Analyzing the effects of humor tendencies on aggression amongst university students

Humor is an important way of communication which is used by all people in society in daily life. Besides that, humor is always an important subject for academic world also. It is investigated just in arts, communication and literature in our country. The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between humor and aggression amongst university students with psychological approach. The relationship between humor and aggression is firstly mentioned in Platon and Aristotele's texts. They believe that humor is a way of humiliation and it makes people more aggressive. On the other hand, Freud defines humor as a defence mechanism so it is a way of coping with anxiety. These two theoretical approaches have different opinions about humor. The hypothesis of this research is based on psychoanalytic approach and claims that humor is a mechanism for reducing anxiety and aggression.The research group of this study was consisted of 18-25 aged 205 students from various faculties in Istanbul Aydin University in 2016-2017 educational year. Personal Information Form (KBF), Scale of Humor in Adolescents and (EMÖ) and Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPSÖ) were used to obtain datas. NCSS 2007 was used for analyzing datas. The result of this study indicates that there is a low positive relationship between humor and aggression. It was observed that the total effect of humor on aggression is 2.9% in regression analysis. According to results, the cognitive usage of humor increased hostility, anger and verbal aggression. So it can be said that the cognitive usage of humor is the most important subscale for aggression.