiliative and self-enhancing, and negatively with aggressive and self-defeating humor styles (Schermeret al., 2013).
Sensation Seeking (Zuckerman, 1979) is the only dimension from the AFFM which was analyzed regarding the humor. Although those studies did not take into account the other factors from the model, for this research, they are of great interest. Deckers and Ruch (1992) reported a positive relationship between Sensation Seeking and situational humor. All Sensation Seeking facets negatively correlated with nonsense and sexually related jokes, while thrill and adventure seeking positively correlated with incongruity-resolution jokes (Hehl & Ruch, 1985). Experience seeking and boredom susceptibility were identified as predictors of low perception of humor (Ruch, 1988). Finally, Kennison and Messer (2018) found that Sensation Seeking was a predictor of affiliative and aggressive humor styles in men and aggressive and self-defeating humor styles in women.
Several arguments can be offered to justify considerations of humor styles within the AFFM. First, the AFFM provides causal explanation of the behavior. Nonetheless, the role of the Sensation Seeking, as a personality trait that is not included in the FFM, but that was found associated with different aspects of humor, deserves to be more seriously examined. The best way to do it is within the personality model that operationalizes this trait as one of the basic ones. Besides, considering the fact that Sensation Seeking is based on the idea of individual differences in the level of optimal cortical arousal that has an impact on one's behavior, it is reasonable to assume that the analysis of this trait might provide valuable information on the nature of impact of optimal level of cortical arousal on humor styles. Furthermore, based on previous findings suggesting the existence of physiological processes that underlie different aspects of humor (Vrticka, Black & Reiss, 2013), as well as humor styles' associations with different brain regions and their activity (Chan et al., 2018; Wu et al., 2018) it is expected that the AFFM will be an adequate framework for explaining the nature of humor styles.
Partly, the results compatible with findings obtained within lexical personality models are to be expected. Neuroticism's positive relation with the self-defeating style and negative relation with both positive humor styles, Extraversion's positive relation with both positive humor styles and Aggressiveness' positive relation with aggressive humor style are to be expected. Beyond that, new findings based on a different theoretical framework of personality, that can expand current knowledge on how personality structure determines humor styles, are expected too. It is hypothesized that Sensation Seeking will be positively associated with all humor styles, suggesting that cortical arousal is a common core of use of humor in all humor styles. Activity is assumed to be positively associated with benign humor styles. Generally, it is expected that all humor styles can be explained on the basis of individual differences in cortical arousal and neural processes that underlay and determine AFFM factors.
Section snippets
Sample and procedure
The sample included 253 respondents (148 female) aged between 20 and 60 years (M = 25.13; SD = 9.36). 146 respondents were students, 78 had high school diploma while 29 had a university diploma. Data was collected in the area of the city of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina by undergraduate psychology students from the Department for psychology at the University of Banja Luka within a regular psychometrics course. Students had a task to distribute questionnaires among adult voluntaries and
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 summarize means, standard deviations, skewness, kurtosis and Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients for humor styles, personality traits and facets. Obtained values for HSQ were similar to those obtained in the cross-cultural study (Schermer et al., 2019). All humor style scales had normal and symmetrical distribution. Descriptive parameters for ZKA-PQ-SF were similar to results obtained by Aluja et al. (2019). Skew indexes were appropriate for all five scales and most of the facets.
Discussion
The purpose of the present study was to analyze associations between humor styles and Zuckerman's alternative five personality traits. Our initial expectations, that the obtained correlations would be in line with findings from studies that employed FFM personality traits, were met. Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Aggressiveness, obtained the same correlations with humor styles as in studies that analyzed personality dimensions from the FFM. Regarding Sensation Seeking, that mostly remained out
Limitation of the present study
This study is possibly the first research using AFFM personality traits in explaining humor, and consequently, the results require replication. The second limitation concerns the generalizability of the obtained findings based on the fact that it employed only one sample with a wide age range of participants. Regarding the sample, it can also be concluded that its size is relatively small for factor analyses and possibly underpowered, which can be considered as the third limitation of the
Conclusion
Overall findings suggest that the AFFM, as a model that provides causal explanation, can be an adequate and sufficient personality framework for the investigation of the humor styles. The nature of humor styles can be explained by individual differences in optimal level of cortical arousal, and their relationship with Alternative Five Factors of personality. Obtained findings offer solid basis for further research on humor styles that would include lower levels of personality traits, such as
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Đorđe Čekrlija: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft. Petar Mrđa: Formal analysis. Lana Vujaković: Investigation, Project administration. Anton Aluja: Writing – review & editing.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Professor Julie Aitken Schermer who reviewed the manuscript and provided comments and suggestions and which significantly improved the study.
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