Depression

[Page 195]Specificity of the Association Between Humor and Depression

A perusal of the research reveals several important limitations on the actual observed associations between humor and depression. Furthermore, it is only within the past few years that we have begun to see the emergence of more rigorously designed treatment–outcome studies that allow for appropriate tests of the therapeutic power of humor when dealing with depression. A robust research finding is that one of the major aspects of humor, namely, humor appreciation (typically measured by ratings of the funniness of cartoons, jokes, or any other potentially humorous materials or situations), is not systemically associated with current depression level, age of onset, or duration of symptoms. Similarly, two other important aspects of humor (laughter and humor creativity) also fail to display consistent relationships with depression levels. It is only the use of humor as a coping strategy for dealing with stressful events that bears a consistent and strong inverse relationship with depression. This pattern has been demonstrated across numerous studies, using a variety of measures of coping humor and depression and different groups of participants (e.g., university students, community samples, clinically depressed individuals). Taken together, these findings indicate that only one specific aspect of humor, namely, the increased use of coping humor, is inversely related to depression. Those with higher levels of coping humor consistently show lower depression levels.

This specific role for coping humor is also evident in a recent personality-based approach that has documented the existence of several adaptive and maladaptive humor styles. In this work, individuals high on self-enhancing humor (i.e., an adaptive style akin to coping humor) again showed the lowest levels of depression. In marked contrast, those displaying the highest levels of self-defeating humor (a maladaptive style of humorously putting down oneself to gain acceptance by others) showed the highest levels of depression. This latter finding is also very robust, and clearly documents that greater humor use (of certain styles) is strongly related to increased depression. This pattern is precisely opposite of the common perception that greater humor use should only be associated with less depression. As such, it is no longer viable to think in terms of one simple inverse relationship between humor and depression. Instead, it appears that various types or styles of humor are related to depression in quite different ways (e.g., coping humor is associated with lower depression, whereas self-defeating humor is associated with higher depression).

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