2022/09/10 by Christoph Burger · 1 citation
Psychology · #Humor Studies and Applications #Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression #Communication in Education and Healthcare #Moderation #Psychology #Mediation #Developmental psychology #Psychological intervention #Moderated mediation #Clinical psychology #Social psychology #Psychiatry
paper · pdf · doi:10.3390/ijerph191811415
openalex publication_date 2022/09/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Humor can be both adaptive and maladaptive and plays a role in bullying victimization and school adjustment. It was hypothesized that humor styles decrease or increase victimization, which in turn affects school adjustment. Furthermore, humor might moderate effects of victimization on school adjustment. Moreover, a person-oriented approach could improve our understanding of group differences in these variables. An online questionnaire retrospectively surveyed emerging adults (N = 172; 77.2% female; mean age: 22.7 years) with respect to humor style use, bullying victimization and school adjustment. Mediation and moderation analyses were computed, and two sets of person-oriented analyses compared victims, bully-victims and noninvolved students on humor styles and school adjustment, and three latent humor-related groups (overall-high, adaptive-high and adaptive-low) on victimization and school adjustment. Victimization fully mediated the positive effect of affiliative humor and partially mediated the negative effect of self-defeating humor on school adjustment. The negative effect of victimization on school adjustment was magnified by self-defeating humor and attenuated by aggressive humor. Bully-victims used both aggressive and self-defeating humor more frequently, and victims used aggressive and affiliative humor less frequently. Furthermore, both victims and bully-victims showed lower school adjustment. Finally, the adaptive-high humor group showed lower victimization and higher school adjustment. Implications for school interventions are discussed.