The Joke’s on Me: The Relation Between Self-Defeating Humor, Gelotophilia, and Gelotophobia

The self-defeating humor style is humor at the expense of one’s self. It has a bad reputation because it is negatively correlated with selfesteem, positive personality traits, and creativity. However, some forms of self-defeating humor do not have such negative correlates. Gelotophobia, or the fear of being laughed at, and gelotophilia, the enjoyment of being laughed at, illustrate the discrepancy between positive and negative effects. Gelotophobia, like standard selfdefeating humor, negatively correlates with self-esteem, well-being, creativity, and positive character traits. Conversely, gelotophilia positively correlates with creativity, positive character traits, selfesteem, self-compassion, and well-being. Possible areas of future research are also discussed. Intuition guts.indd 17 11/13/19 10:22 PM 1 Cortello: The Joke's on Me Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2019 18 Brian Regan, a popular American comedian, used self-defeating humor to share his childhood experience: I was a pretty stupid kid. I used to get talked into making crank calls, you know? My older brother and some friends were just standing around me: “Okay, Brian, make some crank calls . ” And I’d get all nervous, and mess ‘em up. “Is your refrigerator running? It’s not? Ohhohohh . (whispers) It’s not! It’s not! Oh, no, it’s not! Okay, you have a good day, now; you . take luck. ” “Brian, do this one! Read it, so you don’t mess it up! ” “Do you have Prince Albert in the can? You do? Well, then you better take him out, because he is . uhh . suff-oh-cot-ting. He wants to know what that is. ” “Hang up! You’re stupid! You stupid person! ” (As cited in Hamilton, 2010) While Regan shared this story, the audience roared with laughter. Almost every person could relate in some way to his childhood predicament; it had the power to unite the listeners by providing a shared experience to laugh about. Humor bonded humans for centuries, dating at least as far back as the satirical plays of ancient Greece. However, humor is more than the stuff of an entertaining evening. It is also a method of understanding an individual from a psychological perspective. For example, Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, and Weir (2003) found that various aspects of humor correlated with different perspectives on life, including overall psychological well-being. Their research identified four main styles of humor: (a) selfenhancing, characterized by the use of humor to enhance the individual’s experience; (b) affiliative, characterized by the intent to strengthen relationships with others; (c) aggressive, characterized by the individual’s use of humor at others’ expense; and (d) selfdefeating, characterized by the individual’s use of humor at his or her own expense. The authors further differentiated between styles that correlate positively with well-being—affiliative and self-enhancing—and those that correlate negatively—aggressive The Joke’s on Me Intuition guts.indd 18 11/13/19 10:22 PM 2 Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology, Vol. 14 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 4 https://scholarsarchive.byu. edu/intuition/vol14/iss1/4