Prior research links adaptive humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing) with enhanced psychological well-being and maladaptive humor styles (aggressive and self-defeating) with worse psychological well-being, primarily through humor styles’ influence on individuals’ social interactions and efforts to positively reframe stressors. The present study examined the unique relation of each humor style with psychological well-being with a focus on understanding mechanisms of adjustment under highly stressful conditions. Ninety-nine parents of children with disabilities were surveyed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in March 2020, and 79 parents completed follow-up surveys in July 2020. As predicted, at T1, self-enhancing humor was associated with less psychological distress and greater family satisfaction, self-defeating humor was associated with greater distress, and aggressive humor was associated with lower family satisfaction. Moreover, affiliative humor predicted decreased psychological distress over time, whereas self-defeating humor predicted increased psychological distress and decreased family satisfaction over time. Relations were largely mediated by caregiver positive reappraisal, family efforts to reframe daily disability-related challenges, and negative social interactions. Future research should further examine the influence of caregiver humor styles on family dynamics, family reframing norms, and caregiving efficacy.
Introduction
Research on Martin et al.’s (2003) adaptive and maladaptive humor styles has burgeoned in recent years. Adaptive styles use positive, benign humor to connect with others by means of funny comments or anecdotes (affiliative humor), or to bolster the self by noting amusing or ironic aspects of daily events (self-enhancing humor). By contrast, maladaptive styles use injurious or sarcastic humor to insult others and thereby elevate the self (aggressive humor) or to disparage the self as a means of connecting with or gaining attention from others (self-defeating humor; see Martin (2007), for a review). Recent work has focused on the role of humor styles in coping with real-life stressors. Such work is essential to the conceptualization of these constructs: If we are to continue labeling humor styles as “adaptive” and “maladaptive,” we must examine how these concepts operate under conditions that require some sort of adaptation. Emerging evidence suggests that the adaptive humor styles do indeed facilitate adjustment to stressors outside of the laboratory, including coping with police work (Kerkkanen et al., 2004), university academics (Fritz, 2020a), chronic pain (Ramirez-Meastra et al., 2020), infertility (Ostovar et al., 2020), and terrorist attacks (Fritz et al., 2017). By contrast, the maladaptive humor styles interfere with adjustment to these same stressors, with a particularly strong pattern of evidence demonstrating that self-defeating humor predicts worse psychological and physical adaptation to stressors over time (Fritz, 2020b; Schneider et al., 2018).
Parents of children with disabilities live under chronically stressful conditions (Isa et al., 2016; Neely-Barnes & Dia, 2008). A recent review of the literature on cerebral palsy and family stress concluded that parents of children with disabilities report greater stress and worse mental and physical health than parents of typically developing children (Fritz & Sewell-Roberts, 2018). A variety of social, emotional, and health behavior factors explain this disparity in well-being. However, it is important to note that not all parents of children with disabilities fare poorly: Considerable variability in well-being exists even among those parenting children with severe disabilities. Parent financial resources, social support, self-efficacy, and coping strategies all help to explain why some parent-caregivers thrive while others struggle (Fritz & Sewell-Roberts, 2018). Three studies to date have examined the coping strategy of humor use among parents of children with disabilities and found that the positive aspects of humor use are linked with enhanced caregiver well-being and family functioning (Fritz, 2020b; Rieger & McGrail, 2013, 2015). The present study aims to extend prior work by examining the role of humor styles in adapting to a potentially more stressful situation than those of past studies: Caregiving for a child with a disability during a global pandemic.
During the best of times, caring for a child with a disability can be a lonely experience. Parent-caregivers report social isolation as one of their greatest sources of stress (Fritz & Sewell-Roberts, 2018). The abrupt shift to self- or government-imposed isolation, accompanied by the shuttering of schools and businesses and the loss of access to teachers, activities, and routines, was a difficult transition for many families at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But for the families of children with disabilities, this shift was even more complicated. The loss of face-to-face instruction meant the loss of qualified professionals who knew how to implement their child’s Individual Education Plan. It meant the loss of school- and clinic-based physical, occupational, and speech therapy. For some parents, it meant the loss of the only other adults whom they trusted to supervise, lift, feed, and medicate their child, and help their child with toileting. These losses were compounded by the fact that developmental disabilities carry a relatively high rate of comorbidities (Batshaw et al., 2019); thus, many of these families had to cope with added stress that their child was at high risk of complications from COVID-19. This was, objectively speaking, a stressful situation requiring adaptation.
Humor styles and well-being
According to Martin et al. (2003), affiliative humor is benign, cheerful, accepting of the self and others, and designed to enhance one’s relationships with others by telling funny anecdotes and engaging in witty banter. Self-enhancing humor is positive humor designed to elevate one’s own mood or coping effectiveness by being amused by the incongruities of life and noting funny or ironic aspects of situations in order to maintain a humorous perspective in the face of stress or adversity. By contrast, self-defeating humor is negative, disparaging humor designed to facilitate connection with others by making oneself the butt of jokes or denigrating the self in order to ingratiate the self to others. Aggressive humor is negative humor designed to elevate the self in comparison to others by belittling, ridiculing, or excessively teasing others. Across both laboratory and survey studies of a variety of adult populations, a consistent body of evidence demonstrates that the adaptive styles, affiliative humor and self-enhancing, are typically associated with enhanced psychological well-being, whereas self-defeating humor is associated with psychological distress, and aggressive humor is unrelated to well-being (see Schneider et al., 2018, for a meta-analytic review). Some studies have also linked humor styles with physical health outcomes: In one study, a construct similar to self-enhancing humor predicted reduced mortality risk over 15 years (Romundstad et al., 2016), and in another study self-enhancing humor was associated with fewer physical symptoms, whereas self-defeating humor was associated with greater physical symptoms (Dyck & Holtzman, 2013). The relations of adaptive humor styles with positive mental and physical health outcomes, and of maladaptive humor styles with negative health outcomes, appear to hold even when examining the unique relation of each humor style to outcomes while controlling for shared variance with the other humor styles (Fritz, 2020a).
