Benevolent and Corrective Humor, Life Satisfaction, and Broad Humor Dimensions : Extending the Nomological Network of the BenCor Across 25 Countries

• Authors: HEINTZ Sonja; RUCH Willibald; AYKAN Simge; BRDAR Ingrid; BRZOZOWSKA Dorota; CARRETERO-DIOS Hugo; CHEN Hsueh-Chih; CHLOPICKI Wladyslaw; CHOI Incheol; DIONIGI Alberto; DURKA Robert; FORD Thomas E.; GUSEWELL Angelika; ISLER Robert B.; IVANOVA Alyona; LAINESTE Liisi; LAJCIAKOVA Petra; LAU Chloe; LEE Minha; MADA Stanca; MARTIN-KRUMM Charles; MENDIBURO-SEGUEL Andres; MIGIWA Ifu; MUSTAFI Nailya; OSHIO Atsushi; PLATT Tracey; PROYER Rene T.; QUIROGA-GARZA Angelica; RAMIS TamilSelvan; SAFTOIU Razvan; SAKLOFSKE Donald H.; SHCHERBAKOVA Olga V.; SLEZÁČKOVÁ Alena; STALIKAS Anastasios; STOKENBERGA Ieva; TORRES-MARIN Jorge; WONG Peter S. O.
• Year of publication: 2020
• Type: Article in Periodical
• Magazine / Source: JOURNAL OF HAPPINESS STUDIES
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Arts
• Web: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10902-019-00185-9
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-019-00185-9
• Keywords: Humor; Life satisfaction; Cross-cultural comparisons; BenCor
• Description: Benevolent and corrective humor are two comic styles that have been related to virtue, morality, and character strengths. A previous study also supported the viability of measuring these two styles with the BenCor in 22 countries. The present study extends the previous one by including further countries (a total of 25 countries in 29 samples with N = 7813), by testing the revised BenCor (BenCor-R), and by adding two criterion measures to assess life satisfaction and four broad humor dimensions (social fun/entertaining humor, mockery, humor ineptness, and cognitive/reflective humor). As expected, the BenCor-R showed mostly promising psychometric properties (internal consistency and factorial validity). Consistent with previous studies, benevolent humor correlated positively with life satisfaction in most countries, while corrective humor was uncorrelated with life satisfaction. These relationships were only slightly changed when controlling for social fun/entertaining humor and mockery, respectively. Benevolent humor was mostly positively associated with cognitive/reflective humor, followed by social fun/entertaining humor and mockery. Corrective humor was mostly positively associated with mockery, followed by cognitive/reflective and social fun/entertaining humor, although these relationships differed between the countries. Overall, the present study supports the viability of benevolent and corrective humor, which has yet received insufficient attention in psychology, for cross-cultural investigations and applications of humor, well-being, and morality.