The Role Of Humor Style In The Relationship Between Social Interaction And Mental Health

Humor is a broad and complex concept. Its meaning contains more than one level, it can be a stimulus situation can also be a personality trait. Researchers can focus on different understanding of humor for different research purposes. Humor has multiple dimensions, each of them has different relationship with health.Social interaction was first derived from sociology, means behavior between individuals, or groups to transmit information. In our daily lives, we almost always be involved in the process of social interaction. Either interact with friends and relatives, or interact with teachers and students, we constantly adjust our behavior in order to respond to others. And even a look with strangers, there is some kind of information or emotional exchange.Mental health has rich content and broad extension. It refers to state of mind which is able to make.sure all mental activities and functions go well. Many scholars put forward their own views on the mental health evaluation standards. Among them, be able to experience the happy mood is the core standards for mental health.Rod A. Martin has summed up4mechanisms that how humor impact health. These four mechanisms are concerned about the different ingredients of humor with health. However, there is little empirical research on the fourth mechanism, that humor affect social interaction, and thus have an effect on mental health.The study use the experience sampling measure to investigate social interaction and everyday mental health of60youths in30days, use humor styles questionnaire (HSQ) to measure the humor styles of subjects. The study build a two-level data model, humorous style (individual level) is the first level, social interaction and daily mental health (day level) are second level. Ultimately we get the following results:First of all, the quality and quantity of social interaction in some of the demographic variables are significant different:male have more social interaction and higher quality of interaction then female; subjects who work spend more time in social interaction, and get more pleasure, intimacy and self-confidence through social interaction then student subjects.Secondly, there are significant gender differences in humor styles. Male use more self-enhancing humor than female.Thirdly, humor style can moderate the relationship between social interaction and daily mental health. Self-enhancing humor can reduce the positive relation between social interaction quality and positive variables of mental health (positive emotions, self-esteem, non-depressed idea, satisfaction), also reduce the negative relation between negative variable of daily mental health (negative emotions) and interaction quality; Affiliative humor can enhance the positive relation between non-depressed ideas, satisfaction and interaction quality; self-defeating humor reduce the positive correlation between the number of social interaction and positive emotions, and positive correlation between the number of social interaction and non-depressed ideas; Aggressive humor enhance the positive correlation between the number of social interaction and non-depressive ideas.