Humanism, authenticity, and humor: Being, being real, and being funny

Authenticity is an important construct in humanistic psychology; it consists of discrepancies between the true self, the noticed self, and the expressed self. Humor may be conceptualized as having two axes: benign or disparaging, and improving the self or improving relationships with others. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between facets of authenticity and humor styles among a large sample of U.S. college students (N = 813). It was found that lower incongruences between the three stages of authentic experience (i.e., higher authenticity) were associated with benign humor styles. Larger discrepancies in the self as well as the impact of external influences were associated with disparaging humor styles. These results suggest that there is a relationship between individuals' experience of the self and their style of humor.