To date, only two studies have examined humor styles among the parents of children with disabilities. Fritz, 2020b surveyed 80 parents of children with developmental disabilities and resurveyed a subset of 40 parents 4 months later. As expected, the adaptive styles—affiliative and self-enhancing—were associated with a variety of enhanced mental and physical health outcomes at T1. Although the small follow-up sample limited the ability to detect effects at T2, affiliative humor predicted increases in mental functioning and positive affect over time. By contrast, the maladaptive style self-defeating humor was associated with worse mental functioning and health habits and with greater depressive and physical illness symptoms at T1, while aggressive humor predicted increases in negative affect over time. Similarly, Rieger and McGrail (2015) examined humor styles among 72 parents of children with disabilities. Rather than assessing well-being, however, their study examined the impact of humor use on family functioning. Family functioning assesses the norms that family members develop in the course of their daily activities regarding cohesion among members, communication styles, relationship dynamics and quality, and flexibility in coping with stressors. Rieger and McGrail (2015) showed that adaptive humor styles were associated with enhanced family communication and satisfaction, whereas maladaptive styles were linked with relationship difficulties. Relatedly, an earlier study showed that higher scores on the Coping Humor Scale were associated with greater family cohesion and flexibility among parents of children with disabilities (Rieger & McGrail, 2013). Both studies suggest that humor use sets the tone for family dynamics and coping in families of children with disabilities.
The present study aims to build on this work by examining the extent to which humor use facilitates individual and family-level coping strategies, which ultimately may affect family satisfaction and caregiver well-being. The importance of caregiver stress and coping for children’s well-being cannot be overestimated: High stress among parents of children with disabilities has been associated with lower parenting effectiveness across several studies (Coldwell et al., 2006; Crnic & Ross, 2017; Hastings, 2002; Peer & Hillman, 2014). Arguably, the effects of humor use on caregiver well-being may be even more pronounced while families self-isolate during a pandemic.
Mediators of the links between humor styles and well-being
Reframing
Positive reappraisal is the ability to reframe stressful events by viewing some aspect of them as beneficial or meaningful, or as a positive challenge rather than as a negative threat (Folkman, 1997). This construct, which is also referred to in the literature as reframing or cognitive reappraisal, is related to enhanced adjustment to stressful events across a variety of healthy, chronically ill, and victimized populations (see Helgeson et al. (2006) and Park (2010), for reviews). Positive reappraisal is hypothesized to be a primary mechanism by which humor styles facilitate adaptation to negative events by allowing individuals to minimize the emotional and physiological impact of stressors (Kuiper, 2012; Mallya et al., 2019; Perchtold et al., 2019; Wilkins, 2014). Self-enhancing humor, which involves privately enjoying the absurdities and ironies in everyday situations, is the most conceptually similar humor style to positive reappraisal and has been most strongly associated with positive reappraisal in the literature. Affiliative humor is also associated with greater positive reappraisal, whereas self-defeating humor is associated with less positive reappraisal (Fritz, 2020a; Sillars et al., 2020). Moreover, two studies have demonstrated that positive reappraisal statistically mediated the relation of humor styles with psychological well-being among adults coping in the aftermath of a terrorist attack (Fritz et al., 2017) and among parents of children with disabilities (Fritz, 2020b).
Several studies have documented relations between positive reappraisal and well-being specifically among caregivers, including caregivers of family members with dementia (Cheng et al., 2017; Haverstock et al., 2020) and physical health ailments (Litzelman et al., 2017), and parents of children with developmental disabilities (Hastings & Taunt, 2002; Scorgie & Sobsey, 2000). In a review of cerebral palsy caregiving and family stress, Fritz and Sewell-Roberts (2018) review noted that several studies in this area alluded to (but did not necessarily measure) a construct that can be best described as family-level positive reappraisal. Notably, one study of parents of children with disabilities (Lin, 2000) did explicitly examine “family reappraisal,” conceptualized as a family norm for positively reframing stressors related to their child’s disability. Family reappraisal was the strongest predictor of adjustment in this study. Clearly, there is a need to further examine the ways in which humor styles may influence reframing efforts at both the individual and the family level, which may in turn influence adjustment.
Two types of family-level positive reappraisal constructs were created for this study: reframing disability-related daily challenges in a positive light and reframing disability-related emergencies in a positive light. The shift toward examining family-level perceptions and coping aligns with the family resilience framework (Walsh, 2003, 2016) which describes a system of dynamic, recursive processes that foster resilience in the face of chronic stressors. Within this framework, humor use is one element that may help families develop a propensity for viewing daily challenges in a positive light and, as a result, develop effective care routines. The present study aims to connect this theoretical framework with a clear empirical illustration of the pathways by which humor use may elicit effective caregiver coping and well-being in families of children with disabilities.
Social interaction
Humor styles are consistently associated with social interaction outcomes: Affiliative and self-enhancing humor are associated with greater social support and enhanced relationship outcomes, whereas self-defeating humor is consistently linked with low social support and greater interpersonal difficulties (Kazarian et al., 2010; Kuiper, 2010; Martin, 2007). This pattern of relations remains even when shared variance with other humor styles is controlled to examine the unique effect of each humor styles on social interactions (Fritz, 2020a). One prior study showed that social support was an important mediator of the relations of humor styles with both mental and physical well-being (Fritz, 2020b). The relation of aggressive humor with well-being and social interaction outcomes is complex: It is inconsistent across studies and may be moderated by social competence (Fritz, 2020a).
However, some ambiguity exists in interpreting earlier works because the social interaction instruments used did not specify the modality of interaction. Thus, it is unclear the extent to which participants’ self-reports reflected verbal communications (via face-to-face or telephone) or digital communications (via text or social media), or some combination. While it may be safe to assume that the social interaction reports of 15 or 20 years ago primarily reflect verbal rather than digital communications, we simply cannot know the extent to which that is true in more recent studies. Assessing modality is especially important in the present study because pandemic-imposed isolation may have reduced the frequency of face-to-face interactions with all but one’s immediate family members while increasing the frequency and influence of social interactions conducted via social media.
