Correlation between Self-Esteem and Aggressive Humour

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This current paper investigated the correlation between self-esteem and aggressive humour. We found that there was no correlation between them.
Previous literature has found humour to be associated with self-esteem. Stieger, Formann and Burger (2011) found individuals with low self-esteem showed similar characteristics to individuals who frequently use self-defeating humour. Martin et al (2003) found affiliative and self-enhancing humour to be positively correlated with cheerfulness, self-esteem, optimism, psychological well-being, and satisfaction with social support, and negatively related to depression, anxiety, and bad mood. Aggressive humour and self-defeating humour are correlated positively with hostility and aggression and negatively related to intimacy, and satisfaction with social supports (Martin et al., 2003). Although previous research has found a relationship between humour and self-esteem, there is no evidence that aggressive humour is correlated with self-esteem.
Aggressive humour is also a precursor to dissatisfaction in inter-personal relationships. Campbell, Martin and Ward (2008 found afilliative humour and aggressive humour are both used to manage relationships. Increased use of affiliative humour during discussions, leads to couples experiences feelings of closeness and relationship satisfaction; increased use of aggressive humour leads to fewer feelings of closeness and relationship satisfaction. Although aggressive humour effect inter-personal relationships, there was no evidence that it also effects intra-personal relationship of self-esteem.
Further research on aggressive humour has found it to have some positive affects if used in the right social group. Dyck and Holtzman (2013) found a difference in ...

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...low self-esteem. Although aggressive humour has been found to be detrimental to inter-personal relationships, there is no evidence of its negative effects on intra-personal relationship. Thus aggressive humour should not be included in self-esteem focused counseling with humour.
Future research can look at the use of gender specific aggressive humour and its relationship to self-esteem. More research can be done to look at the use of aggressive humour in conjunction with other types of humour. Future research should focus more on the affects of aggressive humour on intra-personal relationships, since there is no relationship between aggressive humour and self-esteem.
Aggressive humour is not correlated with self-esteem. Since humour is used in clinical settings for counseling, it is important to keep in mind that self-esteem and aggressive humour are not related.

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