Abstract
Correlational studies have suggested that self-directed humor (SDH) has positive and negative dimensions, namely deleterious and benign SDH, that have opposite functions on psychological well-being. Therefore, this study conducts two vignette experiments to test the causal relationships between deleterious SDH and increased state anxiety and between benign SDH and decreased state anxiety in stressful situations involving exclusion by others. In Experiment 1, college students were instructed to imagine they used deleterious or benign SDH after being ostracized by others. Participants in the control condition only imagined that they had been excluded by others. As a result, participants in the benign SDH condition reported lower levels of state anxiety than participants in the control condition. This result was replicated in Experiment 2 for working adults. Overall, the experimental results support a causal model indicating that benign SDH positively affects psychological well-being, supporting and extending the results of correlational studies.
Given the continuing interest in positive psychology, individual differences in humor are receiving increasing research attention. Individual differences in habitual humor use in daily life are believed to be closely related to people’s psychological well-being, and there have been several studies in the 21st century aimed at identifying the use of potentially harmful or beneficial humor for psychological well-being. Self-directed humor (SDH) is one of the various types of humor that individuals use in their daily lives that has recently received attention and been intensively investigated in relation to psychological well-being. SDH refers to humor, entertainment, jokes, and laughter directed at oneself (Heintz, 2017; Heintz & Ruch, 2018); it is the type of humor with which individuals make fun of themselves and their characteristics, habits, or experiences. A hypothetical model, the dual self-directed humor model, was proposed by Tsukawaki and Imura (2020), in which SDH has two dimensions with opposing functions for psychological well-being. The model was tested by correlational methods (Tsukawaki & Imura, 2020, 2021; Tsukawaki et al., 2022), yielding promising results supporting the hypothesis. However, Tsukawaki and colleagues (Tsukawaki & Imura, 2020, 2021; Tsukawaki et al., 2022) encouraged studies employing experimental designs to further determine the causal relationship underlying SDH and psychological well-being. The vignette experiment was used as a starting point for this study to experimentally examine the relationship between the use of the two-dimensional SDH and psychological well-being.
Dual Self-Directed Humor Model
Over the past two decades, many researchers interested in individual differences in humor use have used the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003) to measure individual differences in SDH. The HSQ is an instrument consisting of four subscales that comprehensively assesses individual differences in the use of humor, as it affects psychological well-being; the four subscales include three humor scales (affiliative, self-reinforcing, and offensive) as well as a self-defeating humor scale to measure individual differences in SDH. Martin et al. (2003), the developers of the HSQ, conceptualized SDH as a potentially maladaptive type of humor that seeks acceptance from others by forcibly hiding one’s negative feelings and overly sacrificing oneself. However, Tsukawaki and Imura (2020) emphasized that both contemporary psychologists (McGhee, 2010; Ziv, 1984) and prominent past psychologists (Allport, 1961; Maslow, 1954) have argued that the use of SDH is a characteristic of a mature and favorable personality, and is beneficial for psychological well-being. As a result, Tsukawaki and Imura identified a serious shortcoming of empirical research in this area, that is, it ignores the positive and constructive core of SDH.
As such, Tsukawaki and Imura proposed the dual self-directed humor model, which conceptualizes an individual’s use of SDH through two independent dimensions. The model proposes that SDH has both detrimental and beneficial effects on psychological well-being, with these two dimensions of SDH being referred to as deleterious and benign SDH, respectively. The difference between the two SDHs lies in the intention to use them and the degree of self-denial. Deleterious SDH is a concept derived from the self-defeating humor scale (Martin et al., 2003) and is a negative dimension of SDH. Individuals with high levels of deleterious SDH use it to flatter others and be accepted by their surroundings. Notably, they use SDH that is overly self-denigrating. These individuals use SDH as a form of defensive denial to hide their negative feelings and avoid dealing with a problem (Kubie, 1971). Furthermore, although users of this type of SDH expect to create a place for themselves in interpersonal relationships, their approach, in fact, increases the likelihood of rejection by others (Kuiper et al., 2010). As a result, the use of deleterious SDH is thought to undermine psychological well-being (Tsukawaki & Imura, 2020).