The present study utilized a global measure of negative social interactions used in prior studies in order to provide an opportunity for replication, as well as two new measures specifically assessing online social interactions. The Fritz Online Social Support Interactions List (FOSSIL; Fritz, 2020a), which was recently developed to measure interactions with others on social media, was administered. Additionally, new items were created for this study to assess social media interactions specifically related to caregiving for a child with a disability. Online groups are often an important source of social support for caregivers, especially for those whose social interactions are constrained by the logistical difficulties of taking their child out or finding appropriate childcare (Clifford & Minnes, 2013). Thus, online support may have an even greater impact than usual on parent-caregivers’ well-being during the pandemic isolation.
Goals
To summarize, the goals of the present study were (1) to replicate the relations of humor styles with well-being among individuals coping with significant chronic stress—the parents of children with disabilities during a global pandemic, (2) to extend past work on the relation of humor styles with well-being among parent-caregivers (Fritz, 2020b) by controlling for shared variance among humor styles and by obtaining a larger T2 sample, (3) to extend prior work by examining the effects of humor styles on family satisfaction, (4) to replicate past research showing that caregivers’ positive reappraisal mediates relations of humor styles with psychological well-being and to extend this concept to two new family-level reappraisal coping constructs created for this study, positive reframing of daily disability-related challenges and positive reframing of disability-related emergencies, and (5) to replicate past research showing that social interactions (of unspecified modality) mediate relations of humor styles with well-being, and (6) to examine the role of social interactions occurring via a specific, important modality during a lockdown—social media—as a mediator of humor/well-being relations.
Hypotheses
Based on recent work (Fritz, 2020a, 2020b; Schneider et al., 2018), it was expected that the adaptive humor styles—affiliative and self-enhancing—would be associated with enhanced psychological well-being and family satisfaction, whereas one of the maladaptive humor styles—self-defeating—would clearly be associated with worse outcomes. The prediction regarding aggressive humor was equivocal: On one hand, aggressive humor has shown weak and inconsistent relations to psychological well-being in past research (e.g., Schneider et al., 2018), so it could be unrelated here as well. On the other hand, however, it seemed plausible that the social isolation of the pandemic may magnify the negative consequences of aggressive humor (see Fritz (2020a), for a discussion of the theoretical parameters predicting successful versus unsuccessful execution of aggressive humor). Thus, it was predicted that aggressive humor may be associated with worse psychological well-being and family satisfaction, but it would not be as strongly related to these outcomes as would self-defeating humor.
Regarding mediation effects, it was predicted that social interaction would largely mediate the relation of affiliative humor with outcomes and reframing would largely mediate the relation of self-enhancing humor with outcomes, although as in prior studies, both mediators may serve as mechanisms for both adaptive humor styles (Fritz, 2020a, 2020b; Fritz et al., 2017). Consistent with this same body of research, it was expected that self-defeating humor would be associated with worse outcomes and that both social interaction and reframing may mediate these relations. Given that social competence may be an important moderator of the relation of aggressive humor with psychological well-being (Fritz, 2020a), it was expected that if aggressive humor was associated with worse caregiver well-being and family satisfaction, those relations would most likely be mediated by social interaction.
Method
Participants
Parents. Ninety-nine parent-caregivers completed the T1 survey. Participants reported the following demographic characteristics: Mean age of 41.3 years (range: 29–62), 89.9% female, 82.8% White, 10.1% Hispanic, 4.0% Black or African American, 1% Asian, 1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 1% did not report. 80% of participants were currently married. Regarding education, 38.4% completed high school, 24.2% obtained a 4-year college degree, and 38.4% obtained a postgraduate degree. Regarding employment status, 39.4% were employed full-time, 31.3% were employed part-time, and 29.3% were full-time caregivers. Online recruiting yielded a diverse geographic sample from across the United States.
Children. Parents reported on 121 children with disabilities. Nineteen parents cared for more than one child with a disability. Children were 67 males and 53 females (missing data = 1) with a mean age of 10.3 years (range: 2–21). The most common primary diagnoses parents reported were autism spectrum disorder (n = 56), Down syndrome (n = 20), cerebral palsy (n = 17), rare genetic disorder (n = 12), and intellectual disability (n = 8). Nineteen percent of parents rated their child’s disability as mild, 59% rated it moderate, and 22% rated it severe.
Procedure
The study was designed to examine changes in caregivers’ experiences as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in the United States. A declaration of national emergency was issued on March 13, 2020, and the T1 recruitment window began on March 18, at which time the US had recorded over 8600 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 140 deaths. The T1 recruitment window closed on April 16, 2020, at which time the US had recorded over 650,000 confirmed cases and 30,000 deaths. The T2 follow-up window was open from July 1 to July 15, 2020, at which time the US recorded over 3.4 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 138,000 deaths.
Participants were recruited from Facebook groups for parents of children with disabilities. Prior to advertising, approval was obtained from the University IRB approval and from the Facebook group administrators. Interested parents emailed the study coordinator to determine if they met eligibility requirements: that the parent was a primary caregiver, that the family currently resided in the US, and that the child was between the ages of 2 and 21 and had a documented developmental disability. Eligible participants received an email link to an online consent form. Upon completion of consent, participants were emailed a link to the online survey. After completing the T1 survey, participants received a $20 gift certificate to an online vendor, and upon completion of the T2 survey, participants received another $10 gift certificate. At T1, 99 parents completed the survey. At T2, four months later, 79 participants completed a follow-up survey. With alpha and power set at conventional levels of .05 and .8, respectively, and a sample size of N = 99, the minimum detectable effects size is equivalent to r = .27. This sample size is sufficient to detect correlations between humor styles and well-being in the range of r = .30 to r = .50 found in prior research while providing some buffer to account for T2 attrition.
Measures
Descriptive statistics and internal consistencies for instruments appear in Table 1.
Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and Cronbach’s alphas of study variables.
