The present study examines the question of whether certain humor styles predict self-esteem. Men and women in 15 countries (NTOTAL = 4701) completed self-report measures assessing self-esteem and the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-defeating, and self-enhancing. Each of the country samples had self-esteem averages at or above the midpoint of the scale, but did vary. The samples from Colombia and Serbia had the highest self-esteem values and Russia had the lowest. For all of the country samples, with the exception of Russia, the multiple regression results demonstrated that a greater level of the self-enhancing humor style positively predicted higher self-esteem scores. As the self-enhancing humor style involves improving one’s mood with humor, the results suggest that for the majority of the participants, self-enhancing humor styles also help to increase self-esteem. The results are discussed both within countries and across the samples. In particular, the unique finding that not a self-enhancing humor style but an aggressive humor style predicts self-esteem in the Russian sample is discussed. The chapter ends with a discussion of how humor styles correlate with mental health indicators and how the understanding of humor style profiles are related to well-being across countries adds to the global understanding of individual differences.

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This paper investigates how horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism predict self-report loneliness in addition to the variance accounted for by age and sex in 28 countries (N = 8,345). Horizontal and vertical aspects of individualism and collectivism had small but significant contributions to predicting loneliness. Horizontal-collectivism (for 19 country samples) and, to a lesser extent, horizontal-individualism (for seven country samples), significantly predicted lower loneliness scores. Vertical-individualism (for 16 country samples), and to a lesser extent, vertical-collectivism (for six country samples), predicted feeling more loneliness among our participants. Adjusted R2 values suggested that between 0.6% and 27.7% of self-report loneliness was predicted. These results suggest that those who value egalitarian social relations also tend to report being less lonely whereas those who value individuality and competitiveness endorse the loneliness items more. These results are of importance to those investigating and helping lonely individuals by appreciating the influence of perceived culture.@en

The relationships between self-report loneliness and the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-defeating, and self-enhancing were investigated in 15 countries (N = 4,701). Because loneliness has been suggested to be both commonly experienced and detrimental, we examine if there are similar patterns between humor styles, gender, and age with loneliness in samples of individuals from diverse backgrounds. Across the country samples, affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles negatively correlated with loneliness, self-defeating was positively correlated, and the aggressive humor style was not significantly related. In predicting loneliness, 40.5% of the variance could be accounted. Younger females with lower affiliative, lower self-enhancing, and higher self-defeating humor style scores had higher loneliness scores. The results suggest that although national mean differences may be present, the pattern of relationships between humor styles and loneliness is consistent across these diverse samples, providing some suggestions for mental health promotion among lonely individuals.@en

Alcohol is a global risk factor for road trauma. Although drink driving has received most of the scholarly attention, there is growing evidence of the risks of alcohol-impaired walking. Alcohol-impaired pedestrians are over-represented in fatal crashes compared to non-impaired pedestrians. Additionally, empirical evidence shows that alcohol intoxication impairs road-crossing judgements. Besides some limited early research, much is unknown about the global prevalence and determinants of alcohol-impaired walking. Understanding alcohol-impaired walking will support health promotion initiatives and injury prevention. The present investigation has three aims: (1) compare the prevalence of alcohol-impaired walking across countries; (2) identify international groups of pedestrians based on psychosocial factors (i.e., Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and perceptions of risk); and (3) investigate how segments of pedestrians form their intention for alcohol-impaired walking using the extended TPB (i.e. subjective norm, attitudes, perceived control, and perceived risk). A cross-sectional design was applied. The target behaviour question was “have you been a pedestrian when your thinking or physical ability (balance/strength) is affected by alcohol?” to ensure comparability across countries. Cluster analysis based on the extended TPB was used to identify groups of countries. Finally, regressions were used to predict pedestrians’ intentions per group. A total of 6,166 respondents (Age M(SD) = 29.4 (14.2); Males = 39.2%) completed the questionnaire, ranging from 12.6% from Russia to 2.2% from Finland. The proportion of participants who reported never engaging in alcohol-impaired walking in the last three months ranged from 30.1% (Spain) to 83.1% (Turkey). Four groups of countries were identified: group-1 (Czech Republic, Spain, and Australia), group-2 (Russia and Finland), group-3 (Japan), and group-4 (final ten countries including Colombia, China, and Romania). Pedestrian intentions to engage in alcohol- impaired walking are predicted by perceptions of risk and TPB-psychosocial factors in group-1 and group-4. Favourable TPB-beliefs and low perceived risk increased alcohol-impaired walking intentions. Conversely, subjective norms were not significant in group-2 and only perceived risk predicted intention in group-3. The willingness of pedestrians to walk when alcohol-impaired differs significantly across the countries in this study. Perceived risk was the only common predictor among the 16 countries.@en

The present study examines the question of whether certain humor styles predict self-esteem. Men and women in 15 countries (NTOTAL = 4701) completed self-report measures assessing self-esteem and the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-defeating, and self-enhancing. Each of the country samples had self-esteem averages at or above the midpoint of the scale, but did vary. The samples from Colombia and Serbia had the highest self-esteem values and Russia had the lowest. For all of the country samples, with the exception of Russia, the multiple regression results demonstrated that a greater level of the self-enhancing humor style positively predicted higher self-esteem scores. As the self-enhancing humor style involves improving one’s mood with humor, the results suggest that for the majority of the participants, self-enhancing humor styles also help to increase self-esteem. The results are discussed both within countries and across the samples. In particular, the unique finding that not a self-enhancing humor style but an aggressive humor style predicts self-esteem in the Russian sample is discussed. The chapter ends with a discussion of how humor styles correlate with mental health indicators and how the understanding of humor style profiles are related to well-being across countries adds to the global understanding of individual differences.@en

Responses to a measure of the four humor styles of affiliative, aggressive, self-enhancing, and self-defeating from the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(1), 48–75, 2003) were collected from individuals (N = 8361) in 28 countries encompassing 21 different languages. The purpose of this global collaboration was to examine both differences and similarities of humor styles across nations at the descriptive level. Across the countries, typically the highest scores were for the affiliative humor style. When each humor style was examined, some country samples demonstrated differences in mean scores. For example, the samples from Hungary, Indonesia, South Africa, and Serbia had high self-enhancing scores and Japan scored the lowest. In contrast to mean differences, almost all of the countries demonstrated positive inter-scale correlations, similar sex differences, and similar correlations with age, suggesting more similarities than differences. As discussed, some of the samples had low internal consistency values and poorly fitting factor structures for the humor style scales, suggesting that those results should be interpreted with caution.@en