Effects of humor climate in class and personal evaluation of humor messages on adolescents' humor styles

Adolescents spend large amounts of time in the classroom environment. It is known that human behavior could be controlled or encouraged by environmental factors and personal evaluation processes. Previous studies found that adolescents aged between 12 and 16 years started to express their humor styles with aggressive components. However, this verbal bullying was very common and easily ignored. Therefore, the factors that influence adolescents' humor styles should be of concern, especially negative ones. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of humor climate in class and personal evaluation of humor messages on the junior high school students' humor styles in Taiwan. Four dimensions of humor messages and styles - self-devalued, other-devalued, funny actions, and intellective reactions - were used in this study. Data were derived from a nationally representative random sample of 1,746 students from 65 classes and then analyzed using multi-level modeling. After controlling participant's sex, grade, and academic performance, we found that humor climate in class and personal evaluation of humor messages of a certain humor style had a significantly positive effect on adolescents' corresponding humor style. Moreover, we found that humor climate in class had a bigger effect than personal evaluation of humor messages only on students' self-devalued humor style. In order to enhance the adolescents' positive humor styles and reduce negative ones, a literacy education course could be conducted to gauge their personal evaluation of humor messages in class. In addition, this might assist in detecting and averting negative humor climate in class.