Measure
Mean
SD
#items
Alpha
Humor
Affiliative
5.20
1.18
8
.87
Self-enhancing
4.71
0.99
8
.87
Aggressive
2.84
1.07
8
.78
Self-defeating
3.43
1.21
8
.84
Time 1 outcomes
Mood disturbance
2.92
0.69
30
.95
Depressive symptoms
21.97
11.28
20
.91
Perceived stress
3.23
0.73
5
.81
Family satisfaction
3.57
0.74
20
.96
Time 2 outcomes
Mood disturbance
2.79
0.74
30
.96
Depressive symptoms
19.48
12.21
20
.93
Perceived stress
2.93
0.73
5
.84
Family satisfaction
3.50
0.78
20
.96
Reappraisal
Family challenge
3.83
0.71
2
r = .22*
Family emergency
3.79
0.67
4
.69
Positive reframing
3.34
0.78
6
.85
Reappraisal effort
2.99
0.82
3
.62
Social interaction
Online support
3.79
0.56
9
.76
Caregiving support
3.24
0.63
9
.70
Negative interactions
2.35
0.85
17
.93
Humor styles
The Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin et al., 2003) is a 32-item questionnaire with subscales measuring each of the four humor styles: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor. Martin et al. (2003) viewed humor styles as relatively stable traits, and as such, the HSQ asks respondents to rate how they typically experience and express humor in their lives rather than asking them to indicate how much they have used different humor strategies to cope with a specific stressor. Items were rated on a 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree) scale, and sample items include the following for affiliative humor (“I don’t have to work very hard at making other people laugh – I seem to be a naturally humorous person”), self-enhancing humor (“Even when I’m by myself, I’m often amused by the absurdities of life”), aggressive humor (“If I don’t like someone, I often use humor or teasing to put them down”), and self-defeating humor (“I often try to make people like or accept me more by saying something funny about my own weaknesses, blunders, or faults”). The HSQ demonstrates good reliability and validity and has been used in over 150 published studies (see Schneider et al. (2018), for a review) with the Cronbach’s alphas of subscales typically ranging from .70 to .80.
Psychological well-being
Mood disturbance was assessed with the Profile of Mood States (POMS; McNair et al., 1971, 1992; Usala & Hertzog, 1989). Participants rated 30 mood states during the past week on a 5-point scale (1 = not at all to 5 = a lot) for five subscales: anger, anxiety, depression, well-being, and calm. Positive items were reverse-scored to create one index of daily mood disturbance. This well-validated scale has been used in over 4000 published studies with evidence of excellent test–retest reliability and Cronbach’s alphas typically ranging from .80 to .95 (Lin et al., 2014).
Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), which assesses severity of depressive symptoms experienced in the past week on a scale ranging from 0 (rarely or none of the time) to 3 (most or all of the time) (Radloff, 1977). Scores thus range from 0 to 60 with a clinical cutoff of 16 for detecting subthreshold depression. This scale has been utilized in over 3000 published studies and shown high internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent validity across general and patient populations, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients among international samples of university students ranging from .89 to .92 (Jiang et al., 2019). Although the CES-D has been criticized in recent years for recommending too low a clinical cutoff, resulting in false positives, its widespread use provides a useful comparison for the present study (Henry et al., 2018). The mood disturbance and depressive symptoms measures were standardized and combined into a psychological distress index.
Perceived stress was assessed with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; Cohen et al., 1983), which is a widely used measure of life stress that has demonstrated acceptable validity and reliable across hundreds of published studies worldwide (Huang et al., 2020). Participants rated their stress levels during the past week ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a lot). A sample item is, “how much have you felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life?”
Family satisfaction was assessed with the Family Satisfaction subscale of the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES-IV; Olson & Gorall, 2004). Participants rated 10 items rated on a 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (extremely satisfied) scale and responded to the stem, “Please indicate how satisfied or dissatisfied you are in your family with….” Sample items include “your family’s ability to be flexible” and “your family’s ability to share positive experiences.” The FACES-IV has demonstrated excellent reliability and validity (Olson, 2011).
Potential mediators: reframing and social interactions
Caregiver reframing was measured with the revised positive reappraisal index (Fritz, 2020a). This scale is comprised of two related but conceptually distinct factors: (1) positive reframing of negative experiences and (2) reappraisal effort or searching for answers. This scale is based in part on the positive reinterpretation and growth subscale of the COPE (Carver et al., 1989), which has been utilized in over 500 published empirical studies. The revised positive reappraisal index has demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability among undergraduate students (Fritz, 2020a; Fritz et al., 2017) and among parent-caregivers of children with disabilities (Fritz, 2020b). As in prior studies, the reappraisal effort subscale was reverse scored, and then it and the positive reframing subscale were combined into one composite index reflecting caregivers’ positive reappraisal for use in analyses.
Family reframing aims to assess the extent to which respondents view their family-level coping with disability-related stressors in a positive light. Two constructs were created for this study: reframing daily disability challenges and reframing disability-related emergencies. Participants rated items on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) scale. Participants responded to two items for the reframing daily disability challenges measure: “Our family seems to cope with disability-related challenges pretty easily” and “Family members are really good at routines that make some chores easier, like getting ready for school, traveling, or going out to restaurants.” Participants responded to four items for the reframing disability-related emergencies measure: “Our family has routines in place for how to deal with an emergency related to my child’s disability,” “Other families are sometimes shocked at how calm we are during emergencies,” “Some situations that would cause other families to panic or become really upset just seem like minor hassles to our family because we know exactly how to handle it,” and “Our family has a really ‘high bar’ for getting upset, meaning that there are few situations related to my child’s disability that cause us to panic anymore.”
Online social support. The Fritz Online Social Support Interactions List (FOSSIL; Fritz, 2020b) is a new measure assessing online social support. Participants responded to the stem, “In the past week, how much have the people that you interacted with on social media…” and rated nine items on a 1 (not at all) to 5 (a lot) scale. Sample items included, “given you emotional support and encouragement” and “embarrassed or humiliated you.”
