Personality and Individual Differences 99 (2016) 139143

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Gender differences in humour styles of young adolescents: Empathy as

a mediator
Ching-Lin Wu, Hsin-Yi Lin, Hsueh-Chih Chen
Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 18 November 2015
Received in revised form 23 April 2016
Accepted 9 May 2016
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Gender
Humour styles
Empathy
Mediator

a b s t r a c t
Humour has its positive and negative features; negative humour leads to tension between two people. Moreover,
there are gender differences in the use of humour. Previous research has demonstrated that males tend to prefer
unfriendly humour. Aggressive behaviours are predicable by the level of empathy and may mediate the use of
humour by males and females. To address this issue, the present study recruited 431 adolescents and used the
Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory and the Humor Styles Questionnaire. We found that males prefer to use aggressive and self-enhancing humour, whereas females have more empathy; the perspective-taking and empathic
concern are positively correlated to positive humour styles but are negatively correlated to negative humour
styles. The perspective-taking and empathic concern serve to mediate the relation between gender and humour
styles. In particular, empathic concern is the mediator of gender and aggressive humour, and perspective-taking
is the mediator of gender and the other three humour styles. Aggressive humour is highly related to one's ability
to receive the suffering of others, whereas using the three humour styles is related to whether one can perceive or
identify with another's viewpoint. The present study helps us to understand why males prefer unfriendly
humour.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

2. Gender difference in the use of humour

Humour can soften the relationship between two people and is helpful in establishing and maintaining social contact (Zand, Spreen, and
Lavalle, 1999). Humour brings happiness; however, hostile humour occasionally presents a tense situation (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray,
and Weir, 2003). Research has shown that in social contact, males
tend more often to use aggressive humour compared to females
(Yip & Martin, 2006) and that there is a gender difference in the use of
humour. In addition to the gender factor, will there be other reasons
that might inuence a person's humour style? Among the many candidates, the use of empathy can effectively predict the aggressive behaviour of people (Gini, Albiero, Benelli, and Altoe, 2007); individuals
with more empathy have demonstrated to be less inclined to attack
others. Hence, we would understand more regarding the individual difference of humour use if empathy is a mediator of humour styles and
genders. To address this issue, the present study investigates the mediating role of empathy in the humour process and the humour styles between males and females.

Humour plays an important role in social contact because it brings

individuals closer together (Kuchner, 1991; Zand et al., 1999), it
makes us feel happy, and it makes us avoid argument. People with a
sense of humour tend to cope with conict and embarrassment in social
situations. On the one hand, a sense of humour is a positive characteristic that brings people together, e.g., a witty response makes you laugh;
on the other hand, a sense of humour is sometimes aggressive, e.g., it
is so mean that it irritates others (Martin et al., 2003).
In summary, humour has various functions (Martin, 2003), and the
methods for evaluating humour are, thus, multiple (Thorson and
Powell, 1993). In previous research, the tool for measuring a sense of
humour could not discriminate the humorous expression toward oneself or toward others and could not differentiate between the friendly
and unfriendly humour as well (Martin, 2007; Martin and Lefcourt,
1984; Svebak, 1974; Thorson and Powell, 1993). In 2003, Martin et al.
rst proposed the four humour styles, which classied humour styles
along the dimensions of toward oneself or toward others and kindhearted or malicious, so that we have the styles of afliative humour,
self-enhancing humour, aggressive humour, and self-defeating humour.
The former two are positive styles, and the latter two are negative
humour styles. Subsequently, they developed the humor styles
questionnaire to measure the potentially kind-hearted humour and
the potentially malicious humour styles. This questionnaire aims to

Corresponding author at: Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling,

National Taiwan Normal University, Education College Building, Room 612, No. 162, Sec.
1, Heping E. Rd., Da-an District, Taipei City 10610, Taiwan, ROC.
E-mail address: chcjyh@gmail.com (H.-C. Chen).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.05.018
0191-8869/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

