scholarly journals Can self-defeating humor make you happy? Cognitive interviews reveal the adaptive side of the self-defeating humor style

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Heintz ◽  
Willibald Ruch

Abstract The present set of studies employs two cognitive interviewing techniques (thinking aloud and online cognitive probing) of the scale assessing the self-defeating humor style, aiming at delineating the role that self-defeating humor plays in self-esteem and emotions. The self-defeating humor style comprises humor to enhance one’s relationships with others at the expense of oneself, and has often been related to lower well-being. The analyses are based on 392 item responses of a typical sample (Study 1) and 104 item responses of high scorers on the self-defeating scale (Study 2). Content analyses revealed that higher scores on the self-defeating scale went along with humor (Study 1), with higher state self-esteem, with an improvement of one’s interpersonal relationships, and with more facial displays of positive emotions (Study 2). Additionally, the more humor was entailed in the item responses, the higher the state self-esteem and the improvement of relationships was and the more positive emotion words were employed. Thus, the humor entailed in the self-defeating humor style seemed rather beneficial both for oneself and others. These findings call for a reevaluation of past findings with this humor style and provide opportunities for future research and applications of humor interventions to improve well-being.

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 394-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Crocker

Interpersonal dynamics of self-esteem are explored. The author proposes that the desire to be seen as having positive qualities and avoid being seen as having dreaded qualities paradoxically leads to lowered self-esteem and lowered regard from others through its adverse effects on interpersonal relationships. The author also argues that the human capacity to transcend concerns with the images others hold of oneself, through caring about the well-being of other people, paradoxically leads to higher self-esteem and regard from others through its salutary effects on relationships. Data from two recent studies demonstrate these paradoxical effects and prompt questions about the nature of persons and situations, research methods, and the union between personality and social psychology. Accordingly, the author reflects more broadly on how people create their social situations, which in turn create the self, and what that means about the methods scholars use to understand social behavior.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarvdeep Kohli ◽  
Anjali Malik ◽  
Varsha Rani

An essential component of youths’ successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions, including the ability to recognize, identify and describe one’s feelings. Emotional competence refers to one’s ability to express or release one’s inner feelings or emotions. Self-esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. It is a judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self. General well being refers to the harmonious functioning of the physical as well as psychological aspects of the personality, giving satisfaction to the self and benefit to the society. The present study focuses on the self esteem and general well being in adolescents with low vs high emotional competence. For this purpose, first of all emotional competence scale was administered on 260 adolescents within the age range of 15-18 years, to identify the low emotionally competent and high emotionally competent adolescents. After the sample selection of 152 subjects (76 low emotionally competent and 76 high emotionally competent) Rosenberg’s Self-esteem scale and General well being scale were administered. Results indicate that high emotionally competent adolescents have high self-esteem and better general well being than low emotionally competent adolescents.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (85) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolandas Jančiauskas

Research background and hypothesis. The learners experience stress and anxiety at school because of bullying, and routine stressors are perceived as the dangerous ones. Therefore, they even do not want to go to school. Young learners’ psychological well-being and self-esteem is good, and the children experience positive emotions in physical education lessons.Research aim. The aim of the research was to analyze young learners’ self-esteem and psychological well-being in physical education classes.Research methods. Young learners’ self-esteem and psychological well-being in physical education lessons were analyzed in Klaipėda city schools using an anonymous questionnaire survey method.Research results. Summarizing the research results of learners’ psychological well-being, it can be noted that psychological well-being of 41.0% of learners in physical education lessons was good or very good. Analysis of the results of young learners’ self-esteem in physical education lessons showed that 41.0% of learners estimated themselves as the average ones.Discussion and conclusions. Although young learners like attending physical education lessons, and they find the lessons easy, interesting, pleasant, good and useful, they feel unsafe in physical education lessons because they suffer from other children’s bullying. There were cases when they did not want to go to physical education lessons at all.Keywords: bullying, stress and anxiety, reluctance to go to school.


