Humor Styles, Perceived Social Support and Social Anxiety in Young Adults

Pages:211-215
Elza Santha Eype and Jessy Fenn (Department of Psychology, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Kochi, Kerala)

While humor styles across several countries have been studied, not many are available about India. This study aims to understand the usage of these different humor styles among Indian youth, gender differences if any, the interrelation among the styles and the relation of these styles of humor to perceived social support and social anxiety in 203 young adults. Humor Styles Questionnaire, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and Social Interaction Anxiety Scale was made use of to collect data. The study concluded that similar to other countries, affiliative style was the most used style by both the genders, females being higher on it. Positive humor styles were more frequently used than negative humor styles. Aggressive humor style was the least used, but males were significantly higher on it than females. There was a positive correlation between positive humor styles and the level of perceived social support and significant negative correlation between the social anxiety level and only the positive humor styles.