Person. indiuid. 01% Vol. 13, No. 7, pp. 799-804, 1992 0191-8869/92 $5.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved Copyright 0 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd

SENSE OF HUMOR WHEN COPING WITH LIFE STRESS*

JAMES C. OVERHOLSER

Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, U.S.A.

(Received 13 September 1991)

Summary-Humor can provide a method of coping with a variety of stressful situations. Unfortunately, the scientific measurement of humor has suffered from many methodological problems, including low reliability and social desirability bias. The Coping Humor Scale was developed specifically to assess the degree to which subjects report using humor to cope with stressful life situations. This study examined the utility of the Coping Humor Scale as well as measures of humor appreciation and humor creativity in 96 college students. Using correlation and multiple regression analyses, results showed that humor was associated with lower loneliness, lower depression, and higher self-esteem. However, these relationships differed according to the sex of the subject and the frequency with which subjects used humor to cope. Results support the notion that sense of humor plays an important role in the psychological adjustment of some subjects.

Sense of humor is an adaptive personality trait that may act as a buffer to stress. Humor can provide a method of coping with a variety of stressful situations. Humor may act directly on depression (Portetlield, 1987) or may act as a buffer to the detrimental effects of psychological stress (Nezu, Nezu & Blissett, 1988). Humor can help people learn to avoid taking their problems too seriously (Mosak, 1987) and can promote objectivity and distance from their problems (Kuhlman, 1984). The sudden shifts in the information processing required for humor can be a means of distancing oneself from a threatening situation (O’Connell, 1976). Thus, humor should be associated with reduced depression during stressful times.

Humor is important in many social relationships (Giles, Bourhis, Gadfield, Davies & Davies, 1976). Humor can be used as a tool to build and maintain social bonds (Haig, 1986; Mosak, 1987). When used appropriately, humor is a socially desirable trait that elicits reinforcement from others. Humor can be used to ease the tension in uncomfortable situations (O’Connell, 1960) and to express hostility in a socially acceptable manner (Haig, 1986). Therefore, humor should facilitate social behavior, and be associated with reduced loneliness and isolation.

Despite its importance, the scientific assessment of a sense of humor has been plagued with methodological problems. The Wit and Humor Appreciation Test (O’Connell, 1960) displayed very low interrater reliability and was uncorrelated with stress. The Sense of Humor Questionnaire (Svebak, 1974) was affected by social desirability bias and low reliability. More recently the Coping Humor Scale (CHS; Martin & Lefcourt, 1983) was developed specifically to assess the degree to which Ss report using humor to cope with stressful life encounters. Martin and Lefcourt (1983; Lefcourt & Martin, 1986) found strong correlations between CHS scores and ratings of humor responses, thus supporting the scale’s validity. However, other studies have found lower correlations between CHS scores and stress, depression and anxiety than did the original studies (Nezu et al., 1988). Furthermore, humor coping has been found to buffer the impact of life stress in most but not all groups of Ss (Labott & Martin, 1987). Ss low in humor coping have reported stress levels which correlated with depression (Nezu et al., 1988) and with physiological measures of stress (Martin & Dobbin, 1988). In contrast, Anderson and Arnoult (1989) found low humor coping Ss displayed no relationship between stress and adjustment. The high humor coping Ss displayed a strong relationship between stress and adjustment.

A further complication occurs: because the CHS relies on Ss self-reported use of humor without testing their actual ability to create or appreciate humor, the CHS can be affected by social desirability bias. Most people consider themselves to have a good sense of humor. Up to 94% of Ss will state their sense of humor is average or above (Allport, 1961). Thus, humor measured

*Based on a presentation made at the American Psychological Association Convention, San Francisco, CA, August 1991.

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800 JAMES C.~VERHOLSER

by self-report may not be very accurate (Bizi, Keinan & Beit-Hallahmi, 1988). The established measures of humor focus on humor appreciation with little acknowledgement of the creative aspects of humor, and therefore can be affected by social desirability factors. The present study was designed to evaluate the relationships among stress, humor, and psychological adjustment. Humor was assessed by the CHS and a new scale that includes a combination of humor appreciation and humor creativity. Thus, a performance based measure was used to assess Ss ability to use their sense of humor in a structured assessment format.

METHODS

Subjects

Ninety-six undergraduate college students took part in this project in order to receive extra credit in a psychology course. Some Ss were part of a larger study on mood and personality (Overholser, 1992). The sample included 52 females with a mean age of 22.58 (SD = 6.81) and 46 males with a mean age of 19.85 (SD = 1.60). Females were significantly older than males, t(94) = 2.65, P < 0.01. All Ss completed the initial assessment and most (79%) were reassessed 7 weeks later in order to examine the predictive ability of the humor scales. Also, 29 Ss (30% of the sample) were retested on the humor scales 3 months after the initial assessment to evaluate the retest reliability of the humor scales.

