LMAO? Longitudinal relationships between humour and involvement in bullying. Dr Simon C. Hunter School of Psychological Sciences and Health, University of Strathclyde This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, award reference RES

Project team and info P.I.: Dr Claire Fox, Keele University Research Fellow: Dr Siân Jones, Oxford Brookes University Project team: Sirandou Saidy Khan, Hayley Gilman, Katie Walker, Katie Wright-Bevans, Lucy James, Rebecca Hale, Rebecca Serella, Toni Karic, Mary-Louise Corr, Claire Wilson, and Victoria Caines. Thanks and acknowledgements: Teachers, parents and children in the participating schools. The ESRC. More info: Project blog:

Background Methods Victimisation, loneliness and humour Dyadic analyses Summary Overview

Involves recognition of an incongruity and, later, the ability to resolve that incongruity (Bernstein, 1986). For incongruity to operate successfully, it needs to occur within a safe framework (Bariaud, 1988). ‘Safe’ cues become less obvious as we get older. Background

Humour develops and becomes more complex across childhood and into adolescence e.g. At years old, young people understand riddles with complex cognitive incongruities where humour is due to illogical resolution and hence violated expectations (Bruno et al., 1987). Development What did the newscaster say after he announced that the world had come to an end? “Stay tuned - Bob’s here with the weather next !”

Fulfils myriad social roles: Enhancing relationships; increasing or maintaining group cohesion; relieving tension; saving face; expressing aggression in a socially acceptable way; probing intentions and values indirectly; backing down from a previous position; to save face; ingratiate yourself; attract/maintain attention; express views that are otherwise difficult to communicate (Semrud-Clikeman & Glass, 2010). Functions of humour Social: Strengthening relationships, but also excluding, humiliating, or manipulating others (Martin, 2007). Personal: To cope with dis/stress, esp. in reappraisal and in ‘replacing’ negative feelings (Martin, 2007).

Early conceptualisation of humour viewed it predominantly as a ‘force for good’ (Cousins, 1979; Lefcourt, 2001). However, humour is now considered to be a multi-dimensional construct. Social functions

Multi-dimensional (Fox et al., in press; Martin, 2007), with two ‘positive’ forms of humour: Self-enhancing: A generally humorous outlook on life, even in the face of stress or adversity (sample item: ‘I find that laughing and joking are good ways to cope with problems’).  Among adults, correlates with anxiety, depression, self-esteem, social intimacy, and positive wellbeing (not with aggression though, notably). Positive Humour Styles Affiliative: Enhances relationships and can reduce interpersonal tensions; these people tell jokes, engage in witty banter etc (sample item: ‘I often make people laugh by telling jokes or funny stories’).  Among adults, correlates with anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and social intimacy (again, not with aggression).

Self-defeating: Excessively disparaging, aims to enhance relationships, but at the expense of personal integrity or one’s own emotional needs (sample item: ‘I often put myself down when making jokes or trying to be funny’).  Among adults, correlates with depression, anxiety, self-esteem, hostility, aggression, social intimacy, and positive wellbeing. Negative Humour Styles And two ‘negative’ forms of humour: Aggressive: Enhancing the self at the expense of others, use of sarcasm, ridicule, derision, and “put downs” (sample item: ‘If someone makes a mistake I often tease them about it’).  Among adults, correlates with hostility, aggression, not with measures of psychological adjustment though.

Humour and Bullying Already noted that humour may

Peer-victimisation Repeated attacks on an individual. Conceptualised as a continuum rather than a category. Also multi-dimensional in nature: Verbal: Being teased or called names. Physical: Hitting, kicking etc. Also includes property damage. Social: Exclusion, rumour spreading.

