Humor can be used in a multitude of ways. Previously, Rod Martin has developed four distinct categories of individual humor style, which describes the way in which an individual uses humor on an everyday basis. The four styles are affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-deprecating. The question is what factors may be related to one’s humor style. It has been found that humor styles are correlated with one’s personality score on Five Factor Personality test. It has also been found that one’s order of birth is related to one’s personality. Therefore, it is reasonable to propose that one’s birth order may have a correlation with one’s style of humor. In the current research project, we aimed to investigate whether birth order is correlated to certain styles of humor. We predicted that the eldest child would show higher levels of self-enhancing humor, the middle child would show higher levels of affiliative humor, and the youngest child would show higher levels of self-deprecating humor.

We are currently collecting data on student’s birth order and style of humor. Once the data has been collected and analyzed, statistical analysis will determine whether or not we should accept or reject the hypothesis. The data collection is still on going. We plan to present the preliminary results during the symposium.