Measures

The CHS (Martin & Lefcourt, 1983) includes 7 self-report statements evaluating the tendency to use humor when confronted with stressful events. Items are rated on a 4-point scale from Strongly Agree (1) to Strongly Disagree (4). This scale was used to determine the Ss self-reported tendencies to use humor when coping with stressful events. For categorical analyses, a median split was used to divide Ss into high vs low humor usage (median = 22.0). This is the same procedure used by other researchers (Martin & Lefcourt, 1983).

The Humor Appreciation Scale (HAS) consists of 14 captioned cartoons to be rated on a 5-point scale from Not Funny At All (1) to Very Funny (5). Humor appreciation was defined as the ability to understand and enjoy humorous messages (Ziv, 1984). Humor appreciation captures the perceived funniness of the cartoons (Herzog & Larwin, 1988) and appears adequately comprehen- sive for describing the different qualities involved in humor perception (Powell, 1986).

Humor Creativity Ratings (HCR) contain 8 cartoons without captions. Each cartoon contained a drawing of a stressful situation. Ss were asked to provide a humorous caption for each cartoon. Humor creativity was defined as the ability to perceive incongruous objects or ideas and convey them to others (Ziv, 1984). Humor creativity requires the ability to apply a sense of humor in stressful situations. The HCR were later scored by objective raters who scored each caption for its humorous qualities. Ss were given 15 min to complete the three humor scales.

The Life Experiences Survey (Sarason, Johnson & Siegel, 1978) asks Ss to rate 73 common life events in terms of their occurrence during the previous 6 months and the subjective impact of events that occurred. For scoring purposes, negative events were summed to provide a numerical estimate of the degree of negative life stress occurring during the previous 6 months.

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock & Erbaugh, 1961) uses 21 multiple choice items to quantify the different symptoms of depression. Items are summed to provide an estimate of depression severity. The BDI is a widely used and well standardized self-report measure (Beck, Steer & Garbin, 1988).

The UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau & Cutrona, 1980) contains 20 statements describing social relationships and feelings of isolation. This scale provides a useful estimate of the Ss perceived level of social supports. This scale was included to assess the subjective level of isolation and social distress.

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) includes 10 items rated from Strongly Agree (4) to Strongly Disagree (1). The Rosenberg SE scale provides a global estimate of positive self-esteem. This scale was included to assess Ss self-perceptions and appraisals of their strengths.

Sense of humor 801

HCR procedure

An additional 12 Ss participated as objective raters to score the humorous captions generated by the larger sample of Ss. The 12 raters were divided according to age and sex: 6 raters (3 male and 3 female) were between the ages of 18 and 22, and 6 (3 male and 3 female) were age 25 or older. In order to control for bias related to a negative mood state, the raters were first asked to complete the XL-90 subscales for depression, anxiety, and hostility (Derogatis, 1983). Only Ss scoring below f-scores of 60 on each of these three subscales were asked to continue the ratings. Next, raters were asked to complete the CHS in order to sensitize them to the difficulty in creating the humorous captions. Then, instructions were given on how to rate the captions on a scale from 1-5. There was no time limit for the raters; Therefore, all raters rated all captions. In order to control for possible fatigue effects on cartoons rated later in the packet, both Ss and cartoons were presented in randomized order.

RESULTS

First, the retest reliability of the humor scales was examined. Across the 12 week interval, the CHS obtained an adequate retest correlation, r(27) = 0.80, P < 0.01. The HAS obtained a somewhat lower reliability coefficient, r(27) = 0.60, P < 0.01. This was to be expected due to changes in perceived humor with repetition of the cartoon (Gavanski, 1986). The retest reliability of the HCR was not examined.

Preliminary analyses showed no sex differences on the CHS, t(96) = 0.63, NS, or on the HAS, t(96) = 0.60, NS. Also, the HCR showed no significant sex differences among the complete sample of raters, t(200) = 0.44, NS. Furthermore, age was not correlated with the measures of humor. Nonetheless, because previous research has found sex differences in humor (Rim, 1988), and to control for the age differences across the sexes, analyses were performed separately for each sex. On the HCR, a significant age effect was found across all raters, t(94) = 2.94, P < 0.01, as well as separately for male raters (younger vs older), t(94) = 4.46, P < 0.01. Therefore, the HCR were analyzed separately for younger raters (HCR-1) and older raters (HCR-2).

A series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relation- ship between measures of humor and psychological adjustment. All regression analyses were performed separately for each sex, and age was entered first as a covariate. Then, stress was added into the model. Next, the different humor measures were included in the model in stepwise fashion. Finally, the stress x humor interaction effects were added into the model. This order of entry is consistent with previous research on humor and stress (Nezu et al., 1988; Porterfield, 1987). This regression model was conducted separately to predict depression, loneliness, and self-esteem.