140

C.-L. Wu et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 99 (2016) 139143

understand one's humour styles in ordinary life, especially the coping of

social contact and life pressure.
Using the humour styles questionnaire (Martin et al., 2003), we understood how different the humour styles are between genders. Using
1195 undergraduates as a sample, the results showed that males have
a stronger tendency than females to use all types of humour styles.
Yip and Martin (2006) also recruited an undergraduate sample but
found that males only preferred an aggressive humour style; Kazarian
and Martin (2006) demonstrated that male adults usually used aggressive humour and self-defeating humour. In Asia, using the Chinese
sample, Chan et al. (2009) found that males preferred unfriendly humour styles but females preferred afliative humour style to improve
interpersonal relationships. However, Martin et al. thought additional
discussion is warranted to determine whether the gender difference
in humour styles was a result of nature or education.
3. Likelihood of empathy in a mediating role
Empathy is dened as acquiring knowledge and sensitivity
regarding how others feel because of understanding their situation
(Eisenberg, 2000). Using the factor analysis, Davis (1983) dened
empathy using four dimensions of interpersonal interaction tendency
in cognition and disposition as follows: (1) perspective taking, the tendency of truly taking or comprehending others' psychological perspectives; (2) fantasy, how I would feel or act if I played the role in
ctions, movies, and games; (3) empathic concern, the tendency of providing care to others when they are in trouble; and (4) personal distress,
having temporal anxiety or discomfort in nervous interpersonal situations. Davis developed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) accordingly, and the majority of the following research continued and
developed based on his denition, especially the dimensions of perspective taking and empathic concern. For instance, Eisenberg claimed that
empathy was the co-responding of cognition and emotion processes;
the cognition process enabled individuals to identify the differences of
the emotional status of oneself and others and the emotion process referred to the empathy and the feeling of suffering. Decety and Jackson
(2006) indicated that the emotion process was the ability to share feelings with others, whereas the cognition process was the abilities of selfawareness and perspective-taking.
With respect to gender difference, females generally show empathy
more than males, from the age of preschool on (Christov-Moore et al.,
2014). With the expectation of gender role, showing concern and empathy is an important characteristic for females to t the social role;
females are expected to show more empathic behaviours than males
in any situation. This statement is generally supported by the data of
many empirical studies. In all types of self-report questionnaires, females are reported to demonstrate a greater tendency to be empathic
than males in cognition and emotion aspects (Chaplin and Aldao,
2013; Rose and Rudolph, 2006).
Regarding the initial research on empathy and humour, Hampes
(2001) found that humour and empathy were positively correlated by
concluding from the results of The Empathic Concern subscale of the
Empathy Questionnaire, the Coping Humor Scale (CHS), the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, and the Situational Humor Response
Questionnaire (SHRQ). However, Hampes did not believe that humour
might have a negative aspect in the beginning. Subsequently, he used
the Empathy Questionnaire and Humour Styles Questionnaire in continuous studies. Hampes discovered that afliative humour style and
empathic concern had a signicantly positive correlation, that self-enhancing humour style and perspective taking were positively relevant,
that aggressive humour style, perspective taking, and empathic concern
were negatively correlated; however, self-defeating humour style was
not related to empathy (Hampes, 2010). In particular, regarding the cognition aspect or emotion aspect, empathy and aggressive humour style
had a negative correlation. This nding was consistent with the claim
by Mayberry and Espelage (2007). With regard to emotion aspect,

