User:Majobc11/sandbox

Humor styles are a topic of research in the field of personality psychology related to the ways in which individuals differ in their use of humor in everyday life. People of all ages and backgrounds engage in humor but they ways people use humor can vary greatly. Humor can be used to enhance the self or enhance one's relationship with others. Humor can be relatively benevolent or potentially detrimental (either to the self or others). The combination of these factors create four distinct humor styles: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating. Some styles of humor promote health and well-being while other styles can be potentially detrimental to mental and physical health.

Affiliative Humor
This dimension of humor is used to enhance one’s relationships with others in a benevolent, positive manner. Individuals high in this dimension often use humor as a way to charm others, ease tension among others, and improve relationships. They are often spontaneous in their joke telling and frequently participate in witty banter with others. Research suggests that individuals who report high levels of affiliative humor are more likely to initiate friendships.

Self-enhancing Humor
Self-enhancing humor relates to the dimension of humor is used to enhance the self in a benevolent, positive manner. This type of humor is best understood as a type of coping humor in which individuals are use humor to look on the bright side of a bad situation, find the silver lining or maintain a positive attitude even in trying times.

Aggressive Humor
This dimension represents the potentially detrimental use of humor towards others. This type of humor is characterized by the use of sarcasm, put-downs, teasing, ridicule and other types of humor used at the expense of others.

Self-defeating Humor
This dimension is characterized by the use of potentially detrimental humor towards the self. Individuals high in this dimension engage in self-disparaging humor in which laughter is often at their own expense. Self-defeating humor often comes in the form of pleasing others while being the “butt” of the joke.