When predicting depression in females (see Table l), stress explained 7% of the variance. Humor measures explained 29% of the variance (CHS = 10%; HAS = 11%; HCR-2 = 8%). The inter- action between stress and HCR-2 explained an additional 16% of the variance, the interaction between stress and humor coping accounted for an additional 17% of the variance, and the interaction between stress and HCR-1 accounted for an additional 4% of the variance. Thus, for females, the entire predictive model accounted for 75% of the variance in Time 1 depression scores. Humor was not predictive of depression in males. At Time 2, BDI scores were not significantly related to humor for males or females.

Table 1. Multiple regression analyses to predict BDI scores in female Ss

Cumulative R* Increase in R* F value P value

Age 0.005 0.005 0.21 NS Stress 0.076 0.071 3.20 0.08 CHS 0.180 0.104 5.18 0.03 HAS 0.293 0.113 6.41 0.01 HCR-I 0.297 0.004 0.25 NS HCR-2 0.381 0.084 5.26 0.03 Stress x CHS 0.546 0.165 19.85 0.0001 Stress x HAS 0.553 0.007 0.90 NS Stress x HCR-1 0.595 0.042 5.66 0.02 Stress x HCR-2 0.750 0.155 12.40 0.001

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802 JAMB C. OVERHOLSER

Table 2. Multiple regression analyses to predict UCLA Loneliness Scale scores in male Ss

Cumulative R’ Increase in R2 F value P value

Age 0.014 0.014 0.53 NS stress 0.017 0.003 0.12 NS CHS 0.241 0.224 10.91 0.002 HAS 0.264 0.023 1.12 NS HCR-I 0.271 0.007 0.32 NS HCR-2 0.276 0.005 0.24 NS Stress x CHS 0.312 0.036 2.02 NS Stress x HAS 0.3 I3 0.001 0.05 NS Stress x HCR-I 0.368 0.055 3.00 0.09 Stress x HCR-2 0.447 0.079 4.06 0.05

For males, humor was related to loneliness (see Table 2). Coping humor accounted for 22% of the variance in UCLA Loneliness scores, and the interaction between stress and HCR-2 accounted for an additional 8% of the variance. For males, the entire predictive model accounted for 45% of the variance in Time 1 loneliness scores. Loneliness in females was only significantly related to the interaction between stress and HCR-1, RZ = 0.129, F(7,37) = 6.56, P < 0.01. At Time 2, UCLA scores were not significantly related to the measures of humor for males or females.

Humor was related to self-esteem in both sexes (see Table 3). For males, coping humor accounted for 16% of the variance in Rosenberg SE scores, and HCR-1 accounted for an additional 9% of the variance. For females, humor coping explained 8% of the variance in self-esteem scores. The interaction between stress and HCR-1 explained an additional 12% of the variance. The interaction between stress and HCR-2 explained an additional 9% of the variance. Thus, the full predictive model explained 36% of the variance for males and 45% of the variance for females in their Time 1 self-esteem scores. For females at Time 2, humor appreciation accounted for 19% of the variance, R* = 0.188, F(3,33) = 8.03, P < 0.01. Coping humor accounted for an additional 9.5% of the variance, R2 = 0.095, F(4,32) = 4.48, P < 0.04.

In order to more closely examine the relationships among the different measures, a series of Pearson correlations were computed separately by sex and degree of humor coping reported by the Ss. Correlations showed that humor creativity was inversely related to depression severity, but only for the low CHS Ss (see Table 4). In contrast, depression correlated with life stress for the high CHS females. When examining loneliness scores, humor creativity was associated with reduced loneliness for the low CHS Ss. Self-esteem was related to stress for the high CHS Ss, and related to humor creativity for low CHS Ss.

Table 3. Multiple regression analyses to predict Rosenberg SE Scale scores in males and females separately

Cumulative R2 Increase in R2 F value P value

Males Age 0.006 0.006 0.23 NS stress 0.010 0.004 0.16 NS CHS 0.168 0.158 7.04 0.01 HAS 0.168 0.000 0.01 NS HCR-I 0.260 0.092 4.48 0.04 HCR-2 0.260 0.000 0.00 NS Stress x CHS 0.290 0.030 I .47 NS Stress x HAS 0.324 0.034 1.64 NS Stress x HCR-1 0.342 0.018 0.86 NS Stress x HCR-2 0.356 0.014 0.68 NS

FtTdeS Age 0.001 0.001 0.33 NS Stress 0.063 0.062 2.81 NS CHS 0.145 0.082 4.10 0.05 HAS 0.191 0.046 2.14 NS HCR-1 0.192 0.001 0.06 NS HCR-2 0.194 0.002 0.11 NS Stress x CHS 0.221 0.027 1.29 NS Stress x HAS 0.232 0.01 I 0.67 NS Stress x HCR- I 0.357 0.125 6.95 0.01 Stress x HCR-2 0.450 0.093 5.87 0.02

