Incremental Validity of Alexithymia, Emotional Coping and Humor Style on Happiness and Psychological Well-Being

Dario Páez (), Andrés Mendiburo Seguel and Francisco Martínez-Sánchez

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2013, vol. 14, issue 5, 1637 pages

Abstract: This study attempts to ascertain whether alexithymia, suppression and reappraisal coping, and humor styles account for incremental variance in happiness (Lyubomirsky’s scale) and psychological well-being (Ryff’s scale), after controlling for Big Five traits and emotional positivity ratio of previous day’s mood. A total of 355 psychology undergraduates (72 % women) responded to measures of each construct, and two hierarchical multiple regressions were carried out for happiness and psychological well-being. The Big Five were entered in the first regression block, alexithymia was entered in a second block, and affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-defeating humor style, reappraisal and suppression coping were entered in the third block, and previous day’s mood in the last step. Alexithymia accounted for a small proportion of variance in psychological well-being, controlling for the Big Five traits. Suppression and affiliative, self-enhancing and self-defeating humor explained a complementary amount of variance in happiness and psychological well-being, controlling for the previous day’s mood, confirming the association of emotional regulation and affect with judgments of happiness and well-being. Taking into account humor and suppression, the multivariate association of alexithymia disappears. Results suggest that low suppression, low self-critical use of humor and affiliative humor are correlates of psychological well-being, whereas self-enhancing humor and low suppression are correlates of happiness, playing a mediational role between personality traits and well-being. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Emotional coping; Humor; Big Five; Alexithymia; Happiness; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10902-012-9400-0

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