Benign SDH is conceptualized as reflecting the positive aspects of SDH. It refers to the use of SDH to detach oneself from the problems faced and make light of stressful events (Tsukawaki & Imura, 2020). Therefore, it does not involve excessive self-denial as in the case of deleterious SDH. This type of SDH functions as a defense mechanism (Ziv, 1984), enabling people to face their problems head-on and laugh about them proudly while maintaining a strong self-image and sense of dignity, thereby enabling them to actively address the fears and anxieties arising from their problems (McGhee, 2010). Such positive uses of SDH function as positive reframing (Tsukawaki & Imura, 2020) and are thought to change negative perceptions of stressful situations into positive perceptions, promote positive problem-solving behavior and acceptance of stressful situations, and thus lead individuals to adaptive states (Major et al., 1998). Moreover, encountering individuals who openly mock their weaknesses can lead people to develop feelings of empathy, gratitude, and even fondness toward them (Ziv, 1984). Therefore, it is believed that adopting a benign SDH approach can positively impact psychological well-being (Tsukawaki & Imura, 2020).
Based on these conceptualizations of benign and deleterious SDH, Tsukawaki and Imura (2020, 2021) developed the dual self-directed humor scale (DSDHS), the first self-report questionnaire to measure individual differences in SDH use on two independent dimensions, and showed promising initial evidence for the scale’s reliability and validity. Tsukawaki and Imura (2020) analyzed the association between the DSDHS and a wide range of psychological well-being indicators. It was found that deleterious SDH was negatively correlated with adaptive indicators of psychological well-being (self-esteem, subjective sense of well-being, perceived health, and social support) and positively correlated with maladaptive measures (trait anxiety, depression, aggression, and loneliness). Furthermore, the correlation pattern between benign SDH and these measures of psychological well-being was opposite to that of deleterious SDH. These findings supported their hypothesized model, suggesting that the two dimensions of SDH have opposite effects on psychological well-being.
Recently, Tsukawaki et al. (2022) also examined the relationship between the DSDHS and measures of psychological well-being by employing a longitudinal design to obtain evidence for a causal relationship. They performed cross-lagged panel analyses to examine the relationship between the use of two-dimensional SDH and measures of psychological well-being (depression, trait anxiety, and subjective well-being), controlling for the initial values of each construct. The authors found that deleterious SDH predicted an increase in depression after 3 months and that benign SDH predicted a decrease in depression and anxiety after 3 months.
Although Tsukawaki et al. (2022), using a longitudinal dataset, provided promising evidence for a causal effect of SDH use on psychological well-being, they recommended a study with an experimental design to further increase the robustness of this causal pathway. Thus, we used an experimental approach to test the effects of the use of the two dimensions of SDH on psychological well-being.
Humor Use and Psychological Well-being: Several Experimental Studies
Exploring the underlying basic causal relationship between humor use and psychological well-being is a major research challenge. Early experimental studies in this area showed that viewing a stress-producing video and generating a humorous narrative based on the content of the video reduced physiological stress responses, lessened emotional distress, and decreased negative affect (Lefcourt & Martin, 1986; Martin & Lefcourt, 1983; Newman & Stone, 1996). However, a limitation of these early experimental studies was that they did not distinguish between different types of humor.
