Adverse Childhood Experiences, Personality Traits, and Humour Styles: Examining their Interrelationships among College Students

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Vaibhav Jaiswal and Aishvarya Upadhyay (Department of Psychology, DAV Post Graduate College, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh)

Adverse childhood experiences are recognized as a significant factor affecting long-term psychological health, yet their specific impacts on personality traits and humour styles are not thoroughly explored, especially in the Indian population. The study investigated the relationships between adverse childhood experiences, personality traits, and humour styles among Indian college students. Using a quantitative, cross-sectional correlational design, data were collected from 120 college students (aged 18-25 years) from different colleges of Varanasi district. Standardised tools included the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (Bernstein et al., 1994), the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and the Humour Styles Questionnaire (Martin et al., 2003). Findings suggest personality and humour style are significantly associated with adverse childhood experiences. Significant associations were found between physical abuse and physical neglect, and aggressive humour (r=0.258, p<0.01; r=0.298, p<0.01); emotional abuse and sexual abuse were associated with self-defeating humour (r=0.215, p<0.05; r=0.233, p<0.05). Correlations supported these patterns, indicating negative associations of an individual’s traumatic dimensions with adaptive personality traits and positive associations with neuroticism and maladaptive humour styles. Stepwise regression analyses also revealed that physical neglect significantly predicted aggressive humour (8.9%; R²=0.089), sexual abuse was predictive of self-defeating humour (5.4%; R²=0.054) and emotional abuse was the most powerful predictor of neuroticism (7.2%; R²=0.072). Personality traits also had substantive predictive roles: extraversion and openness predicted affiliative humour (20.1%; R²=0.201), lower neuroticism and conscientiousness predicted self-enhancing humour (12.2%; R²=0.122), whereas lower agreeableness and lower conscientiousness were predictors of aggressive humour (23.3%; R²=0.233). Adverse childhood experiences have lasting effects on personality traits and emotional expression. Emotional instability correlates with physical and sexual abuse, and neglect relates to humour’s emotion regulation. Trauma impacts the development of personality, refocusing prevention and intervention on trauma-informed strategies.