Humor styles and borderline personality

Julie Aitken Schermer*, Rod A. Martin, Nicholas G. Martin, Michael T. Lynskey, Timothy J. Trull, Philip A. Vernon

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The present study examined the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between four humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating) and four dimensions of borderline personality disorder (affective instability, identity disturbance, negative relationships, self-harm) as well as a total borderline personality disorder score. Participants were 574 same-sex Australian adult twin pairs. At the phenotypic level, the two adaptive humor style dimensions (affiliative and self-enhancing) were found to correlate negatively with borderline personality and the two maladaptive humor style dimensions (aggressive and self-defeating) were found to have positive correlations with borderline personality. Bivariate genetic analyses demonstrated significant genetic, common environment, and unique environmental correlations. These results indicate that a large component of the phenotypic association between borderline personality disorder and humor style arises from the influence of shared familial and environmental factors associated with both phenotypes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)158-161
Number of pages4
JournalPersonality and Individual Differences
Volume87
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2015

Keywords

  • Behavior genetics
  • Borderline personality
  • Humor
  • Twins

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Humor styles and borderline personality'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this