The influence of humor styles on the sense of belonging among university students

Abstract

The sense of belonging is a strongly human desire, but it is less explored by past researchers. The sense of belonging exists when people in a group or community were taking care and supporting each others. In order to further explore the predictors of the sense of belonging, this study is conducted to identify the influence of humor styles behavior on the sense of belonging. A total of 108 local postgraduate full-time students in a public university in Malaysia were involved in the study. The instruments used were Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) and Psychological Sense of Belonging (SOBI-P). The result from regression analysis shows that there are significant influences of humor styles behavior on the sense of belonging among postgraduate students. It was found that the self-enhancing humor will increase the sense of belonging, whereas the aggressive humor will decrease the sense of belonging among postgraduate students. Overall, this study support Martin’s theory about the role of adaptive and maladaptive humor in the social relationship especially in the context of educational environment.