Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid Humor styles and personality: A systematic review and meta-analysis on the relations between humor styles and the Big Five personality traits Constantin Y. Plessen, Fabian R. Franken, Christoph Ster, Rebecca R. Schmid, Christoph Wolfmayr, Anna-Maria Mayer, Marc Sobisch, Maximilian Kathofer, Katrin Rattner, Elona Kotlyar, Rory J. Maierwieser, Ulrich S. Tran ⁎ Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Liebiggasse 5, A-1010 Vienna, Austria ARTICLE INFO Key words: Humor Humor styles Big Five Personality Meta-analysis Well-being Health ABSTRACT Health-promoting and health-endangering humor styles as measured with the Humor Styles Questionnaire have been repeatedly associated with personality traits. Yet, a comprehensive meta-analysis of all currently available studies on this topic as well as an exploration of the highly heterogeneous effect sizes found in this literature is still missing. We provide an updated overview of the literature, synthesize its results in a random effects model meta-analysis, and explore possible moderators. An extensive literature search identified 24 studies from 13 countries (N = 11,791). Health-promoting humor styles were positively correlated with extraversion, agree- ableness, conscientiousness, and openness, and negatively correlated with neuroticism. Health-endangering humor styles were positively associated with neuroticism and negatively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness. Between-study heterogeneity ranged from I 2 = 41% to 96% and could be only partially ex- plained by moderator variables. The effects appear robust with respect to individual studies, publication bias, and measurement error, and appear mostly generalizable across sexes, sample composition, and continent. Further research is required to examine these associations in less developed countries, possible moderators for the high amount of effect size heterogeneity, and the development of these associations across the lifespan. 1. Introduction 1.1. Humor Since the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists have ex- amined the ways in which humor works, the functions it might fulfil, and how humor differs between individuals. While the first half of the century was dominated by Freudian theories (Freud, 1928; see Martin & Ford, 2018), the second half saw a rapid increase in empirical psy- chological research. Humor is reported to have a positive effect on persons’ social lives (Hay, 2000), well-being (Szabo, Ainsworth & Danks, 2005; Vilaythong, Arnau, Rosen & Mascaro, 2003), mental- health (Schneider, Voracek & Tran, 2018), and aspects of physical health (Lefcourt, Davidson, Prkachin & Mills, 1997, 1990; Stuber et al., 2009). Research from the field of psychoneuroimmunology suggests that humor influences the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system (Berk et al., 1989; Berk, Felten, Tan, Bittman & Westengard, 2001), thereby influencing resilience to stress. In the past, humor mainly has been defined as a pleasant and pro- social phenomenon (Tanay, Roberts & Ream, 2013). However, recent studies suggest that certain aspects of humor can also be seen as malign phenomena, for example, as a form of aggression against oneself or others (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir, 2003). Due to the inherent interdisciplinary nature of humor research, many definitions of humor exist, and no single definition is accepted by all researchers. Most researchers agree that humor can be described as a relatively stable personality trait and a multi-dimensional construct (Ruch, 1998). However, no consensus has been reached with regards to their nature and number. For instance, Craik, Lampert and Nelson (1996) identified five bipolar humor styles related to everyday use of humor, Martin et al. (2003) identified four humor styles related to well-being, and Ruch, Heintz, Platt, Wagner and Proyer (2018) identified eight humor styles related to particular qualities of humor. The currently most widely used scale to assess humor styles is the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003). Considering the potential influence of humor on wellbeing, the instrument distinguishes https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109676 Received 21 August 2019; Received in revised form 14 October 2019; Accepted 22 October 2019 Please find our scripts (R Markdown) and data to reproduce all analyses on the Open Science. Framwork: https://osf.io/6mhe4/. ⁎ Correspondence author. E-mail address: ulrich.tran@univie.ac.at (U.S. Tran). Personality and Individual Differences 154 (2020) 109676 0191-8869/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T