Sense of humor 803

Table 4. Pearson correlations between measures of humor and life stress as correlated with emotional functioning at Time 1 and 2 for the four groups of Ss

High humor coping Low humor coping

Correlations with Males Females Males Females

Time 1 BDI scores HAS HCR-1 HCR-2 Stress

Time 2 BDI scores HAS HCR-I HCR-2 stress

Time I UCLA scores HAS HCR-1 HCR-2 stress

Time 2 UCLA scores HAS HCR-1 HCR-2 Stress

Time 1 RSE scores HAS HCR-I HCR-2 Stress

Time 2 RSE scores HAS HCR- I HCR-2

-0.21 0.04 0.19 -0.10 0.17 -0.09 0.16 0.55”

-0.20 0.13 0.22

-0.15

-0.01 0.03 0.03 0.35”

0.30 0.37’ -0.72*** -0.54** -0.67.. -0.61**’

0.358 0.03

0.20 0.31a -O.SO*** -0.60** -0.76*” -0.61**

0.28 0.11

0.14 0.19 0.04 0.24 0.10 0.25 -0.57.’ -0.10 0.13 0.26 -0.58” -0.21

-0.07 0.20 -0.07 0.34’

-0.02 0.08 0.14 0.41’ 0.08 0.23 -0.75** -0.51’8 0.15 0.23 -0.76**’ -0.56**

-0.07 0.23 0.04 0.18

0.36 - 0.08 -0.27 -0.53** 0.01 - 0.07 0.86”’ -0.02 0.01 -0.09 0.87”’ 0.05 0.01 -0.56” -0.17 0.07

0.20 0.22 0.34 -0.77*** -0.05 -0.18 0.75’1 0.28 -0.11 -0.22 0.78*** 0.28

0.12 -0.47’ -0.20 0.28

a = P < 0.10; * = P < 0.05; ** = P < 0.01; *** = P < 0.001. RSE = Rosenberg Self-Esteen Scale; Time I = Initial assessment; Time 2 = Follow-up

assessment 10 weeks later.

DISCUSSION

The present findings are in agreement with earlier reports (e.g. Martin & Lefcourt, 1983) showing that humor tends to modify the relationship between life stress and psychological adjustment. However, the present findings examined the nature of this relationship in more detail than had been done in earlier studies. The present results show that the effects of humor vary with the degree of life stress, the frequency with which humor is used, the sex of the Ss, and the particular emotional reaction being examined.

Humor was found to have significant effects on depression, loneliness and self-esteem. Ss who reported using humor to cope with stressful situations were found to be less depressed, less lonely, and report higher levels of self-esteem. However, these effects appear to be short-term in nature, having disappeared when Ss were reassessed 7 weeks later. Multiple regression analyses found few significant effects at Time 2, but many simple correlations remained significant across the 7 week interval. Thus, humor as measured by the CHS seems to have important but perhaps temporary effects on psychological adjustment.

Ss that reported infrequently using humor to cope with stress displayed strong correlations between humor appreciation and humor creativity with depression, loneliness, and self-esteem. In contrast, Ss who often used humor to cope displayed nonsignificant correlations between humor and psychological adjustment. Instead, for the high humor coping Ss, stress was more likely to be significantly related to depression and self-esteem. Thus, it appears that to be effective, humor must be used judiciously. If used excessively, humor loses its coping power and the person loses their social attractiveness (the “Uncle Joe” syndrome). The person may begin to use humor as a form of denial. An overuse of humor may be used to avoid dealing with problems (Haig, 1986). Selective use of humor helps to retain its effectiveness. In previous research (Rim, 1988), the CHS has been correlated with a tendency to minimize problems. This may explain why the present correlations were strong for the low but not high humor coping Ss.

The humor scales used in the present study assessed humor from three different perspectives: the self-reported use of humor as a coping strategy, a tendency to appreciate humor, and the ability

804 JAMES C. OVERHOLSER

to create humorous responses. Similar to earlier reports (O’Connell, 1969), humor appreciation and humor creativity were found to be separate dimensions of a sense of humor. In contrast to humor appreciation, humor creativity was more strongly correlated with measures of psychological adjustment. Because objective raters were used to quantify the captions produced by Ss, the humor creativity ratings did not rely on the Ss self-report of humor usage. Thus, social desirability and response bias are less likely to influence these ratings. Future research may be able to refine the scoring of humor creativity so as to reduce our reliance on Ss self-reports.

Acknowledgements--I thank Donna Zloba for her assistance with the data collection and Patti Watson for comments made on an earlier version of this manuscript. Cartoons were reproduced with permission of Universal Press Syndicate (The Far Side, Herman).

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