What’s Your Humour Style?

What’s your humour style? To find out, take this questionnaire. A friend of mine shared it with me and got me thinking about humour. Is there a way to codify what makes us laugh? According to Rod Martin et al. (2003), there are 4 humour styles:

• Affiliative
• Self-enhancing
• Aggressive
• Self-defeating

Having completed the questionnaire, you should know which style(s) you favour. With an understanding of your humour style, you can start developing it and strategically using it in your speeches and everyday communication.

Affiliative Humour

This is humour that everyone can laugh at. The butt of the joke is rarely a specific person. Instead, these jokes are about everyday situations we can all relate to. The good thing about affiliative humour is that there is typically no victim.

Self-enhancing Humour

This is when you laugh at your own personal experiences. You may be at the centre of the joke but you don’t put yourself down.

Aggressive Humour

This is humour that makes another person the butt of the joke. For this to work, the audience has to be comfortable laughing at the victim. Therefore, high-status and/or unpopular people make better targets than those who are vulnerable.

Self-defeating Humour

This is when you make yourself the butt of your own jokes. Although it’s perhaps unhealthy to do this a lot, a small dose of self-defeating humour early on can help to humanise you and make the audience to warm to you (especially if you are a high-status individual).