Individual differences in the way observers perceive humour styles
Individual differences in the way observers perceive humour styles

Summary/Abstract: Humour has been conceptualised as styles, which vary based on their function(Martin et al. 2003). Research examining if and how observers perceive this intent islimited. The current study addresses this research gap by examining the perceptionsof Martin et al.’s (2003) four humour styles. Additionally and of particular interestwas whether self-defeating humour and another self-disparaging humour style,namely self-deprecating humour, were perceived as two independent humour styles.Despite being similar in content, self-deprecating humour is associated with higherself-esteem and self-defeating humour with lower self-esteem. Two hundred and fourstudents watched comedy clips and completed a survey online. Participants wereasked to categorise each video clip by humour style and to rate the self-esteem of thetarget (i.e. producer). Results revealed that humour styles are distinguishable byobservers with participants’ predominantly selecting one humour style over the othersfor each clip. In support of the second hypothesis, targets who were categorised asusing self-deprecating humour were perceived as having higher self-esteem thanthose categorised as using self-defeating humour, illustrating a distinction in theperception of these humour styles at an interpersonal level.

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