| dc.description.abstract | People tend to use humor in four different ways. Two positive humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing) and two negative humor styles (aggressive and self-defeating). Research repeatedly showed that humor styles are related to psychological well-being. If humor styles and psychological well-being are that strongly associated, next the mechanisms that link humor styles with well-being are interesting. Because of the inherently interpersonal nature of humor, it is thought that social support could be such a mechanism. Also interesting is the exploring of contexts in which humor styles could have a more potent impact on psychological well-being, such as age differences. Research showed that there are age differences in the use of humor styles. This is why the current study will investigate the relationship between humor styles and psychological well-being, the possible mediating role of social support in the relationship between humor styles and well-being, and the possible moderating role of age in the relationships between humor styles, well-being and social support. With the use of questionnaires data was collected. The final sample consisted of 109 participants (M Age = 36.8, SD Age = 17.2), both women (n= 72) and men (n= 37). Next correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis, which also tested mediation and moderation, were used to test the hypotheses. Results showed that affiliative and selfenhancing humor were positively related to psychological well-being, and self-defeating humor was negatively related to psychological well-being. Social support mediated the relationship between self-enhancing and self-defeating humor. Age was only found as a moderator for the relationship between social support and well-being. Longitudinal studies are necessary to investigate causal direction. | |
