Humour as a moderator of the relationship between academic expectancy stress and academic ...

101 Pages·2015·1.17 MB·English

COPYRIGHT AND CITATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR THIS THESIS/ DISSERTATION

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if
o
changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that
suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
o

ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your
o
contributions under the same license as the original.

How to cite this thesis
Surname, Initial(s). (2012) Title of the thesis or dissertation. PhD. (Chemistry)/ M.Sc. (Physics)/
M.A. (Philosophy)/M.Com. (Finance) etc. [Unpublished]: University of Johannesburg. Retrieved
from: https://ujdigispace.uj.ac.za (Accessed: Date).
`
Humour as a Moderator of the Relationship between Academic
Expectancy Stress and Academic Self-Concept

by

Lucy Chirwa

submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree

Magister Artium (Counselling Psychology)

in the

Faculty of Humanities

at the

University of Johannesburg

Supervisor: Dr. G. Kruger

July 2014
1
`
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I would like to honour and thank God Almighty for being my strength throughout the
completion of this mini-dissertation. Your love, guidance and peace got me through many
hard times and allowed me to reach this point in my studies. Thank you!

To my supervisor, Dr Gert Kruger, I would like to say thank you for your patience and
support during this process. Working with you was an absolute joy as you encouraged me to
push past my doubts and fears and to believe in myself. It was such a blessing to have you as
my supervisor.

Thank you to the University of Johannesburg for providing me with financial assistance to
complete my studies as I continue my dream of being a Counselling Psychologist.

Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for their constant encouragement and
support throughout this project.

i
Abstract

A correlation between academic achievement and academic self-concept has been well
established during past studies. Academic self-concept may be influenced by the experience
of academic stress, especially academic expectancy stress which is stress derived from the
expectations of the self and significant others. With debilitating effects that academic
expectancy stress may have on students, interventions need to be put in place to assist
students in coping with the workload and also to protect their academic self-concept. The use
of humour in an educational setting has been shown to be successful in assisting students in
performing well academically. Different humour styles may, however, play a role in the
relationship between academic expectancy stress and academic self-concept. This study
focused on humour styles (self-enhancing, affiliative, self-defeating and aggressive humour
styles) as moderators in the relationship between academic expectancy stress and academic
self-concept.

The sample of this study consisted of 976 undergraduate students from the University of
Johannesburg. The Humour Styles Questionnaire, Academic Expectations Stress Inventory
and the Academic Self-concept Scale were used to gather data. A correlational analysis was
initially done to determine the relationships between the variables and to check for
multicollinearity. Next, a moderated multiple regression analysis was done to determine if the
four humour styles moderate the relationship between academic expectancy stress and
academic self-concept.

All four humour styles were found to be statistically significantly correlated with academic
self-concept. Affiliative and self-enhancing humour styles were found to be positively
correlated with academic self-concept, whilst the aggressive and self-defeating humour styles
were found to be negatively correlated with academic self-concept. Only two of the humour
styles were found to be statistically significantly correlated with academic expectancy stress.
Aggressive humour style showed a negative correlation with academic expectancy stress
while self-defeating humour style showed a positive correlation with academic expectancy
stress. Self-defeating humour was the only humour style found to moderate the relationship
between academic expectancy stress and academic self-concept. That is, the more self-
defeating humour is displayed, the more academic stress will increase and academic self-
ii
concept will decrease. The negative relationship between stress and well-being has been well
documented and the use of self-defeating humour style may exacerbate this negative
relationship.

