LMAO? Longitudinal relationships between
humour and involvement in bullying.
Dr Simon C. Hunter
School of Psychological Sciences and Health,
University of Strathclyde
email: simon.hunter@strath.ac.uk
This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, award
reference RES-062-23-2647.
Project team and info
P.I.: Dr Claire Fox, Keele University
Research Fellow: Dr Siân Jones, Oxford Brookes University
Project team: Sirandou Saidy Khan, Hayley Gilman, Katie Walker,
Katie Wright-Bevans, Lucy James, Rebecca Hale, Rebecca Serella,
Toni Karic, Mary-Louise Corr, Claire Wilson, and Victoria Caines.
Thanks and acknowledgements:
Teachers, parents and children in the participating schools.
The ESRC.
More info:
Project blog: http://esrcbullyingandhumourproject.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @Humour_Bullying
Overview
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Background
Methods
Victimisation, loneliness and humour
Dyadic analyses
Summary
Background
Involves recognition of an incongruity and, later, the ability to
resolve that incongruity (Bernstein, 1986).
For incongruity to operate successfully, it needs to occur within a
safe framework (Bariaud, 1988). ‘Safe’ cues become less obvious as
we get older.
Development
Humour develops and becomes more complex across childhood
and into adolescence e.g. At 10-14 years old, young people
understand riddles with complex cognitive incongruities where
humour is due to illogical resolution and hence violated
expectations (Bruno et al., 1987).
What did the newscaster say after he announced that the
world had come to an end?
“Stay tuned - Bob’s here with the weather next!”
Functions of humour
Fulfils myriad social roles:
• Enhancing relationships; increasing or maintaining group
cohesion; relieving tension; saving face; expressing aggression
in a socially acceptable way; probing intentions and values
indirectly; backing down from a previous position; to save face;
ingratiate yourself; attract/maintain attention; express views that
are otherwise difficult to communicate (Semrud-Clikeman & Glass, 2010).
Social: Strengthening relationships, but
humiliating, or manipulating others (Martin, 2007).
also
excluding,
Personal: To cope with dis/stress, esp. in reappraisal and in
‘replacing’ negative feelings (Martin, 2007).
Social functions
Early conceptualisation of humour viewed it predominantly as a
‘force for good’ (Cousins, 1979; Lefcourt, 2001).
However, humour is now considered to be a multi-dimensional
construct.
Positive Humour Styles
Multi-dimensional (Fox et al., in press; Martin, 2007), with two ‘positive’ forms
of humour:
Self-enhancing: A generally humorous outlook on life, even in the
face of stress or adversity (sample item: ‘I find that laughing and joking are
good ways to cope with problems’).
 Among adults, correlates with anxiety, depression, self-esteem,
social intimacy, and positive wellbeing (not with aggression
though, notably).
Affiliative: Enhances relationships and can reduce interpersonal
tensions; these people tell jokes, engage in witty banter etc (sample
item: ‘I often make people laugh by telling jokes or funny stories’).
 Among adults, correlates with anxiety, depression, self-esteem,
and social intimacy (again, not with aggression).
Negative Humour Styles
And two ‘negative’ forms of humour:
Aggressive: Enhancing the self at the expense of others, use of
sarcasm, ridicule, derision, and “put downs” (sample item: ‘If someone
makes a mistake I often tease them about it’).
 Among adults, correlates with hostility,
aggression, not with measures of
psychological adjustment though.
Self-defeating: Excessively disparaging, aims to enhance
relationships, but at the expense of personal integrity or one’s own
emotional needs (sample item: ‘I often put myself down when making jokes or
trying to be funny’).
 Among adults, correlates with depression, anxiety, self-esteem,
hostility, aggression, social intimacy, and positive wellbeing.
Humour and Bullying
Already noted that humour may
Peer-victimisation
• Repeated attacks on an individual.
• Conceptualised as a continuum rather than a category.
Also multi-dimensional in nature:
• Verbal: Being teased or called names.
• Physical: Hitting, kicking etc. Also
includes property damage.
• Social: Exclusion, rumour spreading.
Peer-victimisation
• Clearly a stressful experience for many young people,
associated with depressive symptomatology (Hunter et al., 2007, 2010),
anxiety (Visconti et al., 2010), self-harm (Viljoen et al., 2005) and suicidal
ideation (Dempsey et al., 2011; Kaltiala-Heino et al., 2009), PTSD (Idsoe et al.,
2012; Tehrani et al., 2004), loneliness (Catterson & Hunter, 2010; Woodhouse et al.,
2012), psychosomatic problems (Gini & Pozzoli, 2009), ...etc
• Also a very social experience – peer roles can be broader than
just victim or aggressor (Salmivalli et al., 1996).
Peer-victimisation
Klein and Kuiper (2008):
• Children who are bullied have much less opportunity to interact
with their peers and so are at a disadvantage with respect to the
development of humour competence.