empathy makes people stop hurting others because they know how
others feel. With regard to the cognition aspect, empathy allows individuals to observe from another person's viewpoint in social contact to decrease the bias by hostile attribution in the social information process.
To conclude, empathy is vital in interpersonal interacting. Moreover,
research also has shown that empathy is strongly related to gender and
humour styles. Hence, empathy is a potential mediator to the gender
difference in the use of humour.
4. The present study
Previous studies have demonstrated gender difference in humour
styles using (Chan et al., 2009; Kazarian and Martin, 2006; Martin et
al., 2003; Yip & Martin, 2006). To discuss the potential factors for gender
difference because of nature or education, the empirical support is still
lacking. If we can identify the inuential factor of humour styles and
genders, the psychological process might be clear to us. Empathy
is one key index to psychological health (Hobson, 2007; Lee, 2007);
empathy, gender, and humour styles are also obviously relevant
(Christov-Moore et al., 2014; Hampes, 2010). In previous research on humour styles, the focus was for the most part on other psychological traits,
such as self-esteem, subjective well-being, and bullying (Dyck and
Holtzman, 2013; Schermer et al., 2015; Stieger, Formann, and Burger,
2011); however, the studies regarding the specic process were few.
One study focussed on empathy as a mediator to different psychological
traits (Lee, 2009). Hence, the present study aims to investigate the mediator of empathy between gender and humour styles and hope that we
could learn more concerning gender difference in the use of humour.
Concluding from the aforementioned reviews, we already know that
males prefer the aggressive humour style in every type of sample. For
the remaining three humour styles, the ndings were inconsistent.
Moreover, the gender difference in empathy is across ages; females
generally exhibit more empathy than males in the cognition and emotion aspects. Empathy and humour styles are signicantly relevant;
the empathic concern and perspective taking are positively correlated
to the afliative humour style and self-enhancing humour style but
are negatively correlated to the aggressive humour style, which shows
that the aggressive humour style tends to be predictable by its cognition
and emotion aspects. Hence, the present study compares the humour
styles and the cognition and emotion aspects of empathy by genders
and subsequently identies the correlation of empathy and humour
styles for the next stage. We investigate the mediating role of empathy
in the relationship of gender and humour styles using the hierarchy
regression analysis, Sobel Test, and the Bootstrapping Method; furthermore we assume that empathy mediates the tendency of using aggressive humour style between different genders. (See Fig. 1.)
5. Method
5.1. Participants
A total of 431 junior high school students in Taiwan (of whom 195
were male) were recruited to participate in the study. The students
ranged in age between 13 and 14 years old; the average age in the sample was 13.32 (SD = 0.47) years. The participants were invited by their
teachers, and each of them received a set of stationery after completing
the experiment. All the participants agreed to proceed the research after
well informed and completing the informed consent form.
5.2. Materials and procedure
The Humor Styles Questionnaire (Chan, Chen, Cho, and Martin,
2011) contains the following four styles: afliative humour, self-enhancing humour, aggressive humour, and self-defeating humour.
Every style is measured using 8 items. The total questionnaire comprises 32 items. The participant rates each item using a 7-point scale;

C.-L. Wu et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 99 (2016) 139143

141

Fig. 1. Empathy mediates gender differences in humour styles.

higher scores refer to the stronger tendency of that humour style.

Internal reliabilities range from 0.73 to 0.88; taking the personality,
behaviours of attack, and self-esteem as the criteria, the correlation coefcients range from 0.25 to 0.54 and the criterion validities are ne.
The Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory was developed by Lin and
Cheng (2010), who translated two sub-inventories into a Chinese edition, the empathic concern and the perspective-taking of the inventory
by Davis (1983) and Mayberry and Espelage (2007). Each sub-scale is
composed of 6 items using a 5-point scale. The Interpersonal Reactivity
Inventory consists of 12 items. The participant who obtains a higher
score would spontaneously think in another's viewpoint or would
have the ability to receive another's feelings and experiences. The internal consistence coefcients range from 0.85 to 0.89. Regarding the
constructs validity, according to the results of the factor analysis, the
factor loadings of each item range from 0.63 to 0.81, and the total variance explained is 55.57%, and the validity of the inventory is ne.
The experimental design was counterbalanced; 50% of the participants initially completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire and subsequently the Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory, whereas the remaining
50% of the participants completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory and subsequently the Humor Styles Questionnaire.
6. Results
6.1. Gender differences analyses
Table 1 lists the mean and SD values in the Humor Styles Questionnaire as well as those in Interpersonal Activity Inventory for junior
Table 1
Gender differences in humour style and empathy.
Male
(N = 195)

Female
(N = 236)

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Humour styles
Afliative humour
Self-enhancing humour
Aggressive humour
Self-defeating humour

4.71
4.47
3.48
3.30

0.79
1.01
1.01
0.98

4.78
4.20
3.16
3.21

Empathy
Empathic concern
Perspective-taking

2.77
2.69

0.57
0.61

2.94
2.90

*p b 0.05; **p b 0.01.