Samson and Gross (2012) conducted a study that broadly categorized humor as positive or negative. Participants viewed pictures that elicited negative emotions (e.g., skulls) with instructions to look at them, rate them using positive humor, or rate them using negative humor. In the positive humor condition, participants were instructed to cognitively reappraise the pictures with sympathetic, tolerant, and benevolent amusement, focusing on the imperfections of life and human beings or on the absurdities of the situation without becoming hostile or depreciating. In the negative humor condition, participants were instructed to laugh in these situations in a hostile, superior way, mocking others to create an emotional distance. The results showed that participants who used either positive or negative humor reported an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect; however, the effect was more pronounced with the use of positive humor than with the use of negative humor. Subsequent studies replicated the results of Samson and Gross (2012), reporting that the use of positive humor had an emotion regulation function (Braniecka et al., 2019; Kugler & Kuhbandner, 2015). However, these studies only broadly categorized humor as positive and negative and did not consider humor as subdivided by Martin et al. (2003) and Tsukawaki and Imura (2020, 2021).
These studies simplified humor into a dichotomy of positive and negative humor. Contemporary humor psychologists, however, have expanded the concept of humor and subdivided humor as it relates to psychological health by purpose of use and form. The framework by Martin et al. (2003) posits two types of positive humor: affiliative humor, which involves jokes and wit to strengthen social relationships, and self-enhancing humor to maintain a positive view of one’s own life. Tsukawaki and Imura (2020, 2021) argue that this should also include humor that embraces laughing at oneself to distance oneself from problems. Samson and Gross (2012) described negative humor as hostile, but humor with excessive self-denigration used to flatter others is also considered unhealthy (Martin et al., 2003; Tsukawaki & Imura, 2020, 2021). Future research should take these subdivisions of humor into account and examine their relationship with psychological health.
Employing a vignette experiment, Ford et al. (2017) examined the effects on state anxiety of engaging in self-enhancing humor and self-defeating humor by having participants imagine a stressful event of taking a difficult math test. The experiment was conducted via the web, and participants in the self-enhancing humor condition received the following instruction: “Please maintain a humorous perspective in the face of this stressful event. Try to find amusement in the absurdity of this whole situation of being surprised with a math test. […]. As you put yourself in the situation of taking a difficult math test, use the cartoons and jokes to maintain a humorous, light-hearted outlook on the whole thing.” Participants then read four cartoons and four jokes that poked fun at math tests and math in general, to help them view stressful situations in a humorous and light-hearted way. They were then instructed to type in their favorite joke.
Participants in the self-defeating humor condition were instructed to put themselves down by using humor that made fun of themselves or their math abilities: “I want you to think about this situation in a humorous way that makes fun of your math ability and puts yourself down in the face of inevitable difficulty you are going to have with the test. Rodney Dangerfield was a master at this kind of humor, ingratiating himself by making fun of his weaknesses. […]. As you put yourself in the situation of having to take a difficult math test, use the cartoons and jokes to humorously put yourself down to lessen the sting of doing poorly on the test.” Ensuingly, the participants read four cartoons and four jokes poking fun at their mathematical abilities and entered the ones they liked best.
Participants in the control condition only imagined the stressful situation and were given no instructions. The experiment found that engaging in self-enhancing humor reduced state anxiety, while the use of self-defeating humor had no such function.
A study by Ford et al. (2017) examined the effects of humor on stress induced by taking math exams. However, humor is an inherently social phenomenon, and we know that we laugh and joke more often when we are with others than when we are alone (Martin & Kuiper, 1999; Provin & Fischer, 1989). Therefore, examining the effects of humor used in social interactions with others seems to be an interesting perspective in this area.
The Present Research
Recent studies examining the effects of humor use on psychological well-being have emphasized the need to consider the type of humor. To date, however, no experimental studies have examined the effects of humor use on psychological well-being by considering the two dimensions of SDH distinguished by Tsukawaki and Imura (2020, 2021). The present study employed a vignette experiment similar to Ford et al. (2017) to examine the effects of two types of SDH use on state anxiety. We agree that vignette experiments are not always suitable for studying complex communicative and social phenomena. However, we believe that they could complement findings from correlational studies and advance knowledge of the causal relationship between SDH use and state anxiety.