 Cross-sectional data support: Peer-victimisation is negatively
correlated with both affiliative and self-enhancing humour (Fox &
Lyford, 2009).
 May be particularly true for victims of social aggression.
Victims gravitate toward more use of self-defeating humour?
 May be particularly true for victims of verbal aggression as
peers directly supply the victim with negative self-relevant
cognitions such as “You’re a loser”, “You’re stupid” etc which
are internalised (see also Rose & Abramson, 1992, re. depressive cognitions).
Research aims
Primarily, to evaluate the relationship between humour use,
involvement in bullying (as victim or aggressor), and adjustment
 Testing causal hypotheses, e.g., verbal victimisation will cause
an increase in levels of self-defeating humour (Rose & Abramson,
1992)
 Evaluating proposed explanatory causal pathways, e.g. the
effect of victimisation on mental health is mediated via negative
humour styles
 Evaluating humour as a risk / resilience factor, e.g. high levels
of positive humour may buffer young people against the
negative effects of peer-victimisation
 Assessing whether friendships serve as a contextual risk factor
for peer-victimisation
Methods
• N=1241 (612 male), 11-13 years old, from six Secondary schools
in England.
• Data collected at two points in time: At the start and at the end of
the 2011-2012 school session.
• Data collection spread over two sessions at each time point due
to number of tasks.
• N=807 present at all four data collection sessions.
Measures
Self-Report:
• 24-item Child Humour Styles Questionnaire (Fox et al., in press).
• 10-item Children’s Depression Inventory
– Short Form (Kovacs, 1985).
• 36-item Victimisation and Aggression
(Owens et al., 2005).
• 10-item Self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1965).
• 4-item Loneliness
et al., 2005).
(Asher et al., 1984; Rotenberg
Measures
Peer-nomination:
• Rated liking of all peers (Asher & Dodge, 1986).
• Nominated friends and very best friend (Parker & Asher, 1993).
• Peer-victimisation and use of aggression (Björkqvist et al., 1992),
participants nominated up to three peers for Verbal, Physical, and
Indirect. This was an 8-item measure.
 Verbal: “Gets called nasty names by other children.”
 Physical: “Gets kicked, hit and pushed around by other children.”
 Indirect – “Gets left out of the group by other children” and “Has nasty
rumours spread about them by other children.”
• Humour (adapted from Fox et al., in press). This was a 4-item measure,
young people nominated up to three peers for each item.
Cross-lagged analyses
The cross-lagged model (also referred to as a simplex model, an
autoregressive model, a conditional model, or a transition model).
T1
Victimisation
T2
Victimisation
e
e
T1
Depression
T2
Depression
Can the history of victimisation predict depression, taking into
consideration the history of depression (and vice-versa)?
Cross-lagged analyses
Victimisation, Humour, and Internalising
Internalising = withdrawal, anxiety, fearfulness, and depression
(Rapport et al., 2001). Operationalised here as symptoms of depression
and loneliness.
Cross-lagged analyses
Victimisation, Humour, and Internalising
Three models compared:
1. Stability only
2. Stability and ‘within construct’ cross-lagged effects
3. Stability and fully cross-lagged model
Cross-lagged analyses
Results:
• Model comparisons: All models significantly different from each
other (ΔX2, p < .001).
X2
CMIN/DF
CFI
RMSEA
Model 1
283.54 (df = 83),
p < .001
3.416
.977
.044
(.039, .050)
Model 2
175.54 (df = 63),
p < .001
2.786
.987
.038
(.031, .045)
Model 3
36.58 (df = 27),
p = .103
1.355
.999
.017
(.000, .030)
Cross-lagged analyses
Cross-sectional associations: T1 (T2)
2. Agg
3. SD
4. SE
1. Aff Hum
.13 (.06)
-.16 (-.22)
.35 (.26)
2. Agg Hum
-
.14 (.19)
.04 (-.04)
.07 (.04)
.09 (.07)
.03 (.01)
-.05 (.02)
-
.09 (.01)
.38 (.28)
.31 (.17)
.34 (.23)
.49 (.48)
3. SD Hum
4. SE Hum
5. Verbal
6. Physical
7. Social
8. Interlsng
-
5. Verb
6. Phys
7. Soc
8. Int
-.15 (-.12) -.14 (-.10) -.16 (-.17) -.38 (-.31)
-.06 (-.04) -.04 (-.04) -.07 (-.06) -.20 (-.25)
-
.73 (.65)
.78 (.69)
.53 (.38)
-
.69 (.57)
.46 (.23)
-
.59 (.43)
-
Time 2
Time 1
Self-Defeating
Humour
Self-Defeating
Humour
.11
.13
Aggressive
Humour
.07
Aggressive
Humour
.07
Self-Enhancing
Humour
Affiliative
Humour
Self-Enhancing
Humour
Affiliative
Humour
.08
.20
Verbal
Victimisation
-.14
-.14
Social
Victimisation
-.13
.13
Physical
Victimisation
T1
Internalising
-.17
.09
Verbal
Victimisation
Social
Victimisation
.12
.15
.12
Physical
Victimisation
T2
Internalising
Cross-lagged analyses
Summary
• Humour may be self-reinforcing (virtuous cycle…of sorts)
• (Mal)adjustment appears to be an important driver of both
humour use and peer-victimisation
 Implications for intervention re. adolescent mental health and
adolescent attitudes toward those with mental health issues
Dyadic analyses - APIM
Children in friendships are likely to produce data
which are related in some way, violating the
normal assumption that all data are independent.
