Lonely people tend to make fun of themselves: A behavior genetic analysis of humor styles and loneliness

The present study examined the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between four humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating) and loneliness in Australian adult twins. At the phenotypic level, the two adaptive humor style dimensions (affiliative and self-enhancing) were found to correlate negatively with loneliness and the two maladaptive humor style dimensions (aggressive and self-defeating) were found to have positive correlations with loneliness. Because both humor and loneliness were found to be heritable (ranging from 7% for loneliness to 35% for self-defeating humor style), bivariate genetic analyses were conducted. Significant genetic and unique environmental correlations were found between loneliness and humor styles with the exception of aggressive humor. These results indicate that the phenotypic association between loneliness and humor style arises from the influence of shared familial and unique environmental factors.