Limitations of this study include poor reliability of the Humour Styles Questionnaire when
used within the South African context. It is recommended that the Humour Styles
Questionnaire be adapted for use within the South African context.

ii
`
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
ABSTRACT ii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
1.1 Orientation 1
1.2 Problem Statement 2
1.3 Purpose of Statement 2
1.4 Chapter Overview 3
Chapter 2: Literature Review 4
2.1 Definition of Humour 4
2.2 Theories of Humour 5
2.2.1 Psychoanalytic Theory 5
2.2.2 Superiority Theory 6
2.2.3 Biological Theory 7
2.2.4 Incongruity Theory 8
2.3 Development of Humour 9
2.4 Styles of Humour 11
2.4.1 Affiliative Humour Style 11
2.4.2 Self-enhancing Humour Style 12
2.4.3 Aggressive Humour Style 12
2.4.4 Self-defeating humour Styles 12
2.5 Individual difference in humour appreciation and production 13
2.6 Applications of Humour: Psychotherapy, health care and the
workplace 14
2.6.1 Psychotherapy 14
2.6.2 Health care 15
2.6.3 The workplace 17
2.7 Academic self-concept and academic expectancy stress 17
2.7.1 Definition of the self and academic self-concept 17
2.7.2 Academic self-concept and academic achievement 18
2.7.3 Peer influences on academic self-concept 20
2.7.4 Consequences of high and low academic self-concept 20
2.8 Academic stress and academic self-concept 23
2.8.1 Sources of Academic Stress 23
2.8.1.1 Assignments, tests and exam stress 23
2.8.1.2 Disturbed sleeping patterns 24
2.8.2 Academic expectations stress 25
2.8.2.1 Parental expectations 25
2.8.2.2 Socio-economic status 26
2.8.2.3 Race and gender 26
2.8.2.4 Teachers, peers and self-expectations 28
2.8.3 Psychological and physical effects of academic
expectations 29
2.9 Humour, academic self-concept and academic expectancy stress 30
2.10 Summary 33
Chapter 3: Methodology 35
3.1 Research Problem and design 35
3.2 Participants 35
3.3 Measurement Instruments 36
3.3.1 Humour Styles Questionnaire 36
3.3.2 Academic Expectations Stress Inventory 37
3.3.3 Academic Self-concept Scale 37
3.4 Procedure 38
3.5 Research Hypothesis 38
3.6 Data Analysis 39
3.7 Ethical Considerations 39
3.8 Summary 40
Chapter 4: Results 41
4.1 Descriptive Statistics 41
4.2 Correlations between humour styles, academic self-concept
and academic expectancy stress 47
4.3 Results pertaining to the General Hypothesis 48
4.3.1 Results pertaining to specific Hypothesis 1 48
4.3.2 Results pertaining to specific Hypothesis 2 51
4.3.3 Results pertaining to specific Hypothesis 3 53
4.3.4 Results pertaining to specific Hypothesis 4 56
4.4 Summary 59
Chapter 5: Discussion 60
5.1 Correlations of the various variables 60
5.1.1 Affiliative humour style 60
5.1.2 Self-enhancing humour style 61
5.1.3 Aggressive humour style 61
5.1.4 Self-defeating humour style 62
5.2 Moderated outcomes between the variables of interest 62
5.2.1 Affiliative humour style as moderator 63
5.2.2 Self-enhancing humour style as moderator 63
5.2.3 Aggressive humour style as moderator 63
5.2.4 Self-defeating humour style as moderator 64
5.3 Limitations of the study 65
5.4 Recommendations for future studies 65
5.5 Conclusion 66
References 67
Tables
Table 2.3: Comparisons of the theories of humour 9
Table 4.1: Gender statistics for sample of 976 first year undergraduate students 41
Table 4.2: Age statistics for sample of 976 first year undergraduate students 43
Table 4.3: Ethnic representation for sample of 976 first year undergraduate
students 45
Table 4.4: Correlation matrix displaying zero-order correlations between
humour styles, academic self-concept and academic expectancy stress 48
Table 4.5: Academic expectancy stress, academic self-concept and the moderating
effects of affiliative humour style 49
Table 4.6: Regression weights, t-values, p-values and semi-partial correlations
pertaining to academic expectancy stress, academic self-concept and the
moderating effect of affiliative humour style 50
Table 4.7: Academic expectancy stress, academic self-concept and the
moderating effects of self-enhancing humour style 51