The Relationship between Sense of Humor, Coping with Humor, Perceived Stress and Self-esteem in the Middle-aged Women

Park, Mi Sung

Abstract

PURPOSE
This study was performed to identify the relationship between Sense of Humor, Coping Humor, Perceived stress and self-esteem in the middle-aged women. METHODS: Data were collected from the 20th of June to the 30th of August in 2009 from 145 middle-aged women living in Seoul. Data analysis was done with SPSS/WIN 12.0 program for descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation. RESULTS: The mean score of the humor sense was 55.94+/-6.52, coping humor was 21.11+/-3.82, perceived stress was 22.21+/-3.03 and self-esteem was 27.50+/-2.88. Subcategories of sense of humor were that emotional expressiveness was average 20.75+/-2.70, meta-message sensitivity was average 20.12+/-2.74 and liking of humor was average 15.13+/-3.44. Sense of humor was difference according to the economic status(t=2.000, p=.047), coping humor was difference according to the on medication use(t=2.227, p=.027). There was a significant correlation between the coping humor, perceived stress and the self-esteem. When the coping humor was higher, perceived stress was lower and the self-esteem was higher. CONCLUSION: This study showed that medication and economic status influences the humor scores and the sense of humor and coping humor were related to perceived stress and self-esteem in middle-aged women Therefore, these findings can provide the basis for the development of nursing intervention to increase the ability to coping with stress.