0.80
1.10
0.92
0.95

0.92
2.50*
3.43**
0.94

0.09
0.24
0.33
0.09

0.52
0.52

3.26**
3.91**

0.31
0.38

high school students categorized by male and female. The gender differences are shown in humour styles and empathy. First, for the results of
humour styles, the tendencies of using self-enhancing humour and
aggressive humour are signicantly higher in males than in females
(t N 2.50, p b 0.05, d N 0.24); junior high school boys tend to use the
humour styles for promoting self-belief or attacking others. The tendencies of perspective-taking and empathic concern are obviously
higher in females than in males (t N 3.26, p b 0.01, d N 0.31);
junior high school girls tend to acquire the affective responses and
experiences of others from the cognition and emotion aspects.
6.2. Relationship between humour styles and empathy
The correlations of humour styles and empathy are signicant
(Table 2). In particular, positive humour styles (afliative humour and
self-enhancing humour) are positively relevant to empathy (r b 0.19,
p b 0.01); aggressive humour style and empathy are negatively correlated (r N 0.37, p b 0.01); the individual who has more empathy tends to
use positive humour styles but the person who has less empathy tends
to use the aggressive humour style. Moreover, the self-defeating
humour style is positively correlated to the perspective-taking of
empathy (r = 0.11, p = 0.03) but is not related to the empathic concern
(r = 0.05, p = 0.34), which refers to the tendency of using selfdefeating humour that is related to the cognition aspect of empathy
but not to the emotion aspect. In summary, the tendency of positive humour style or negative humour style is bonded to the level of empathy.
6.3. Mediation analyses
We investigated the mediator roles of perspective-taking and
empathic concern in the relationship of gender and humour styles
using the hierarchy regression analysis. After considering the mediating
effect, the results showed that gender is less predictive to the aggressive
humour style but that empathy mediates the relation of gender and
Table 2
Correlation coefcient between humour style and empathy (N = 431).
Humour styles

Empathic concern
Perspective-taking
*p b 0.05; **p b 0.01.

Afliative

Self-enhancing

Aggressive

Self-defeating

0.25**
0.30**

0.19**
0.20**

0.42**
0.37**

0.05
0.11*

142

C.-L. Wu et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 99 (2016) 139143

aggressive humour. However, the correlations of gender to afliative

humour, self-enhancing humour, and self-defeating humour are higher
after considering empathy as the mediator. Hence, empathy might play
the role of suppressor in the relationship between gender and humour
styles.
We also investigated the indirect effects of gender on the humour
styles through the perspective-taking and the empathic concern using
the methods of the Sobel Test (Sobel, 1982) and the Bootstrapping
Method (Preacher and Hayes, 2008).
The results of the Sobel Test indicate that empathic concern mediated the relation of gender and the aggressive humour style (Z = 2.64)
and that perspective-taking mediated the relation of afliative humour,
self-enhancing humour, and self-defeating humour (Z b 1.82).
Regarding the analysis using the Bootstrapping Method, it resamples and measures the mediating effect by interval estimation. We
generated the simulative sample by random sampling from the raw
data of 431 participants, and calculated the bootstrap coefcient and
the estimate of indirect effect with this simulative sample. The procedure repeats 500 times; hence, we obtain 5000 bootstrap coefcients
and the mean of indirect effect. Table 3 lists the 95% condence interval
(CI) of the indirect effect of gender on humour styles through empathy.
The results show that the mediating effect of gender on aggressive
humour is signicant through the empathic concern of empathy (95%
CI = 0.030.21); also, the mediating effect of gender on afliative humour, self-enhancing humour, and self-defeating humour is signicant
through empathic concern; the 95% CI does not include 0.
The results of the two methods are agreeable, and the mediator roles
of the two dimensions of empathy are identied. The emotion aspect,
empathic concern, mediates the relation of gender and the aggressive
humour; the cognition aspect, perspective-taking, mediates the corresponding relation of gender to the afliative humour, self-enhancing
humour, and self-defeating humour.
7. Discussion
The gender difference was found in the humour styles in interpersonal relationships (Chan et al., 2009; Kazarian and Martin, 2006;
Martin et al., 2003; Yip & Martin, 2006). Our study rst investigated
the mediator role of empathy in the relationship of gender and humour
styles and found the potential factors to gender difference using
humour styles. The results support portions of the hypotheses. Males
prefer aggressive humour, which is consistent with the results in previous ndings (Yip & Martin, 2006); females exhibit empathy, which is
also consistent with the results of previous research (Christov-Moore
et al., 2014). Moreover, our results also support the concept that empathy and humour styles are apparently linked (Hampes, 2010); empathy
is positively correlated to afliative humour, self-enhancing humour,
and self-defeating humour but is negatively correlated to aggressive humour. Finally, the results of the hierarchy regression analysis reveal that
the empathic concern partly mediates the relationship of gender and
aggressive humour; the perspective-taking is, however, a suppressor
and, in part, mediates the corresponding relation of gender to afliative
humour, self-enhancing humour, and self-defeating humour. Our nding suggests that empathy plays an inuential role in the relationship
of gender and humour styles and also in the mediating effects of cognition and emotion aspects of empathy in the use of humour styles by
genders.