Many previous studies have examined the effects of humor on stress induced by viewing stress-inducing pictures in the laboratory or taking math exams. However, given that humor is an inherently social phenomenon that often occurs in the context of daily social interactions (Martin & Kuiper, 1999; Provine & Fischer, 1989), it is important to capture humor in interpersonal interactions. Therefore, the present study examines the effects of humor in response to stressful events that occur during social interactions. Specifically, we tested the effects of using two types of SDH on state anxiety in interpersonal stressful situations, such as being excluded by friends.
To achieve this goal, two experiments were conducted in this study. In Experiment 1, college students were asked to imagine that they used deleterious or benign SDH to cope with a stressful situation, and the effects on state anxiety were examined. In Experiment 2, some of the procedures were modified to ensure the seriousness and motivation of participants in the control condition. In addition, the sample was changed to working adults to determine whether the results of Experiment 1 could be replicated in this population. Through the two experiments, we tested the hypotheses derived from the dual self-directed humor model proposed by Tsukawaki and Imura (2020, 2021); that is, deleterious SDH increases state anxiety (Hypothesis 1), and benign SDH decreases state anxiety (Hypothesis 2).
Experiment 1
Method
Participants and Design
From the panel members of Freeasy (https://freeasy.research-plus.net/lp/), a leading online research service in Japan, 370 Japanese university students provided informed consent to participate in the online experiment. Among these 370 students, those who were unable to follow the instructions to engage in SDH were excluded (for details, see the section on data selection and deletion below), leaving 180 participants (80 men and 100 women) for the final analysis. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions, with the type of humor (benign, deleterious, or control) as a between-participant factor. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 44 years, with a mean age of 21.58 years (SD = 3.51).
The needed sample size was calculated with G*Power software version 3.1.9.7. Data from this study were analyzed using a one-way analysis of variance; a minimum sample of 159 participants was needed to detect a moderate effect size (f = 0.25) with sufficient power (0.80), as recommended by Cohen (1992).
Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethical Committee of the Graduate School of Education, Saga University, for the study (approval code: 21007). All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. All participants provided online informed consent prior to being monitored.
Procedure
Participants who provided informed consent received access to a link to the study. People experience a variety of negative emotions when excluded by others, including anxiety (MacDonald & Leary, 2005; Williams & Zadro, 2005). As such, participants were given a vignette created for this study that depicted the stressful situation of being excluded from friends. They were instructed to read the vignette carefully, imagining the “you” in the vignette to be themselves. The vignettes were as follows, describing a story of exclusion by friends:
One holiday morning, you decide to go for a walk in a nearby park. You ask Amazon Alexa about the day’s weather, but no matter how many times you ask, it doesn’t respond, so you watch TV to make sure the weather will be clear. In addition, you take your mutt pet dog named Pochi to the park to relax. You’re wearing a white T-shirt and white shorts because you didn’t want to dress neatly. Your hair is as it was when you woke up, not styled. You notice that two of your good friends from the same university are sitting in the park, happily chatting and drinking tea. You decide to enjoy conversation with these friends, so you go over to them and greet them with a “good morning.” However, your friends seem to be having a lively conversation, and after a curt “Hi,” they continue to enjoy their conversation, seemingly oblivious to your presence. You watch them for a while, but it seems that the two friends have no intention of including you in their conversation.
The information in the first paragraph was intended to provide participants with information to facilitate the generation of SDHs that poke fun and laugh at themselves.
Manipulation of Independent Variables
After reading the vignette, participants in the benign SDH and deleterious SDH conditions read additional instructions to manipulate humor. Participants in the control condition were given no additional instructions. Participants in the benign SDH condition were given the following instruction: There are people around us who cheerfully laugh off bad luck and misfortune that happens to them with jokes that poke fun at themselves. These people tell jokes that poke fun at themselves in a light-hearted and cheerful way in order to make light of and laugh off unpleasant events without taking them too seriously. Now, think of one light-hearted joke to make fun of yourself in the above situation, in the same way as these people. As you devise one, please write it down in the box below. For example, “Recently, I crashed into a door because the automatic door didn’t respond. No matter how many times I ask Amazon Alexa, it ignores me. I wonder if I’m not very present, lol,” and so on.