Online caregiving support. Nine items were created for this study to assess social media interactions specifically related to caregiving for a child with a disability. Participants responded to the stem, “In the past week, how much have the people that you interacted with on social media…?” Five positive items included, “seemed to really understand the caregiving difficulties that you faced?” “given you useful information related to your child’s special needs?” “given you the kind of understanding that only another caregiver could provide?” “given you useful information about caregiving resources or strategies?” and “given you a way to feel a meaningful social connection without interfering with your caregiving duties?” Four negative items included, “posted an insensitive comment about your child or your childcare choices?” “seemed unappreciative of how easy their own lives are?” “seemed uncomfortable with your posts about your special needs child?” and “caused you to feel sad, jealous, or resentful of their typically-developing children?” The five negative items were reverse scored and averaged with the four positive items to create a total online caregiving support score.
Negative interactions were assessed with the Test of Negative Social Exchange (TENSE; Ruehlman & Karoly, 1991), which assesses four types of social conflict: Hostility/Impatience, Insensitivity, Interference, and Ridicule. Participants reported the extent to which the important others had engaged in behaviors such as “took my feelings lightly” and “ignored my wishes or needs” during the past week. In contrast to the other social interaction measures described herein, the TENSE does not direct participants to report on their online interactions. Rather, it is designed to assess the quality of interactions with important others regardless of modality. The TENSE has been used in over 40 studies and demonstrates acceptable internal consistency and construct validity with Cronbach’s alphas typically .90 or higher (Gallo et al., 2003).
Analytic strategy
To examine the relations of humor styles with psychological well-being and potential mediators, simultaneous regression analyses entering all four humor styles on the same step were conducted to examine the effect of each humor style on outcomes independent of its shared variance with the other three humor styles. To examine the relations of potential mediators with psychological well-being, two different sets of simultaneous regression analyses were conducted: one analysis entering all three reappraisal variables on the same step to examine the unique effect of each variable on outcomes and a second analysis entering all three social interaction variables on the same step to examine the unique effect of each variable on outcomes. To test whether reappraisal or social interaction mediated relations of humor styles with outcomes, recommended procedures to estimate a series of model four equations using the PROCESS v.3.5.3 macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2018) were followed. Indirect effects were tested using a bias-corrected bootstrapping approach with 5000 resamples to address non-normality in the product of the coefficients. Asymmetric 95% confidence intervals around the indirect effect (ab path) estimates that do not include zero indicate statistically significant mediation effects (Hayes & Rockwood, 2017).
Results
Changes in well-being over time
Despite the growing pandemic, paired t-tests showed that family satisfaction remained unchanged over time (T1 = 3.54 vs. T2 = 3.50, t(78) = 0.61, n.s.). Moreover, mood disturbance (T1 = 3.00 vs. T2 = 2.79, t(78) = 3.43, p < .001), perceived stress (T1 = 3.28 vs. T2 = 2.93, t(78) = 4.86, p < .001), and depressive symptoms (T1 = 22.9 vs. T2 = 19.5, t(78) = 3.50, p < .001) decreased over time. Notably, parents of children with disabilities generally score higher than parents of typically developing children on depressive symptoms (Isa et al., 2016; Neely-Barnes & Dia, 2008). Here, too, parent-caregivers scored well above population norms: 64.6% of parents scored above the CES-D clinical cutoff score of 16 at T1 and 52% scored above the cutoff score at T2. These percentages are considerably higher than the approximately 20% of adults in the general population typically exceeding the clinical cutoff (Henry et al., 2018; Radloff, 1977).
Relations of humor styles with psychological well-being
Cross-sectional relations. As shown in Table 2, at Time 1 self-enhancing humor was associated with less psychological distress and perceived stress and with greater family satisfaction. Unexpectedly, affiliative humor was associated with greater psychological distress and perceived stress. As predicted, aggressive humor was associated with lower family satisfaction, and self-defeating humor was associated with greater psychological distress and perceived stress.
Table 2. Relations of humor styles to outcomes and potential mediators.
n
Intercept (SE)
95% CI
Affiliative
Self-enhancing
Aggressive
Self-defeating
T1 outcomes
Psychological distress
99
−0.43 (.50)
(−0.56, 1.42)
.29**
−.45***
.11
.36***
Perceived stress
99
2.93 (.41)
(2.12, 3.74)
.32**
−.38***
.08
.22*
Family satisfaction
99
3.97 (.40)
(3.18, 4.76)
−.04
.24*
−.40***
−.16
T2 outcomes
Psychological distress
79
−0.51 (.43)
(−0.35, 1.36)
−.21*
.25**
−.07
.18*
Perceived stress
79
0.94 (.48)
(−0.02, 1.90)
−.21†
.13
−.08
.29**
Family satisfaction
79
0.91 (.43)
(0.05, 1.77)
−.01
−.01
.08
−.17*
Reappraisal
Family challenge
99
4.05 (.39)
(3.28, 4.82)
.09
.16
−.22*
−.33***
Family emergency
99
3.13 (.40)
(2.34, 3.92)
.04
.30**
−.13
−.10
Caregiver reappraisal
99
1.99 (.28)
(1.43, 2.55)
.04
.54***
−.02
−.15
Social interaction
Online support
99
3.30 (.32)
(2.66, 2.94)
.27*
.10
.01
−.29**
Caregiving support
99
3.14 (.37)
(2.41, 3.87)
−.04
.23*
.06
−.32**
Negative interactions
99
1.34 (.48)
(0.39, 2.29)
.11
−.12
.08
.38***
Note: SE = standard error; CI = 95% confidence interval. Humor styles were simultaneously entered into regression models. Table values presented are standardized regression coefficients. Time 2 analyses include Time 1 outcomes as covariates. †p < .06; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
Longitudinal relations. A different pattern emerged when examining changes in outcomes over time. As expected, affiliative humor predicted decreased psychological distress and perceived stress over time. Unexpectedly, however, self-enhancing humor predicted increased psychological distress over time. Although aggressive humor was unrelated to changes in outcomes over time, self-defeating humor predicted greater psychological distress and perceived stress over time, and worsening family satisfaction.