Usually, we just ignore this.
Shared experiences may shape friends’ similarity
or their similarity may be what the attraction was to
begin with.
The Actor-Partner Independence Model (APIM: Kenny,
1996) makes a virtue of this data structure.
Can conduct APIM analyses in SEM, or using MLM (where individual
scores are seen as nested within groups with an n of 2)
Dyadic analyses
Looks a lot like the cross-lagged analysis
T1
Victimisation
T2
Victimisation
e
e
Friend’s T1
Victimisation
Friend’s T2
Victimisation
Dyadic analyses
We can evaluate “actor effects”
T1
Victimisation
T2
Victimisation
e
e
Friend’s T1
Victimisation
Friend’s T2
Victimisation
Dyadic analyses
We can evaluate “partner effects”
T1
Victimisation
T2
Victimisation
e
e
Friend’s T1
Victimisation
Friend’s T2
Victimisation
Dyadic analyses
We can evaluate the simple correlation between partners
T1
Victimisation
T2
Victimisation
e
e
Friend’s T1
Victimisation
Friend’s T2
Victimisation
Dyadic analyses
Humour & Bullying Data
Indistinguishable dyads: Best friends.
• Ndyad = 457 (best friends at T1)
First APIM:
• Depressive symptomatology of best friend dyads.
Dyadic analyses
Depression
.59
T2 Depression
.59
T2 Friend’s
Depression
.12
.12
Friend’s
Depression
Actor effect is significant: .59, p < .001
Partner effect is also significant: .12, p < .001
Dyadic analyses
Second APIM:
• Depressive Symptomatology of Best Friend Dyads.
• Victimisation of Best Friend Dyads
 Earlier analyses suggested that mental health
victimisation. True for friend effects too?
drove
Dyadic analyses
Cross-lagged analyses
Cross-sectional ACTOR (& PARTNER) correlations at T1
1. Depression
2. Social
3. Verbal
4. Physical
1. Depression
2. Social
3. Verbal
4. Physical
N/A (.18)
.44 (.09)
.40 (.10)
.36 (.06)
N/A (.12)
.80 (.12)
.68 (.05)
N/A (.16)
.70 (.12)
N/A (.14)
• Strong actor correlations between constructs, all positive
• Partner correlations between social/verbal victimisation and
depression, and between verbal and physical victimisation
Time 2
Time 1
Depression
Friend’s
Depression
Verbal
Victimisation
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
Social
Victimisation
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
.58
.08
.08
.58
.28
.34
.34
-.12
.28
.11
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
.11
Friend’s
Depression
Verbal
Victimisation
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
.52
Social
Victimisation
.52
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
.29
Physical
Victimisation
.29
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
-.12
Physical
Victimisation
Depression
Time 2
Time 1
.58
Depression
Friend’s
Depression
Verbal
Victimisation
Depression
.08
.08
Friend’s
Depression
.58
.24
.24
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
Verbal
Victimisation
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
.34
Social
Victimisation
Social
Victimisation
.34
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
.22
.22
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
Time 1
Time 2
Depression
Depression
.23
Friend’s
Depression
Verbal
Victimisation
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
Social
Victimisation
.23
Verbal
Victimisation
.28
.34
.28
Friend’s
Depression
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
.34
.12
Social
Victimisation
.12
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
.16
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
.16
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
Time 1
Time 2
Depression
Depression
Friend’s
Depression
Friend’s
Depression
.24
.24
-.19
-.19
Verbal
Victimisation
-.35
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
Social
Victimisation
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
.16
.16
-.35
.52
-.12
Verbal
Victimisation
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
Social
Victimisation
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
-.12
.52
-.25
-.25
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
Time 1
Time 2
Depression
Depression
Friend’s
Depression
Friend’s
Depression
Verbal
Victimisation
Verbal
Victimisation
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
Friend’s Verbal
Victimisation
Social
Victimisation
-.16
Social
Victimisation
-.16
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
Friend’s Social
Victimisation
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
.29
.11
.11
.29
Physical
Victimisation
Friend’s Physical
Victimisation
Dyadic analyses
Summary
• Friendships as context for development of worsening victimisation
(except for social victimisation)
• Verbal victimisation seems to be most problematic for friends of
victims, not those experiencing it
• Conversely, social victimisation seems to be ‘good’ for friends of
victims
• Physical victimisation has fewer effects
• Can be... challenging to report results!