PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

The goal of this study was to examine the effect of the moderators of adaptive and maladaptive humour on stress and on the four levels of defence based coping mechanism amongst the youth of Kerala, India. Four hundred and fifty-three youth between the age of 18 and 40, selected from two different cities of North Kerala, India (Calicut, Malappuram) and Central Kerala, India (Cochin, Trissur), were asked to fill out three questionnaires assessing stress, coping and humour. Pearson’s test of product-moment correlation indicated that stress had a positive and moderate statistically significant correlation with the first three levels of defence based coping mechanism (pathological defences, immature defences and neurotic defences). Furthermore, there was a positive and weak statistically significant correlation between stress and level-IV coping (mature defences). When positive and moderate correlation- was found for stress with maladaptive humour, no significant correlation was found with adaptive humour. When coping was studied in relationship with humour, a negative and weak statistically significant correlation was found for level-I coping (pathological defences) with adaptive humour, whereas a positive and moderate statistically significant correlation was found with maladaptive humour. Here level-IV coping (mature defences) was found to have a positive and moderate statistically significant relationship with adaptive and maladaptive humour. Moderator analysis showed that maladaptive humour moderated the association between stress and four levels of defence based coping mechanism. The study implied that youth should be trained to use more of mature means of coping and adaptive humour styles in life.