Relations of humor styles with potential mediators
The adaptive humor styles were linked with positive outcomes: affiliative humor was associated with greater online social support and self-enhancing humor was associated with greater caregiver positive reappraisal, greater reframing of disability-related emergencies, and greater online caregiving support. By contrast, the maladaptive humor styles were linked with worse outcomes: aggressive humor and self-defeating humor were both associated with less reframing of daily disability challenges, and self-defeating humor was also associated with less online social support, less online caregiving support, and greater negative interactions.
Relations of potential mediators with psychological well-being
Reframing. As shown in Table 3, reframing of daily disability challenges was broadly associated with enhanced well-being: At T1, it was associated with less psychological distress and less perceived stress and with greater family satisfaction. It also predicted decreases in psychological distress and perceived stress over time. By contrast, reframing of disability-related emergencies was unrelated to well-being. Consistent with prior work (Fritz, 2020a, 2020b), caregiver positive reappraisal was associated with less psychological distress and perceived stress at T1.
Table 3. Relations of potential mediators with outcomes.
Reappraisal Mediators
N
Intercept (SE)
95% CI
Challenge
Emergency
Reappraisal
T1 outcomes
Psychological distress
99
2.74 (.65)
(1.45, 4.03)
−.37***
.20
−.34***
Perceived stress
99
4.66 (.53)
(3.61, 5.71)
−.23*
.20
−.31**
Family satisfaction
99
0.85 (.44)
(−0.02, 1.72)
.62***
.09
−.03
T2 outcomes
Psychological distress
79
0.73 (54)
(−0.35, 1.81)
−.32***
.14
.02
Perceived stress
79
2.57 (.60)
(1.37, 3.77)
−.39***
.13
−.08
Family satisfaction
79
0.63 (.38)
(−0.13, 1.39)
.13
.002
−.06
Social interaction mediators
N
Intercept (SE)
95% CI
FOSSIL
Caregiver
TENSE
T1 outcomes
Psychological distress
99
−0.01 (.66)
(−1.30, 1.32)
.06
−.28*
.42***
Perceived stress
99
3.28 (.56)
(2.17, 4.39)
.04
−.21
.28**
Family satisfaction
99
4.18 (.54)
(3.11, 5.25)
.03
.05
−.47***
T2 outcomes
Psychological distress
79
−0.14 (.60)
(−1.06, 1.33)
.03
−.13
.20*
Perceived stress
79
0.96 (.66)
(−0.35, 2.27)
.10
.15
.20+
Family satisfaction
79
1.13 (.49)
(0.15, 2.11)
.09
−.03
−.22**
Note: SE = standard error; CI = 95% confidence interval. Table values presented are standardized regression coefficients. Time 2 analyses include Time 1 outcomes as covariates. Separate regression analyses were conducted for reappraisal mediators and social interaction mediators. Reappraisal mediators were simultaneously entered into regression models: Challenge = family views daily disability-related tasks positively; Emergency = family copes well with disability-related emergencies; Reappraisal = caregiver positive reappraisal. Social interaction mediators were entered simultaneously into regression models: FOSSIL = positive online interactions; Caregiver = positive online interactions regarding caregiving; TENSE = negative interactions. †p < .06; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
Social interaction. Online social support was unrelated to well-being, whereas online caregiving support was associated with less psychological distress at T1. By contrast, TENSE negative interactions were associated with greater psychological distress and perceived stress at T1 and with increases in these variables over time. Negative interactions were also associated with lower family satisfaction at T1 and with decreases in family satisfaction over time.
Mediation
To examine whether reframing or social interaction mediated relations between humor styles and psychological well-being, we followed recommended procedures to estimate a series of Model four equations using the PROCESS v.3.5.3 macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2018). Indirect effects were tested using a bias-corrected bootstrapping approach with 5000 resamples to address non-normality in the product of the coefficients. Asymmetric 95% confidence intervals around the indirect effect (ab path) estimates that do not include zero indicate statistically significant mediation effects (Hayes & Rockwood, 2017). The relations of each humor style with outcomes included the other three humor styles as covariates in each mediation model. T2 longitudinal analyses examined whether T1 reframing or social interaction variables mediated the relation of each T1 humor style with T2 psychological well-being outcomes, while including each T1 well-being measure and the other three humor styles as covariates. Supplementary Table 1 displays unstandardized regression coefficients and p-values for total, direct, and indirect (mediation) effects from analyses testing the reframing variables and the social interaction variables as mediators.
Cross-sectional relations. The relation of self-enhancing humor with greater T1 well-being was mediated by reframing disability-related emergencies and caregiver positive reappraisal, as evidenced by the reduction in the coefficient from the c path to the c’ path and the absence of zero in the confidence intervals with respect to T1 psychological distress (reframing emergencies: β = .06, SE = .04, 95% CI = (.01, .16), p < .05; positive reappraisal: β = −.13, SE = .06, 95% CI = (−.28, −.03), p < .05) and T1 perceived stress (reframing emergencies: β = .05, SE = .03, 95% CI = (.004, .12), p < .05; positive reappraisal: β = −.11, SE = .05, 95% CI = (−.22, −.02), p < .05). The relation of self-defeating humor with greater T1 psychological distress was mediated by negative interactions (β = .10, SE = .04, 95% CI = (.03, .18), p < .05). Negative interactions also mediated the relation of self-defeating humor with greater T1 perceived stress (β = .06, SE = .03, 95% CI = (.01, .12), p < .05).
Regarding T1 family satisfaction, the relation of aggressive humor with lower T1 family satisfaction was mediated by reframing daily disability challenges (β = −.07, SE = .04, 95% CI = (−.16, −.001), p < .05). Additionally, indirect effects of reframing daily disability challenges (β = .10, SE = .04, 95% CI = (−.17, −.03), p < .05) and negative interactions (β = −.06, SE = .02, 95% CI = (−.11, −.01), p < .05) emerged on the relation of self-defeating humor with lower T1 family satisfaction. Figure 1 depicts significant cross-sectional mediational pathways.
