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ABSTRACT
The study analyzed relationships among humor styles and hope and deepen the role of humor styles as predictors of hope in 582 Italian adolescents and young adults (with age ranged between 14 and 27). Sex and age differences were observed. The Humor Styles Questionnaire was used to assess the inclination to adopt positive (affiliative/self-enhancing) and negative (aggressive/self-defeating) humor styles, and Hope Scale was used to evaluate the general level of hope ("overall" hope score) and its two components (agency/pathways). Significant differences for sex and age-groups were found. Correlation analyses pointed out that positive humor styles were positively related to hope, and self-defeating humor was negatively associated to hope. Linear regressions displayed that self-enhancing and affiliative styles positively influenced hope while self-defeating negatively affected hope. The emerged relationships suggested that promoting the use of humor to amuse the others facilitate interpersonal relationships especially in developmental age.
Keywords: humor styles, hope, individual differences, young adults, adolescents.
This study examined two main topics: humor styles, analyzed according to Martin's perspective (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir, 2003) and hope in the point of view proposed by Snyder (1994; 2000).
Humor has been considered one of the main resources that individuals could use to increase personal and social well-being (Kuiper & McHale, 2009; Martin, PuhlikDoris, Larsen, Gray, & Wei, 2003; Penzo, Giannetti, Stefanile, & Sirigatti, 2011; Zhao, Cong, & Wang, 2012) and several studies noted that humor was strictly linked to the ability to overcome difficulties and problems (Able, 2002; Erickson & Feldstein, 2007); in some cases, it was considered a coping strategy (Doosje, Landsheer, de Goede, & van Doornen, 2010; Fuhr, 2002; Henman, 2001), and used with therapeutic intent (Sultanoff, 2013). Martin et alia defined humor as "a multi-faceted construct wich is best viewed as a class of loosely related traits" (p.49) constituted by cognitive, emotional, behavioural, psycho-physiological, and social components. Martin et alia (2003) marked out four humor styles linked to positive or negative ways in which humor was typically used in everyday life (see also Martin, 2007). These authors named the two positive humor styles as affiliative and self-enhancing styles and considered the former as functional to facilitate the development of social relationships and the latter as useful to reach personal well-being by means...