Participants in the deleterious SDH condition were given the following additional instructions: We are surrounded by people who make jokes at the excessive expense of themselves in order to flatter others. These people prioritize pandering to others so much that they make jokes that hurt themselves, even by suppressing their negative feelings. Now, considering the above situation, think of one joke that is overly self-serving to you. If you conceive one, please write it down in the box below. “Recently, I crashed into a door because the automatic door didn’t respond. No matter how many times I ask Amazon Alexa, it ignores me. I must be a worthless person whose existence is not recognized by anyone lol,” and so on.
Measurement of the Dependent Variable
The Japanese version (Shimizu & Imae, 1981) of the State Anxiety Scale (Spielberger et al., 1970) was used to measure state anxiety. This scale consists of 20 items measuring anxiety as an emotional state, and participants rated each item on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Not at all) to 4 (Very much so). The responses to the 20 items were averaged to form an overall measure of state anxiety in the imagined situation. The Cronbach’s alpha for the 20 items was 0.88.
Participants in the benign SDH and deleterious SDH conditions completed the State Anxiety Scale, imagining that they had used the indicated type of SDH in response to the stressful situation depicted in the vignette. Participants in the control condition completed the State Anxiety Scale while imagining they were placed in the stressful situation depicted in the vignette.
Data Selection and Deletion
The study initially randomly assigned 180 participants to the three conditions, with 60 participants in each condition. Participants in the benign SDH and deleterious SDH conditions were evaluated by two independent raters on whether they were able to follow the instructions to engage in the appropriate form of SDH, that is, humor that made fun of themselves, their traits, habits, and experiences in either a benign or deleterious way. The raters were briefed on the characteristics and differences between malignant and benign SDH, and it was explained that the difference between the two lies in the intention to use SDH and the degree of self-denial. They were taught that malignant SDH is used to flatter others and be accepted by those around them and is characterized by excessive self-negative content. On the other hand, benign SDH is used to detach oneself from the problems faced and downplay stressful events, and is not accompanied by excessive self-denial, as is the case with malignant SDH. After confirming that the raters were fully aware of the two SDHs, each participant was asked to judge whether or not they were following the instructions. Both raters judged participants with benign SDH conditions first and those with malignant SDH conditions later. SDHs rated differently by the raters were discussed until they could decide whether to select or delete them. The SDHs generated by all participants prior to deletion and the raters’ judgments about them are available to the public (https://osf.io/wve7x/?view_only=514738e097ed4b0381bbca1dd9511ec1). As a result, data from 22 (36.67%) participants in the benign SDH condition and 28 (46.67%) participants in the deleterious SDH condition were selected, while the other participants were removed because they failed to correctly engage in SDH. The interrater reliability was sufficiently high, with kappa = .96 in the benign SDH condition and kappa = .93 in the deleterious SDH condition.
To ensure the recommended minimum sample size, we recruited an additional 190 participants and randomly assigned 120 to the benign SDH condition and 70 to the deleterious SDH condition, using the valid response rate of the initial sample as a reference. Then, as in the initial sample, participants were evaluated by two independent raters on whether they were able to engage in SDH. The interrater reliability was sufficiently high, with kappa = .93 for the benign SDH condition and kappa = .91 for the deleterious SDH condition. As a result, 37 (30.83%) and 33 (47.14%) participants were selected for further analysis in the benign SDH and deleterious SDH conditions, respectively. Thus, Experiment 1 included data from 59 participants in the benign SDH condition, 61 participants in the deleterious SDH condition, and 60 participants in the control condition.