Clearly a stressful experience for many young people, associated with depressive symptomatology (Hunter et al., 2007, 2010), anxiety (Visconti et al., 2010), self-harm (Viljoen et al., 2005) and suicidal ideation (Dempsey et al., 2011; Kaltiala-Heino et al., 2009), PTSD (Idsoe et al., 2012; Tehrani et al., 2004), loneliness (Catterson & Hunter, 2010; Woodhouse et al., 2012), psychosomatic problems (Gini & Pozzoli, 2009),...etc Also a very social experience – peer roles can be broader than just victim or aggressor (Salmivalli et al., 1996). Peer-victimisation

Klein and Kuiper (2008): Children who are bullied have much less opportunity to interact with their peers and so are at a disadvantage with respect to the development of humour competence.  Cross-sectional data support: Peer-victimisation is negatively correlated with both affiliative and self-enhancing humour (Fox & Lyford, 2009).  May be particularly true for victims of social aggression. Victims gravitate toward more use of self-defeating humour?  May be particularly true for victims of verbal aggression as peers directly supply the victim with negative self-relevant cognitions such as “You’re a loser”, “You’re stupid” etc which are internalised (see also Rose & Abramson, 1992, re. depressive cognitions).

Primarily, to evaluate the relationship between humour use, involvement in bullying (as victim or aggressor), and adjustment  Testing causal hypotheses, e.g., verbal victimisation will cause an increase in levels of self-defeating humour (Rose & Abramson, 1992)  Evaluating proposed explanatory causal pathways, e.g. the effect of victimisation on mental health is mediated via negative humour styles  Evaluating humour as a risk / resilience factor, e.g. high levels of positive humour may buffer young people against the negative effects of peer-victimisation  Assessing whether friendships serve as a contextual risk factor for peer-victimisation Research aims

Methods N=1241 (612 male), years old, from six Secondary schools in England. Data collected at two points in time: At the start and at the end of the school session. Data collection spread over two sessions at each time point due to number of tasks. N=807 present at all four data collection sessions.

Measures Self-Report: 24-item Child Humour Styles Questionnaire (Fox et al., in press). 10-item Children’s Depression Inventory – Short Form (Kovacs, 1985). 36-item Victimisation and Aggression (Owens et al., 2005). 10-item Self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1965). 4-item Loneliness (Asher et al., 1984; Rotenberg et al., 2005).

Measures Peer-nomination: Rated liking of all peers (Asher & Dodge, 1986). Nominated friends and very best friend (Parker & Asher, 1993). Peer-victimisation and use of aggression (Björkqvist et al., 1992), participants nominated up to three peers for Verbal, Physical, and Indirect. This was an 8-item measure.  Verbal: “Gets called nasty names by other children.”  Physical: “Gets kicked, hit and pushed around by other children.”  Indirect – “Gets left out of the group by other children” and “Has nasty rumours spread about them by other children.” Humour (adapted from Fox et al., in press). This was a 4-item measure, young people nominated up to three peers for each item.

Cross-lagged analyses T1 Victimisation T2 Depression T2 Victimisation T1 Depression e e The cross-lagged model (also referred to as a simplex model, an autoregressive model, a conditional model, or a transition model). Can the history of victimisation predict depression, taking into consideration the history of depression (and vice-versa)?

Victimisation, Humour, and Internalising Internalising = withdrawal, anxiety, fearfulness, and depression (Rapport et al., 2001). Operationalised here as symptoms of depression and loneliness. Cross-lagged analyses

Victimisation, Humour, and Internalising Three models compared: 1.Stability only 2.Stability and ‘within construct’ cross-lagged effects 3.Stability and fully cross-lagged model Cross-lagged analyses

Results: Model comparisons: All models significantly different from each other (ΔX 2, p <.001). Cross-lagged analyses X2X2 CMIN/DFCFIRMSEA Model (df = 83), p < (.039,.050) Model (df = 63), p < (.031,.045) Model (df = 27), p = (.000,.030)