The results support our hypotheses that empathy is the mediator of

using aggressive humour by genders, and the results are consistent with
previous ndings that aggressive behaviours could be predicted by empathy (Gini et al., 2007; Miller and Eisenberg, 1988). An individual with
more empathy was less likely to attack others. Aggressive humour style
is to attack others using humour to defeat others with expressions of
mocking, scofng, and teasing (Martin et al., 2003). Many studies have
indicated that males frequently use the aggressive humour style
(Kazarian and Martin, 2006; Martin et al., 2003; Yip & Martin, 2006)
and that they tend to be less empathic (Chaplin and Aldao, 2013; Rose
and Rudolph, 2006). According to the results of mediation analyses,
we know that males prefer aggressive humour, in part, because males
lack empathy, especially in the emotion aspect. Males often interact by
mocking or ridiculing others but seldom by acquiring others' pain
from the aspect of empathic concern; they consequently tend to inict
pain on others (Mayberry and Espelage, 2007).
We learned that empathy mediates the relations of gender to
afliative humour, self-enhancing humour, and self-defeating humour.
After incorporating empathy into the model, the prediction of genders
to these three humour styles increases; i.e., empathy is a suppressor to
the relation of gender and afliative humour, self-enhancing humour,
and self-defeating humour (Conger, 1974; Kline, 2005), particularly,
the perspective-taking, which is the cognition aspect. In previous research, however, there were no consistent ndings to the gender difference on using these humour styles except the aggressive humour style
(Kazarian and Martin, 2006; Martin et al., 2003; Yip & Martin, 2006),
which suggests other distributing variables not yet found. The correlations of empathy and afliative humour, self-enhancing humour, and
self-defeating humour styles are lower than those of empathy and the
aggressive humour style (Hampes, 2010). Although the direct effect of
gender is not signicant to afliative humour and self-defeating humour after taking empathy as a mediator, the present study found
that the prediction will increase after considering the effect of perspective-taking. To conclude, the tendency to use afliative humour, self-enhancing humour, and self-defeating humour by males and females, and
the ability of perspective-taking is important for individuals in an interpersonal relationship, although empathy is not highly related to these
three humour styles.
Furthermore, we found the cognition and emotion aspects of empathy are positively correlated to afliative humour and self-enhancing
humour, but negatively relevant to aggressive humour. Perspectivetaking and self-defeating humour are not well correlated. People who
are capable of perspective-taking and empathic concern frequently
use humour to establish interpersonal harmony or decrease pressure,
and they are less likely to use aggressive humour (Martin et al., 2003).
In particular, self-defeating humour, a type of malicious humour, is
positively related to the ability of perspective-taking. An individual
with enhanced capability of thinking from another's viewpoint is also
capable of self-ridiculing. The potential reason might be the culture.
Confucianism is dominant in Chinese culture; self-defeat might appear
as an expression of being humble (Ho, Huang, Chen, Wang, and Lai,
2010), which therefore makes the perspective-taking and self-defeating
humour styles relevant in the Chinese sample.
The results in the present study differ from the results obtained by
Hampes (2010). In his study, the sample consisted of 103 American
adults; afliative humour and empathic concern were positively correlated, and self-enhancing humour and perspective-taking were also