Overall, 51.35% of the participants in Experiment 1 were excluded because they were unable to work on their SDH. The majority (90.52%) of those removed participants did not describe their SDH and either entered meaningless words, such as “aaaa” and “bn,” or words that indicated giving up, such as “none” and “no idea” (this trend was also true in Experiment 2). In recent years, participant satisfaction in online surveys has become an issue, which means that participants do not devote adequate attentional resources to the survey (Krosnick, 1991). According to Miura and Kobayashi (2015), who examined the tendency of participants’ satisfaction in several online survey companies in Japan, only approximately half of the participants read and followed the instructions thoroughly. The exclusion rate in this study is roughly consistent with this figure. From this, Miura and Kobayashi (2015) noted that screening should be arranged when conducting online surveys or experiments. In this study, the task of reading the presented vignettes and working on the SDH also functioned as a screening, and participants who developed satisficing were likely excluded.
To determine whether there was a difference in the degree of self-denial for the 59 benign SDHs and 61 deleterious SDHs entered by the participants, 35 university students (16 men, 18 women, and 1 other; Mage = 20.54; SDage = 3.29) majoring in psychology at a private university in Japan were surveyed. The vignettes used in the experiment were presented to the participants, who were asked to respond to 120 SDHs on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from (1) not at all self-denial to (5) very self-denial. A t-test to see if there was a difference between the means of benign SDH and deleterious SDH revealed that deleterious SDH was judged to be more self-negative, t (34) = 15.06, d = 1.05, p < .001. This suggests that the manipulation of the condition was valid.
Examples of benign SDHs entered by participants include “I’m invisible only today! lol!” and “Alexa, how can I not be ignored by my friends? Oh my gosh, Alexa ignores you too! lol!” Examples of deleterious SDH are “In the end, you don’t care about me like this, the conversation is more important…. I can’t admit it to my friends as well as the machine lol” or “I’m such a human scum, aren’t I? I’ve finally become such a human scum that even Alexa ignores me lol.”
Results and Discussion
The mean and standard deviation of the state anxiety scores for the three conditions are shown in Table 1. Differences in state anxiety scores among participants in the three conditions were analyzed by a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results showed that the effect of the humor manipulation was significant, F(2, 177) = 6.21,
Mean State Anxiety Scores as a Function of Humor Manipulation in Experiment 1.
Note. Scores range from 1 to 4; SDH = Self-Directed Humor.
Experiment 1 was conducted with a sample of college students. However, Experiment 2 was conducted with a sample of working adults to determine whether the findings from Experiment 1 would be replicated in a different sample. In Experiment 1, participants in the benign SDH condition and those in the deleterious SDH condition were instructed to describe the SDH they used in response to the administered vignettes, and only those who followed this instruction were included in the analysis. However, participants in the control condition were not given such instructions, so all participants were included in the analysis, as in Experiment 2. Therefore, sample characteristics (e.g., seriousness and motivation) may not have been homogeneous across conditions. To remedy this, in Experiment 2, participants assigned to the control condition were asked to guess what the protagonist’s personality was and to describe it in a text box. Only participants who followed this instruction were included in the analysis.
Experiment 2
Method
Participants and Design
A total of 330 Japanese working adults who provided informed consent participated in the online experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions, with the type of humor (benign, deleterious, or control) as a between-participants factor. Participants ranged in age from 23 to 49 years, with a mean age of 39.85 years (SD = 7.06). The sample recruitment methods and sample size calculations were the same as in Experiment 1. As in Experiment 1, participants who failed to follow the instructions to describe their use of SDH in the benign SDH and deleterious SDH conditions, as well as those who did not describe the protagonist’s personality in the control condition, were excluded (for details, see the section on data selection and deletion below). The total number of participants included in the final analysis was 179 (75 men and 104 women).
Procedure
In Experiment 2, the word “university” was replaced with “company” in the vignette. In addition, instructions were added to the control condition of Experiment 1. Specifically, participants in the control condition who read the vignette were asked to describe the kind of personality they thought the protagonist had. The other instructions and the State Anxiety Scale were the same as those in Experiment 1. The Cronbach’s alpha of the State Anxiety Scale in Experiment 2 was .92.
