What Is Your Humour Style?

About this test

In 2003 the Canadian psychologist Rod Martin and his colleagues proposed measuring humour differently: not how much of it you have, but what it does. Their Humor Styles Questionnaire separates four styles along two axes — humour aimed at other people or at yourself, and humour that builds or damages. That yields affiliative humour (connecting), self-enhancing humour (keeping yourself afloat), aggressive humour (going after someone) and self-defeating humour (making yourself the target).

The model's contribution is breaking the assumption that humour is itself a sign of psychological health. The first two styles tend to correlate with wellbeing, the last two with its opposite — and a person can be extremely funny in a costly style. The interesting question, in other words, isn't "are you funny?" but "what is your humour for?".

The four archetypes in this test are those four styles under our own names. Sixteen ordinary situations, one dominant style, and the full breakdown underneath: most people run two, depending on the terrain.

How it works

Each answer gives a point to one of the four styles, and the most-picked one becomes your result. The full breakdown appears underneath: a narrow gap between two styles is the most common outcome — people switch humour depending on the audience, which is exactly what Martin's model predicts.