Table 3
95% condence interval of indirect effect of gender on humour styles through empathy.
Humour styles

Empathy
Empathic concern
Perspective-taking

Afliative

Self-enhancing

Aggressive

Self-defeating

0.15 to 0.04
0.06 to 0.03
0.16 to 0.03

0.17 to 0.04
0.10 to 0.03
0.17 to 0.01

0.05 to 0.22
0.04 to 0.21
0.04 to 0.11

0.10 to 0.01
0.00 to 0.12
0.19 to 0.03

C.-L. Wu et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 99 (2016) 139143

positively relevant; aggressive humour and perspective-taking and empathic concern were negatively related, but self-defeating humour and
empathy were not signicantly correlated. In our study, the sample
consisted of 431 Chinese junior high school students. Using the correlations of the Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory and Humor Styles
Questionnaire, two dimensions of empathy were signicantly relevant
to all of the humour styles. The likely reasons for the inconsistence
between the results of the two studies might be attributable to the
cultures, ages, or even the sample size. Additional research is warranted
to clarify whether nature or education is inuential with regard to traits
of empathy and preference of humour styles.
There are several restrictions on implementing the research.
First, the purposive sampling constrains the inference of results. Second,
the self-report questionnaire is limited in having the entire picture
regarding the traits of empathy and use of humour styles. It suggests
combining the methods of teacher evaluation, peer evaluation, eld observation, and individual interview to obtain richer information. Finally,
the random sampling is also recommended so that the results could be
re-veried and inferred.
In conclusion, our study found empathic concern that, in part,
replaced the relation of gender and aggressive humour for junior
high school students; perspective-taking is confounding to the use of
afliative humour, self-enhancing humour, and self-defeating humour
by genders. By considering empathic concern, the prediction ability of
gender to the use of humour increases, which also shows the functional
roles of cognition and emotion aspects of empathy in the gender difference of humour styles and discloses the internal process of humour
styles and interpersonal relationship. Finally, our study results suggest
the improvement of decreasing aggressive humour style, which will
encourage empathy in junior high school students. Compassion and
care shown toward others who experience unfortunate situations
would be helpful in reducing the tendency to use aggressive humour.
Acknowledgements
This research is, in part, supported by the Aim for the Top University
Project and Center of Learning Technology for Chinese of National
Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, R.O.C. and the International Research-Intensive Center of
Excellence Program of NTNU and Ministry of Science and Technology,
Taiwan, R.O.C. under grant no. MOST 104-2911-I-003-301.
References
Chan, Y. C., Chen, H. C., & Proyer, R. T. (2009, Summerr). Relationships between
gelotophobia, gelotophilia, katagelasticism, humor styles, and big-5 personality traits.
Oral presentation at the meeting of International Society for Humor Studies. Long Beach,
California State University. June 1720, 2009.
Chan, Y. C., Chen, H. C., Cho, S. L., & Martin, R. A. (2011). Development of a traditional Chinese version of the humor styles questionnaire. Psychological Testing(Special issue),
207234.
Chaplin, T. M., & Aldao, A. (2013). Gender differences in emotion expression in children: A
meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 139(4), 735765.
Christov-Moore, L., Simpson, E. A., Coud, G., Grigaityte, K., Iacoboni, M., & Ferrari, P. F.
(2014). Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior. Neuroscience and
Biobehavioral Reviews, 46, 604627.
Conger, A. J. (1974). A revised denition for suppressor variables: A guide to their identication and interpretation. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 34(1), 3546.

