In this study, the mediator effects of self-esteem and humor style on the relationship between shyness and loneliness in Chinese college students were investigated. The participants were 525 students, with age range of 19–23, who were attending two different Chinese colleges in Xi’an and Fujian. Data were collected by using the Cheek and Buss shyness scale, Rosenberg self-esteem scale, humor style questionnaire and emotional and social loneliness scale. Path analysis showed that self-esteem and humor style partially mediated the relationship between shyness and loneliness. The final model also revealed a significant path from shyness through self-enhancing humor and self-esteem to loneliness. Furthermore, a multi-group analysis found that male college students who are less likely to use self-enhancing humor are more likely to result in loneliness than their female counterparts. The results are discussed in terms of the conceptional context.
Loneliness is a common, but negative emotional experience that has an obvious impact on psychological functioning and physical health (e.g., Eshbaugh, 2010 and Jackson, 2007). It refers to a painful experience due to the inconsistency between one’s social expectation and her/his actual social network, either qualitatively or quantitatively (Peplau & Perlman, 1982). There are two kinds of factors that foster loneliness: situational factors and characterological factors (Weiss, 1982).
One of the important characterological factors of loneliness in college students is shyness. Previous studies have shown that there was a significant correlation between shyness and loneliness (e.g., Ashe and McCutcheon, 2001, Fitts et al., 2009 and Gökhan, 2010). For example, shy people usually take an evasive attitude on social interaction, too prone to yield negative emotions, and tend to have a more negative evaluation of themselves and others, which make them less involved in social activities, and thus have a strong sense of loneliness (Ashe & McCutcheon, 2001). Schmidt and Fox (1995) indicated that shyness is a valid predictor of loneliness, depression, social phobia and other physical and mental problems. Whereas the literature is clear that shyness is related to loneliness, far less is known about the mechanisms involved. What potential mediating processes can explain the buffering/beneficial effects of shyness on loneliness?
A likely candidate to mediate the relationship between shyness and loneliness is self-esteem. First, it is a robust finding that high susceptibility to loneliness in college students is also due to their low self-esteem (e.g., Mahon et al., 2006, Man and Hamid, 1998 and McWhirter et al., 2002). People with low self-esteem may blame themselves for social “failures” or for having low levels of social contact, and thus reinforce their loneliness (Perlman & Peplau, 1981). Some researchers also provided evidence that greater shyness is related to lower self-esteem in elementary school children and Adolescents (Lazarus and Philip, 1982 and Wadman, Durkin & Ramsden, 2008). The combined observations of self-esteem’s relation with both shyness and loneliness support the idea that self-esteem might mediate the relation between shyness and loneliness. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that self-esteem has been found to mediate the relationship between loneliness and a series of other protective or vulnerability factors (e.g., Çivitci and Çivitci, 2009, Kong and You, in press, Man and Hamid, 1998 and Sedikides et al., 2004).
Researches by Hampes, 2005 and Hampes, 2006 provided evidence supporting the potential mediating role of humor style in the shyness-loneliness relationship. Humor style is the way in which individuals tend to express their sense of humor in the social situations. It can be divided into four distinct types, two of which are considered potentially helpful to interpersonal relationships (affiliative and self-enhancing humor), and two of which are considered potentially harmful (aggressive and self-defeating humor) (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003). Hampes (2005) found that higher loneliness scores were negatively related to affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles, but positively related to self-defeating humor. Hampes (2006) also found that affiliative and self-defeating humor styles were significantly related to higher shyness scores while in the opposite mode. In fact, Fitts et al. (2009) have recently identified affiliative and self-defeating humor styles as partial mediators between shyness and loneliness. They showed that shy individuals tended to use affiliative humor less, which led to more loneliness. Conversely, shy individuals tended to make more use of self-defeating humor style, which also contributed to an increase in loneliness.
In spite of the frequent observation that self-esteem and humor style are indeed related to shyness and loneliness, it remains unclear whether self-esteem and humor style – given their significant correlation (Kuiper et al., 2004, Martin et al., 2003, Stieger et al., 2011 and Zeigler-Hill and Besser, 2011) – are really differentially and specifically associated with the relationship between shyness and loneliness, respectively. In this case, further investigation can be explored. First of all, there are not many studies around considering both self-esteem and humor style in one and the same study, examining their associations with both shyness and loneliness. Testing the concurrent mediating effects of self-esteem and humor style would broaden our consolidated understanding of the mechanism how shyness and loneliness are connected. Second, a noteworthy deficiency in the humor style and self-esteem literature is that the majority of the studies were executed within Western countries. Testing the mediation models in an Asian culture, especially in Chinese culture would provide meaningful evidence for the external validity. Taken together, the present study tested the mediation effects of both self-esteem and humor style between shyness and loneliness in Chinese college students.
