HUMOR STYLES IN PREDICTING LONELINESS AMONG TURKISH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was two-fold. Firstly, to examine whether there were significant correlations between loneliness and four humor styles, and secondly to examine which humor style was the best predictor of loneliness among university students. In this study 483 undergraduate students participated at Çukurova University, Turkey. Data were collected through the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980) and the Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003). Four Pearson product-moment correlations were computed for the scores on the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale and on each of four humor scales. The results provided evidence in support of a conceptual framework of humor styles and loneliness indicating strong negative correlations between loneliness and affiliative and self-enhancing humor, and moderate positive correlations between loneliness and self-defeating humor, but no significant correlations between loneliness and aggressive humor. The stepwise regression analysis results indicated that four variables contributed meaningfully to loneliness, and the affiliative humor style was the best predictor of loneliness.