Style of humor

It is no doubt that humor is a way to enrich our daily life. Humoring jokes let us laugh at even a tough situation. There are many examples of great persons saying a humorous comment in a conflict. Ronald Reagan, an ex-President of the US said when entering the operation room after being shot by a hitman; "I am glad if you doctors are all Republicans." The doctor replied, "We are all Republicans today."

The styles of humor are various in its subject and attitude to it. Recently, researchers found some kind of humor is rather harmful to the user's psychological health, while others are benign. According to them, they are categorized into four types: Self-enhancing, Affiliating, Self-defeating, and Aggressive.

A study proved that self-enhancing and affiliative humor are associated with improved self-esteem. In contrast, self-defeating humor is associative with low self-esteem. With another study, researchers hypothesized the vicious circle between self-defeating humor and depressive mood. Thus, depressive people tend to use a self-defeating talk. At the same time, such humor does deteriorate your mood.

Journal of Research in Personality: Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire

This theory of humor style is also applicable to children. Some adolescents exclusively using self-defeating humor will be depressive, according to the prospective study.

Europe's Journal of Psychology: Longitudinal Associations Between Humor Styles and Psychosocial Adjustment in Adolescence

It is interesting that, however, some people loving humor, called as humor endorsers, are more likely to use the self-defeating style of humor, as well as the other categories, than those who exclusively use it. In this case, they do not become depressive due to the use of self-defeating humor. Researchers guess that adaptive type of humor antidotes the harm of self-defeating humor.

The Conversation: What a child’s humour reveals about their psychological well-being

My idea is different. Humor endorsers sense the content of humor differently from other persons. They are resistant to invasive stimulation of subtle jokes. As well, they identify tough situation not as it is but a funny, challenging, or merely strange one. Therefore, they can avoid the risk of receiving negative image following the failure.

The matter is how can we feel like humor endorsers. It is not easy to act as same as them. And, unfortunately, frequent use of adaptive humor is not enough for you to change your basic mentality. I have no answer to it. It would be great if you find a certain way of altering your negative tendency.