Author(s):  
SOLAJA MAYOWA OLUDELE

Community-based green care initiative is an intervention geared towards satisfying the environmental, social, psychological, medical and material care for stimulating healthy well-being of children, adolescence and adults. Evidence-based studies have established that there is continual degeneration of self-esteem among adolescence in developing countries including Nigeria due to problems associated with unsustainable parenting styles and teaching patterns. It is in the light of this, the study examines a community-based green care initiative as a catalyst for sustainable parenting styles, teaching patterns and child self-esteem in Ogun State, Nigeria. The study adopted exploratory survey design and tested three hypotheses on the subject matter. A self-structured questionnaire and in-depth interview guide were used for data collection. Quantitative data were analysed through percentage distribution table and multiple regressions while qualitative data were analysed using direct quotes. Findings were discussed with reference to relevant empirical literatures and future research highlighted.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler L Renshaw

This brief report presents an analog test of the relative classification validity of three cutoff values (CVs; 16, 18, and 20) derived from responses to the self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: Total Difficulties Scale. Results from Bayesian t-tests, using several school-specific subjective well-being indicators as dependent variables, yielded evidence suggesting all CV models effectively differentiated between students with lower and higher levels of risk. Evidence also indicated that the lowest CV (16) was more effective than the higher CVs (18, 20) at identifying students with greater levels of risk, and that the higher CVs functioned comparably well. Implications for future research and practice are noted.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Berger ◽  
Florian Bitsch ◽  
Irina Falkenberg

Humor is a ubiquitous human characteristic that is socially motivated at its core and has a broad range of significant positive effects on emotional well-being and interpersonal relationships. Simultaneously, however, impairments in humor abilities have often been described in close association with the occurrence and course of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, social anxiety, or depression. In the past decade, research in the neuroimaging and psychiatric domain has substantially progressed to (i) characterize impaired humor as an element of psychopathology, and (ii) shed light on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the role of humor in neuropsychiatric diseases. However, (iii) targeted interventions using concepts of positive psychology have revealed first evidence that a systematic training and/or a potential reactivation of humor-related skills can improve rehabilitative outcome in neuropsychiatric patient groups. Here, we sought to integrate evidence from neuroscience, as well as from psychopathology and treatment research to shed more light on the role of humor in psychiatry. Based on these considerations, we provide directions for future research and application in mental health services, focusing on the question of how our scientific understanding of humor can provide the basis for psychological interventions that foster positive attitudes and well-being.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-283
Author(s):  
Magdalena Gómez-Díaz ◽  
María Jiménez-García

