Yawp Mag Issue 29 The Five Humour Styles | Page 14

self enhanc
by Robyn Brown
We have all experienced stress at some
stage of our lives; stress over our careers,
our finances, our relationships, the potential
death of our favourite television characters.
We have accepted that it is commonplace
in today’s success-driven society and the
ways in which we deal with this stress varies
quite dramatically from person to person.
Rod Martin uses the term self-enhancing
humour to describe an intra-psychic form
of humour used to cope with adversity and
involves the ability to see the funny side of
life. People who report using more of this
style of humour are able to find amusement
in their daily lives and often have their own
internal jokes (like an “in-joke” with yourself!).
Recently, while doing my grocery shopping,
I noticed that the word condiments, when
said slowly, sounds like the words “condom”
and “mints”. Immediately, the image of tiny
breath mints for condoms sprung to mind
and aisle eight of Safeway witnessed my fits
of giggles.

Given its optimistic nature, it is not surprising
that self-enhancing humour is associated
with higher levels of self-esteem, greater
psychological wellbeing, and higher
perceived quality of life and is thought to
be a healthy defense mechanism. These

individuals avoid negative emotions, while
still keeping a realistic perspective on a
potentially aversive situation, and tend to
possess a positive attributional style. In
Psychology, attributional style refers to the
way in which people explain life events.
Negative attributional styles are used to
describe maladaptive thinking in depression
where these individuals are likely to explain
the causes of negative events in terms of
stable (unchanging), global and internal
causes. For example, burning dinner might
result in thoughts such as, “That was
my fault” (internal), “I can’t do anything
right” (this reflects a global feature of their
personality) and “I am always going to
hopeless at everything and I’ll never be
able to cook dinner without it burning”
(reflecting that is never going to change i.e.
stable). Another important concept includes
self-schemas, which are essentially an
established pattern of thought summarizing
a person’s perceptions of himself or herself
and individuals diagnosed with depression
tend to have a negative self-schema.
Because schemas and attributional styles
generally develop earlier in life, it has
been argued that those individuals with
early maladaptive schemas are less likely
to engage in adaptive humour styles,
such as self-enhancing humour. Dozois,
Martin, Bieling (2009) gave 305 participants
a questionnaire measuring depressive
symptoms, humour styles and maladaptive
schemas. They found that self-enhancing