People have different experiences in humor. Humor serves many different functions in our daily lives. But how are adaptive and non-adaptive humor related to depression?

In his report published in the journal Psychology Today, Jill Greengros said that humor is sometimes used as a coping mechanism when things aren't going well, and sometimes it's just a moment when we enjoy laughing with friends.

Researchers use different metrics to assess our experiences in humor, but the most common one is the "Humor Patterns" questionnaire.

In this context, people were asked to assess their acceptance and opposition to different situations (eg "I enjoy making people laugh"). Their answers formed a measure of four modes of humor.

Dependency humor
It is the tendency to share humor with others, make jokes and funny stories, make others laugh, use humor to conduct relationships, and entertain others.

Self Enhancement
It is the tendency to maintain a humorous outlook on life even when we are not with others, besides using humor in dealing with stress, and encouraging self-humor.

Share humor dependency with others (pixels)

Aggressive
People tend to use humor to mock, belittle or manipulate others, as well as to use ridicule, offensive humor, and possibly the use of sexist and racist jokes.

With the opposite results
Some tend to make others laugh at their own expense, humiliate oneself and laugh with others when they are ridiculed or harassed, and also use humor to hide one's true feelings about himself and others.

The relationship between humor and depression
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The link between these methods and depression is a serious mental illness affecting millions of people around the world, according to a new study.

A high degree of positive humor has been linked to various positive health outcomes, such as happiness and healthy relationships. But getting high scores in negative humor may have a negative impact on an individual's health.

By looking at the relationship between the four humor patterns and depression, the researchers wanted to test whether people with depression scored high in the two negative humor patterns, and a decrease in the two positive patterns. They also looked at whether there was a genetic basis for the relationship between humor patterns and depression.

In some cases humor has serious negative effects (pixels)

a study
In this regard, the researchers used a model of 1154 Australian twins, and found that 339 of them were identical, and 236 did not. Through the whole models, 145 people with depression were diagnosed through a questionnaire of all twins of humor, as well as answering three questions related to depression. These questions were taken from different scales in line with the elements used to diagnose major depressive disorders.

The results of the study primarily showed that women were 2.5 times more likely than men to be depressed. Secondly, as expected, people with depression used far more humor than non-depressed people.

Moreover, depressing twins used less positive humor patterns than dismal. Contrary to expectations, there were no differences in the use of aggressive humor between gloomy and non-gloomy twins. The researchers then examined potential genetic and peripheral factors that might explain these associations.

Comparison of identical and non-identical twins allowed to derive the relative contributions of genetic and peripheral factors to a particular trait or correlation through the use of behavioral genetic tools.

Consequently, analyzes revealed that 26% of the differences in depression scores were attributable to added genetic factors, whereas 74% of the differences in depression scores were due to non-shared environments (eg, twins studying in different classes, who had unique friends ).

Reverse humor in which people tend to laugh at others at the expense of themselves (pixels)

Other results
Other results showed that the positive relationship between the depression scale and reverse-humor, and the negative relationship between the depression scale and the self-reinforcement humor, have a key genetic factor affecting the correlations.

Overall, the study not only demonstrated that humor patterns were associated with depression, but also demonstrated that some of these correlations were due to some intrinsic genetic effects. Moreover, the research also highlights the fact that humor is not always good for us, and in some cases may have serious negative effects.

Mutual relationships do not mean causality, and it is unclear what exactly they mean. Do people with depression choose to use more negative humor and not try to improve their condition with a more positive humor? Or does the use of a negative humor pattern affect depression? Indeed, the third and probable possibility that certain factors (genetic and environmental) affect depression and the use of negative patterns.