Introduction:
Humor functions as a flexible psychosocial resource that influences emotion regulation, stress recovery, social cohesion, and connectedness (Dunbar et al., 2021). Through laughter and play, individuals may broaden their thought-action repertoires and build lasting interpersonal resources (Fredrickson, 2004). The capacity to use humor adaptively depends on self-efficacy beliefs about one's ability to generate humor across contexts, an underexplored mechanism linking personality, coping, and well-being (Bandura, 1997).
Purpose:
This study assessed the validity of the Production of Humorous Behavior Self-Efficacy Scale (PHUBSS-1), conceptualizing humor behavior self-efficacy as a positive, self-regulatory strength reflecting the social-cognitive underpinnings of humorous behavior.
Method:
A sample of 183 adults completed the PHUBSS-1 along with measures of humor styles, self-regulation, fun, cheerfulness, past humor use, Big Five personality traits, life satisfaction, affect, and physical symptoms. Correlational and hierarchical principal components analyses were used to test the scale's structure and theoretical positioning.
Results:
An initial PCA identified four humor behavior self-efficacy components—performative humor, verbal wit, written/pictorial humor, and nonverbal/expressive humor, partially corresponding to nonverbal, verbal, written, and visual communication modalities. Hierarchical PCA revealed an integrative structure within a general humor behavior self-efficacy factor. When the personality, humor, well-being, and social-cognitive variables were analyzed together, the PHUBSS-1 loaded primarily with the humor-related constructs, while diverging from the hedonic and personality variables, suggesting humor behavior self-efficacy represents a distinct, socially grounded strength.
Conclusions:
The findings support humor behavior self-efficacy as a measurable construct that bridges personality, coping, and positive functioning. Although its cross-sectional design limits causal inference, the PHUBSS-1 contributes to an emerging applied psychology research literature by operationalizing humor as a health-related self-efficacy belief. As a practical tool, it can inform societal applications aimed at promoting sustainable well-being, long-term social harmony, stress resilience, and adaptive communication across individual and collective settings (e.g., Bandura, 2000).