143

Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 113126.
Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2006). A social-neuroscience perspective on empathy. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 15(2), 5458.
Dyck, K. T. H., & Holtzman, S. (2013). Understanding humor styles and well-being: The
importance of social relationships and gender. Personality and Individual Differences,
55, 5358.
Eisenberg, N. (2000). Emotion, regulation, and moral development. Annual Review of
Psychology, 51(1), 665697.
Gini, G., Albiero, P., Benelli, B., & Altoe, G. (2007). Does empathy predict adolescents'
bullying and defending behavior? Aggressive Behavior, 33, 467476.
Hampes, W. P. (2001). Relation between humor and empathic concern. Psychological
Reports, 88, 241244.
Hampes, W. P. (2010). The relation between humor styles and empathy. Europe's Journal
of Psychology, 6(3), 3445.
Ho, Y. C., Huang, H. C., Chen, H. C., Wang, Y. P., & Lai, H. D. (2010). The relationships among
the humor style, self-esteem, and emotional intelligence of junior high school
students. Formosa Journal of Mental Health, 23, 271304.
Hobson, P. (2007). Empathy and autism. In T. F. D. Farrow, & P. W. R. Woodruff (Eds.),
Empathy in mental illness (pp. 126141). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kazarian, S. S., & Martin, R. A. (2006). Humor styles, culture-related personality, wellbeing, and family adjustment among Armenians in Lebanon. Humor International
Journal of Humor Research, 19(4), 405423.
Kline, R. B. (2005). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (2nd ed.). New
York, London: Guilford.
Kuchner, J. F. (1991). The humor of young children. Paper presented at the meeting of the
National Association for the Education of Young Children. NY: Uniondale.
Lee, K. (2007). Empathy decits in schizophrenia. In T. F. D. Farrow, & P. W. R. Woodruff
(Eds.), Empathy in mental illness (pp. 1732). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, S. A. (2009). Does empathy mediate the relationship between neuroticism and
depressive symptomatology among college students? Personality and Individual
Differences, 47, 429433.
Lin, Y. T., & Cheng, C. L. (2010). The normative beliefs, empathy, and interpersonal coping
strategies of relationally aggressive perpetrators and victims in junior high schools.
NTTU Educational Research Journal, 21(2), 128.
Martin, R. A. (2003). Sense of humor. In S. J. Lopez, & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Positive psychological assessment: A handbook of models and measures (pp. 313326). Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
Martin, R. A. (2007). The psychology of humor: An integrative approach. Oxford: Academic
Press.
Martin, R. A., & Lefcourt, H. M. (1984). Situational humor response questionnaire:
Quantitative measure of sense of humor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
47(1), 145155.
Martin, R. A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J., & Weir, K. (2003). Individual differences
in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the
humor styles questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 4875.
Mayberry, M. L., & Espelage, D. L. (2007). Associations among empathy, social competence
and reactive proactive aggression subtypes. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36,
787798.
Miller, P. A., & Eisenberg, N. (1988). The relationship of empathy to aggressive and externalizing/antisocial behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 324344.
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing
and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research
Methods, 40(3), 879891.
Rose, A. J., & Rudolph, K. D. (2006). A review of sex differences in peer relationship processes: Potential trade-offs for the emotional and behavioral development of girls
and boys. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 98131.
Schermer, J. A., Martin, R. A., Martin, N. G., Lynskey, M. T., Trull, T. J., & Vernon, P. A. (2015).
Humor styles and borderline personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 87,
158161.
Stieger, S., Formann, A. K., & Burger, C. (2011). Humor styles and their relationship to
explicit and implicit self-esteem. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 747750.
Svebak, S. (1974). Revised questionnaire on the sense of humor. Scandinavian Journal of
Psychology, 15, 328331.
Thorson, J. A., & Powell, F. C. (1993). Development and validation of a multidimensional
sense of humor scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 49(1), 1323.
Zand, J., Spreen, A., & Lavalle, J. B. (1999). Smart medicine for healthier living: A practical
a-to-z reference to natural and conventional treatments for adults. Garden City Park,
New York: Avery Pub Group.