Longitudinal relations. Reframing daily disability-related challenges mediated the relation of self-defeating humor with increased psychological distress over time (β = .06, SE = .03, 95% CI = (.01, .14), p < .05) and increased perceived stress over time (β = .08, SE = .05, 95% CI = (.01, .19), p < .05). Additionally, online social support (β = −.04, SE = .03, 95% CI = (−.11, −.01), p < .05) mediated the relation of self-defeating humor with increased perceived stress over time. Figure 2 depicts significant longitudinal mediational pathways.
The present study examines changes in well-being among parents of children with disabilities from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States until 4 months later. During this time, schools and businesses were shut and families self-isolated—including isolating from their support team of teachers, therapists, and respite care providers. This was, indeed, a stressful situation. This study replicates past findings regarding humor styles’ effects on adjustment to stress: The adaptive humor styles largely helped caregivers adapt to the unfolding pandemic, although in a more complex manner than originally hypothesized. The maladaptive styles, as expected, clearly inhibited adaptation to the pandemic isolation. Two potential mechanisms—reframing and social interaction—revealed nuances in the means by which humor styles may facilitate or impede adjustment over time.
In March 2020, at T1, participants reported on how they typically use or express different types of humor in their daily lives. As predicted, self-enhancing humor was associated with less psychological distress and perceived stress at T1, whereas self-defeating humor was associated with greater T1 psychological distress and perceived stress. These results are consistent with prior research on the relations of humor styles with well-being under chronic stress (Fritz, 2020b; Fritz et al., 2017; Kerkkanen et al., 2004; Ostovar et al., 2020; Ramirez-Meastra et al., 2020). Surprisingly, affiliative humor was associated with greater psychological distress and perceived stress at T1, which is inconsistent with prior findings. This result may have occurred due to the unique situation of being thrust into isolation: Individuals who make a habit of amusing others with jokes, stories, and witty banter may have found the sudden loss of their broader social network especially distressing.
When examining the relations of humor styles with adaptation to the pandemic at T2, a different pattern emerged. Consistent with the only prior longitudinal study of disability caregiving and humor styles (Fritz, 2020b), T1 affiliative humor predicted decreased psychological distress and perceived stress over time. Thus, even though affiliative humor was associated with lower well-being at the start of the pandemic, individuals utilizing this humor style apparently rebounded over time as they adapted to their new normal. Unexpectedly, T1 self-enhancing humor predicted increased psychological distress over time. One potential explanation for this finding is that rather than self-enhancing humor serving to elevate distress, perhaps the protective effect against psychological distress that self-enhancing humor provided at the immediate outset of the emergency lost its potency over time as the pandemic continued with no end in sight. As predicted, self-defeating humor predicted increases in psychological distress and perceived stress over time. Indeed, self-defeating humor is the humor style most consistently associated with outcomes across the literature.
Family satisfaction
Family dynamics are typically an important determinant of well-being (Olson, 2011), and their importance may be further elevated during isolation. Self-enhancing humor was associated with greater T1 family satisfaction, whereas aggressive humor was associated with less. Importantly, self-defeating humor predicted decreased family satisfaction over time. These findings are consistent with the only prior study that has examined this question: Rieger and McGrail (2015) showed that adaptive humor styles were associated with enhanced family communication and satisfaction, while the maladaptive styles were linked with family relationship difficulties. According to Walsh’s family resilience framework (2003, 2016), humor is one means by which family members facilitate communication, cohesion, well-being, and effective care routines. Future studies should expand the scope of family dynamics assessed in order to better delineate the mechanisms by which parental humor use affects family processes and, in turn, family members’ well-being.
Reframing
A large body of work links positive reappraisal with well-being following stressful events (Helgeson et al., 2006; Park, 2010), and recent work demonstrates that positive reappraisal is one mechanism linking humor styles with enhanced adjustment to stressors (Fritz, 2020a, 2020b; Fritz et al., 2017). In the present study, parents’ positive reappraisal was associated with lower psychological distress and perceived stress at T1. Consistent with prior work, positive reappraisal mediated the relation of self-enhancing humor with lower T1 psychological distress and perceived stress and mediated the relation of self-defeating humor with greater T1 distress. Unlike prior studies, however, parents’ positive reappraisal did not predict T2 well-being or mediate relations of T1 humor styles with changes in well-being over time.
Yet, a more specific type of reappraisal was associated with enhanced well-being over time. Two new constructs were created for this study to assess disability-specific reframing efforts: reframing daily disability challenges and reframing disability-related emergencies. In an effort to capture family-level dynamics, the constructs were intentionally designed to assess the extent to which caregivers viewed their families as engaged in positively reframed disability-related daily and emergency stressors. Reframing daily challenges was a powerful predictor of adaptation to the pandemic: It was associated with less psychological distress and perceived stress and with greater family satisfaction at T1, and predicted decreases in psychological distress and perceived stress over time. Reframing daily challenges mediated the relations of aggressive and self-defeating humor with lower family satisfaction at T1, and mediated the relation of self-defeating humor with increased distress and perceived stress over time. Reframing disability-related emergencies was a somewhat less important reframing tool: It mediated the relation of self-enhancing humor with less psychological distress and perceived stress at T1, as the emergency unfolded. It did not, however, predict or mediate humor/well-being relations over time. Clearly, one way that humor styles affect well-being is by influencing caregivers’ beliefs about the extent to which their family members will view their ability to cope with daily disability-related tasks and hurdles in a positive light. In line with Walsh’s (2003) family resilience framework, the development of such a family coping norm could potentially enhance caregiving effectiveness and persistence. Future research should examine the extent to which positive reframing of disability-related challenges translates into enhanced performance on caregiving tasks and, ultimately, superior health and developmental outcomes for children with disabilities.