Cross-sectional associations: T1 (T2) Cross-lagged analyses 2. Agg3. SD4. SE5. Verb6. Phys7. Soc8. Int 1. Aff Hum.13 (.06)-.16 (-.22).35 (.26)-.15 (-.12)-.14 (-.10)-.16 (-.17)-.38 (-.31) 2. Agg Hum-.14 (.19).04 (-.04).07 (.04).09 (.07).03 (.01)-.05 (.02) 3. SD Hum-.09 (.01).38 (.28).31 (.17).34 (.23).49 (.48) 4. SE Hum--.06 (-.04)-.04 (-.04)-.07 (-.06)-.20 (-.25) 5. Verbal-.73 (.65).78 (.69).53 (.38) 6. Physical-.69 (.57).46 (.23) 7. Social-.59 (.43) 8. Interlsng-

Physical Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Self-Enhancing Humour Affiliative Humour Aggressive Humour Self-Defeating Humour Physical Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Self-Enhancing Humour Affiliative Humour Aggressive Humour Self-Defeating Humour Time 1 Time T1 Internalising T2 Internalising

Cross-lagged analyses Summary Humour may be self-reinforcing (virtuous cycle…of sorts) (Mal)adjustment appears to be an important driver of both humour use and peer-victimisation  Implications for intervention re. adolescent mental health and adolescent attitudes toward those with mental health issues

Dyadic analyses - APIM Children in friendships are likely to produce data which are related in some way, violating the normal assumption that all data are independent. Usually, we just ignore this. Shared experiences may shape friends’ similarity or their similarity may be what the attraction was to begin with. The Actor-Partner Independence Model (APIM: Kenny, 1996) makes a virtue of this data structure. Can conduct APIM analyses in SEM, or using MLM (where individual scores are seen as nested within groups with an n of 2)

Dyadic analyses T1 Victimisation Friend’s T2 Victimisation T2 Victimisation Friend’s T1 Victimisation e e Looks a lot like the cross-lagged analysis

Dyadic analyses We can evaluate “actor effects” T1 Victimisation Friend’s T2 Victimisation T2 Victimisation Friend’s T1 Victimisation e e

Dyadic analyses We can evaluate “partner effects” T1 Victimisation Friend’s T2 Victimisation T2 Victimisation Friend’s T1 Victimisation e e

Dyadic analyses We can evaluate the simple correlation between partners T1 Victimisation Friend’s T2 Victimisation T2 Victimisation Friend’s T1 Victimisation e e

Dyadic analyses Humour & Bullying Data Indistinguishable dyads: Best friends. N dyad = 457 (best friends at T1) First APIM: Depressive symptomatology of best friend dyads.

Dyadic analyses Depression T2 Friend’s Depression T2 Depression Friend’s Depression Actor effect is significant:.59, p <.001 Partner effect is also significant:.12, p <.001

Dyadic analyses Second APIM: Depressive Symptomatology of Best Friend Dyads. Victimisation of Best Friend Dyads  Earlier analyses suggested that mental health drove victimisation. True for friend effects too?

Dyadic analyses

Cross-sectional ACTOR (& PARTNER) correlations at T1 Cross-lagged analyses 1. Depression2. Social3. Verbal4. Physical 1. DepressionN/A (.18).44 (.09).40 (.10).36 (.06) 2. SocialN/A (.12).80 (.12).68 (.05) 3. VerbalN/A (.16).70 (.12) 4. PhysicalN/A (.14) Strong actor correlations between constructs, all positive Partner correlations between social/verbal victimisation and depression, and between verbal and physical victimisation

Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Time 1 Time

Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Time 1 Time

Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Time 1 Time

Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Time 1 Time

Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Physical Victimisation Friend’s Physical Victimisation Friend’s Social Victimisation Social Victimisation Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Verbal Victimisation Friend’s Depression Depression Time 1 Time

Dyadic analyses Summary Friendships as context for development of worsening victimisation (except for social victimisation) Verbal victimisation seems to be most problematic for friends of victims, not those experiencing it Conversely, social victimisation seems to be ‘good’ for friends of victims Physical victimisation has fewer effects Can be... challenging to report results!