Data Selection and Deletion
The study initially randomly assigned 180 participants to the three conditions, with 60 participants in each condition. Two independent raters assessed whether participants in the benign SDH and deleterious SDH conditions could describe the SDH they used according to the instructions and whether participants assigned to the control condition could describe what the protagonist’s personality was like according to the instructions. Ultimately, 29 (48.33%) participants were selected for analysis in the benign SDH and deleterious SDH conditions, respectively, and 40 (66.67%) participants were selected in the control condition. The interrater reliability was sufficiently high: kappa = .87 for the benign SDH condition, kappa = .93 for the deleterious SDH condition, and kappa = .88 for the control condition.
To ensure the recommended minimum sample size, we recruited an additional 150 participants and randomly assigned 60 to the benign SDH condition, 60 to the deleterious SDH condition, and 30 to the control condition, using the valid response rate of the initial sample as a reference. Subsequently, as in the initial sample, two independent raters judged whether the participants followed the instructions. The interrater reliability was sufficiently high, with kappa = .83 in the benign SDH condition, kappa = .90 in the deleterious SDH condition, and kappa = .92 in the control condition. As a result, 26 (43.33%), 34 (56.67%), and 21 (70.00%) participants were selected for further analysis in the benign SDH, deleterious SDH, and control conditions, respectively. Thus, Experiment 2 included data from a sample of 55 participants in the benign SDH condition, 63 participants in the deleterious SDH condition, and 61 participants in the control condition.
Following the same procedure as in Experiment 1, 35 university students majoring in psychology at a private university in Japan (16 men, 18 women, and 1 other; Mage = 19.83; SDage = 1.42) were surveyed to determine whether there was a difference in the degree of self-denial for the 55 benign SDH and 63 deleterious SDH entered by the participants. A t-test was used to examine whether there was a difference in self-denial scores between benign SDH and deleterious SDH. We found that deleterious SDH was judged to be more self-denial, t(34) = 12.50, d = 1.01, p < .001. This suggests that the manipulation of the condition was valid.
Examples of benign SDH described by participants include “I am invisible lol!” and “I guess it was hard to see because I went out in white. I didn’t know I had a special skill that could erase my presence!” Deleterious SDH participants entered SDHs such as “The only friends I have are my pets lol,” and “Lately, my friends haven’t been inviting me to hang out. I guess I’m just a worthless person who isn’t valued by anyone (laughs).”
Results and Discussion
The mean and standard deviation of the state anxiety scores for the three conditions are shown in Table 2. Differences in state anxiety scores for participants in the three conditions were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results showed that the effect of the humor manipulation was significant, F(2, 176) = 8.82, p < .000,
Mean State Anxiety Scores as a Function of Humor Manipulation in Experiment 2.
Note. Scores range from 1 to 4; SDH = Self-Directed Humor.
General Discussion
This study was the first to use an experimental approach to examine the effects of the use of the two dimensions of SDH postulated by the dual self-directed humor model on state anxiety. Both deleterious and benign SDH are types of humor that poke fun at one’s own characteristics, habits, and experiences, but the difference between the two lies in the intent of SDH use and the degree of self-denial. Malignant SDH is used to flatter others and gain acceptance, and is characterized by excessive self-negating content. On the other hand, benign SDH is used to detach oneself from the problems faced and downplay stressful events, and is not accompanied by excessive self-denial as in malignant SDH. The hypotheses that benign SDH reduces state anxiety and that deleterious SDH increases state anxiety were tested.