Social interactions
Prior work has shown a consistent pattern of the adaptive styles being linked with positive social interactions, self-defeating humor being associated with negative interactions, and aggressive humor either being unrelated to social interactions or associated with negative interactions. This is the first study, however, to examine the relations of humor styles to interactions during isolation and to examine links to social media interactions. Real-life negative interactions appeared to be much more powerful determinants of well-being in this situation than were social media interactions. Negative interactions with family and friends were associated with lower psychological well-being and family satisfaction both cross-sectionally and over time and mediated the effects of self-defeating humor with worse outcomes at T1. However, it is worth recalling that the modality of communication was not specified in the negative interactions instrument, so respondents may have lumped verbal interactions in with those occurring online. It is thus somewhat unclear whether the modality or the valence of social interaction was the more important force in these relations.
Online caregiving support was associated with lower psychological distress at T1, potentially suggesting that the support and advice that parents received about disability-related resources was particularly useful as school and businesses shut down. General online social support (i.e., not specific to caregiving) mediated the role of self-defeating humor with increased perceived stress over time, which suggests that problematic social media interactions added to, rather than alleviated, stress for high self-defeating humor users.
Limitations
Some limitations to the present study exist. Social activities, and thus the modalities of social interactions, may have changed substantially from T1 to T2, and this was not assessed. T1 data collection occurred at the very beginning of the national emergency in March 2020, when little scientific evidence existed regarding the parameters of COVID-19 transmission. Thus, people may have been much more cautious about leaving their homes for outdoor walks or meetings with friends at T1 than they were at T2. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that people became more proficient at using Zoom and other video conferencing technologies from March to July 2020, which could also change the amount of “face-to-face” social interaction that individuals experienced. Finally, it is worth noting that the TENSE assesses negative interactions, so positive interactions outside of social media use were not specifically measured in this study.
Conceptually, more work is needed to construct reframing measures specific to stressors. The reframing daily disability challenges measure herein was comprised of only two items. Although the present study strove to obtain family-level assessments, they were ultimately all from the caregivers’ perspective. That is, caregivers reported on their family’s reframing norms and satisfaction levels. Future studies should strive to obtain assessments from multiple family members to better capture family processes. Methodologically, it would have been informative to obtain a finer-grained assessment of changes in caregiver behaviors and well-being by conducting more than two assessments. Doing so would have allowed a better understanding of whether changes in reframing and social interactions shaped changes in personal or family well-being. More work needs to be done to understand how parental humor use translates into family norms for humor use and coping, and ultimately shapes family well-being.
Future directions
One would hope that a global pandemic accompanied by mass isolation is a unique, rather than a recurring, stressor. Even so, the lessons learned from individuals’ responses to isolation may be broadly applied. For the parents of children with moderate to severe disabilities, some element of chronic family isolation is not uncommon (Fritz & Sewell-Roberts, 2018; Isa et al., 2016; Neely-Barnes & Dia, 2008). The relatively high level of comorbidities accompanying disability often necessitates limiting children’s participation in the larger community, especially during cold and flu season. Moreover, logistical constraints often limit the community participation of individuals with disabilities and their families due to inaccessible physical or social environments (Batshaw et al., 2019). The limitations and inconveniences that most individuals experienced due to the pandemic are, to some extent, reminiscent of the daily experiences of many families of children with disabilities. Thus, although the present situation was a rather extreme version of the constraints faced by the families of children with disabilities, the results can apply to their everyday lives as well.
Future research should pursue a more robust assessment of construct of reframing of daily challenges, especially those specific to the stressor at hand. Notably, the broader construct of caregiver positive reappraisal was not nearly as strong a predictor and mediator of outcomes as were the disability-specific reframing constructs created for this study.
The present research also points to the importance of examining family-level variables. Parent-caregiver humor use has the potential to mobilize family reframing norms and, ultimately, the effectiveness of and persistence applied to caregiving routines. This chain of events could affect not only caregiver well-being but also the well-being of the child with the disability who is the target of caregiving. Although little research has examined the effects of caregiver psychological well-being on child physical health due to the logistical difficulties of examining such a question, one study has done so: McCubbin and Huang (1989) followed families of children with cerebral palsy over time and assessed psychological as well as physical health outcomes. They found that high levels of family stress at Time 1 predicted declines in child health at the 3-month physician follow-up exam. It is therefore important to understand the mechanisms linking humor use with caregiver well-being in order to incorporate these elements into targeted interventions for caregivers that might influence the well-being of the entire family.
These results potentially could be applied to designing a psycho-educational intervention for caregivers, who may benefit from the knowledge that humor use in stressful situations is not only acceptable; it is a common coping mechanism. Caregivers may find it useful to learn about the associations of humor styles with psychological well-being at both the individual and the family level and may benefit from learning about humor generation strategies that promote rather than undermine social support. However, any such psycho-educational approach should be careful to emphasize that humor use is but one coping tool of many that caregivers have at their disposal for navigating chronic stressors, and it is not necessary for adaptation to stress. Indeed, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to maintain a humorous outlook through every stressor, and lack of humor use does not imply that other coping strategies are not effective. See Fritz, 2020b for an in-depth discussion of issues involved in incorporating humor in caregiver interventions.
Conclusions
Self-enhancing humor protected parent-caregivers from elevated distress as the pandemic began, largely due to a positive view of their families’ ability to cope with emergencies. Although affiliative humor use was associated with greater distress at the start of isolation, over time it facilitated adaptation to the pandemic, largely due to positive reframing of the daily challenges of disability caregiving. Aggressive humor was associated with lower family satisfaction over time, and self-defeating humor predicted lower well-being at T1 and worsening distress, stress, and family satisfaction over time. Negative interactions with family and friends consistently mediated the links between humor styles and adjustment at T1, and the ability to reframe daily disability challenges was a powerful mediator of the relation of self-defeating humor with decreased well-being over time. Future research should seek to further understand the contributions of humor styles to family dynamics and ultimately to the specific mechanisms that facilitate caregiver psychological and physical well-being and efficacy.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Salisbury University Faculty Mini-grant.
Open research statement As part of IARR’s encouragement of open research practices, the author(s) have provided the following information: This research was not preregistered. The materials used in this research can be publicly shared. The data used in this research cannot be shared publicly but are available upon request. The data and materials can be obtained by emailing [email protected].
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