Introducción: La Inteligencia emocional, resiliencia y autoestima son conceptos relacionados con el desarrollo personal. Las personas que presentan discapacidad física, la percepción de las diferentes situaciones a las que tienen que enfrentarse pueden influir en sus emociones y comportamiento.Objetivo: Analizar las diferencias o similitudes entre las personas con discapacidad y sin discapacidad en el ámbito de la inteligencia emocional, la resiliencia y la autoestima. Metodología: Estudio cuantitativo de tipo descriptivo, transversal, y prospectivo, utilizando las escalas de la Inteligencia emocional TMMS-24, la escala de la Resiliencia CD-RISC10 y la escala de la autoestima de Rosemberg, con un total de 100 participantes. Resultados: Las personas con discapacidad física presentan medias estadísticamente superiores en inteligencia emocional y resiliencia, aunque en autoestima las personas sin discapacidad presentan medias superiores. Discusión: Distintos autores ponen de manifiesto que las emociones juegan un papel fundamental en el bienestar de los individuos. En el caso de las enfermedades que implican discapacidad física, afectan a los diferentes aspectos de la vida de las personas, por lo tanto se hace más necesario aún el buen manejo emocional para evitar que la persona sufra mayores consecuencias físicas y/o emocionales. Conclusiones: Las personas con discapacidad física presentan unos niveles adecuados de inteligencia emocional en sus diferentes dimensiones, desarrollando estrategias de afrontamiento que les permiten hacer frente a dichas dificultades. La autoestima de las personas con discapacidad física, se ve mermada por la baja percepción de control independiente. Introduction: Emotional intelligence, resilience and self-esteem are concepts related to personal development. People who have physical disabilities, the perception of the different situations that have to face may influence emotions and behavior.Objective: Analyze the differences or similarities between people with disabilities and without disabilities in the field of emotional intelligence, resilience and self-esteem.Methodology: Type descriptive, transversal and prospective, quantitative study using the scales of the emotional intelligence TMMS-24, the scale of the Resilience CD-RISC10 and the scale of the Rosenberg self-esteem, with a total of 100 participants.Results: Persons with physical disabilities present mean statistically higher on emotional intelligence and resilience, although regarding self-esteem people without disabilities have an upper mean.Discussion: Different authors have shown that emotions play a fundamental role in the well-being of individuals. In the case of diseases that involve physical disability, affect different aspects of the life of people, therefore even good emotional management is necessary most to avoid that the person may suffer greater consequences physical and/or emotional.Findings: Persons with physical disability have adequate levels of emotional intelligence in its different dimensions, developing coping strategies that enable them to cope with such difficulties. The self-esteem of people with physical disabilities is weakened by the low perception of independent control.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 3773-3795
Author(s):  
Nahema El Ghaziri ◽  
Joëlle Darwiche ◽  
Jean-Philippe Antonietti

The aim of this study is to investigate the longitudinal influence of self-esteem on romantic and coparental relationship quality. The data were drawn from the German Family Panel, pairfam. Parents ( n couples = 2,364) were assessed three times over 4 years. The results indicated that romantic and coparental quality decreased over time, while self-esteem remained stable. The self-esteem of both parents predicted initial romantic and coparental quality. Additionally, mothers’ self-esteem reduced the decline in romantic quality. Finally, romantic quality mediated the relationship between parents’ self-esteem and coparental quality. These results suggest that self-esteem might be a resource for the parental couple and even for the family unit, as romantic and coparental quality are key elements for the well-being of both parent and child.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis Kadylak

Phubbing refers to the nonverbal behavior of glancing at, or using, one’s mobile phone during a face-to-face (FtF) interaction, whereby the mobile-phone-checking behavior is perceived to breach expectations of attention or etiquette. In general, phubbing can negatively affect interpersonal relationships and well-being. When younger family members’ phubbing behavior is perceived by older adult relatives as a violation of their conversational expectations, these older adults may feel ignored and disrespected. This study may be the first to investigate the associations between intergenerational family phubbing expectancy violations and indicators of well-being among older adults. Survey data were derived from a sample of U.S. Internet users aged 65 or above ( n = 679). The results suggested that both perceived frequency of family phubbing and family phubbing expectancy violations were inversely associated with mattering and indicators of well-being. Study limitations and potential directions for future research are discussed.


Social Work ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn J Lee ◽  
Shari E Miller ◽  
Brian E Bride

Abstract Self-care is regarded as essential for effective social work practice, offsetting occupational stress and promoting well-being and resiliency among practitioners. However, the literature reveals a notable absence of psychometrically sound instruments to measure self-care. The purpose of the present study was to describe the development, refinement, and construct validity of the Self-Care Practices Scale (SCPS). The piloted version of the SCPS is a 38-item instrument designed to measure frequency of engagement in personal and professional self-care practices. Data were collected through mailed surveys from a random sample of master’s-level clinical social workers and members of the National Association of Social Workers (N = 492). Analysis supports the construct validity of an 18-item SCPS with two subscales that demonstrate strong internal validity. The SCPS is useful for social work educators, practitioners, and administrators to ascertain frequency of self-care practice and build a stronger culture of self-care. The role of SCPS in future research is discussed.


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