Throughout the two experiments, participants in the benign SDH condition, that is, those who imagined using SDH to make fun of themselves or laugh at the misfortune they experienced, reported lower state anxiety than participants in the no-humor control condition. This result, first found in Experiment 1 with college students, was replicated in Experiment 2 with working adults, clearly supporting Hypothesis 1 that benign SDH use reduces state anxiety. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 provide more robust evidence for the causal effect of benign SDH on positive psychological well-being that has been demonstrated by longitudinal studies. These results indicate that the use of benign SDH may serve as a conscious adaptive strategy to help people cope with interpersonal stress; as noted by Tsukawaki and Imura (2020, 2021), the change in perspective associated with benign SDH may enable people to distance themselves from stressful situations, leading them to reevaluate negative events as less threatening. This change in perspective associated with benign SDH may enable people to distance themselves from stressful situations, leading them to reevaluate negative events as less threatening.
In contrast, Hypothesis 2, that participants in the deleterious SDH condition would report higher state anxiety than participants in the control condition, was not supported in either Experiment 1 or 2. Although this result suggests that people need not be concerned about engaging in deleterious SDH, it contradicts the findings of Tsukawaki et al. (2022), whose longitudinal study found that malignant SDH negatively impacts psychological well-being. One possible resolution to this discrepancy is that the negative effects of deleterious SDH on psychological well-being could have resulted from prolonged and repeated use over a period of days to weeks. In experimental studies, a one-time, i.e., short-term, the use of a deleterious SDH may not affect psychological well-being. Alternatively, as noted by Tsukawaki and Imura (2020), this type of SDH may negatively impact individuals’ psychological well-being through rejection by others. The vignette used in this experiment did not depict the reactions of friends after using SDH. If there is a high likelihood of rejection by friends after using a deleterious SDH, it may negatively affect psychological well-being as a result of such reactions of others. Thus, concerns about the use of deleterious SDH remain.
Another possible interpretation is that even negative humor, such as deleterious SDH, may temporarily divert people’s attention away from negative events, as the use of humor requires a certain amount of attention resources (Strick et al., 2009). Consistent with this idea, in Samson and Gross’s (2012) experiment, participants who rated stressful pictures and used negative humor also reported an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect, although not as much as those who used positive humor. This positive function may have been offset by the negative function associated with the self-denial of deleterious SDH, resulting in an output that is neither harmful nor harmless. In any case, further research is needed to conclude how deleterious SDH affects people’s psychological health.
Limitations
The current study contributes to the literature on the dual self-directed humor model and psychological well-being but has some limitations. Most importantly, as this study was a vignette experiment, it measured participants’ stress responses in an imaginary situation and did not assess responses in a real stressful situation. Therefore, it is not known at this time whether the results of this study will be replicated in real-life situations. Furthermore, although there are various interpersonal stresses in daily life, such as arguing with a friend, having a friend renege on a promise, or having a friend make unreasonable demands, another limitation is that this experiment used only one situation: being excluded by a friend. Notably, the results of this study apply only to the fictitious situation of being excluded by others. Finally, a limitation may be that the study included only East Asian Japanese individuals in its sample and did not check whether similar results could be obtained for other countries or ethnic groups with different cultural backgrounds. The generalizability of the study results is limited to the Japanese population.
Directions for Future Research
Future studies should confirm whether the results of the use of SDH from the present study can be replicated in realistic stressful situations. In addition, as mentioned above, various interpersonal stresses exist in daily life, and examining whether the results of the present study can be replicated in these situations is necessary. It would also be effective to conduct the study in different countries and ethnic groups to see if the results can be replicated. It is recommended that the results of the present study be extended by such studies and that the extent to which the results can be generalized be investigated.
Conclusion
The dual self-directed humor model proposed by Tsukawaki and Imura (2020) argues that SDH has positive and negative dimensions, namely, deleterious and benign SDH, that produce conflicting results for psychological well-being. The experiments in the study did not show that the use of deleterious SDH negatively affected psychological well-being, at least in the short term. However, it did demonstrate that the use of benign SDH produced positive psychological outcomes. This result confirms and extends the results of previous correlational studies.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI, Grant Number JP21K02975).
