Ways Of Using Humor In Interpersonal Relationships: An Analysis Between Turks And The Spanish

Humor is an effective and significant part of interpersonal relations. Humor has always had a slight role in maintaining or ending relationships, and in relational conflict management. People make their addressee laugh by cracking a joke, receive their approval, and win them over or gain self-confidence.Besides the fact that humor facilitate the solution of many problems in relationships, the partners may choose to use humor at the breaking points of their relationships, and this may cause the relationship to end.Expressions (actions) are created by using various functions of humor in relationships (Affiliative humor, Self-enhancing humor, Aggressive humor, Self-defeating humor). Since it facilitates the hardships, humor has always been the most popular way of dealing with stuff in relationship conflicts. Humor is most frequently used when solving problems. However, this may lead to adverse outcomes if the partner?s vulnerabilities are neglected. A sense of humor on a common ground is one of the essential building stones of a sound relationship.This study has been designed to reveal the most common function of sense of humor used by the Turkish and the Spanish in their ?nterpersonal relationships. In-depth interviews conducted with 5 Turks and 5 Spaniards through questions regarding four different styles of humor in HSQ Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin et al., 2003) form constitute the research methodology of this study.