Humour styles as moderators and mediators of the relationship between peer-victimisation and internalising

Peer-victimisation is associated with numerous, negative psycho-social outcomes and meta-analyses indicate that internalising difficulties are particularly salient. Given the inherently social nature of humour, and previous work supporting the association of humour with wellbeing, we investigated whether specific humour styles mediated or moderated the relationship between peer-victimisation and depressive symptomatology. Peer-reports of physical, verbal, and indirect peer-victimisation were collected for 1,241 English adolescents aged 11-13 years old. Self-reports of humour style and depression were also collected. Analyses using Structural Equation Modeling revealed no moderation by humour was evident. Verbal victimisation had the largest association with depressive symptomatology and a positive association between verbal victimisation combined with large, positive association between self-defeating humour and depressive symptomatology provides evidence for an indirect pathways via self-defeating humour use. The implications of these results for our understanding of peer-victimisation, adjustment, and humour are considered.