Examination of the relationship between cognitive flexibility levels and humor styles of high school students

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between cognitive flexibility levels and humor styles of high school students. For this purpose; 402 high school students that were 9th, 10th and 11th graders in Çifteler, Eskişehir through 2016-2017 educational term have participated in this research. In this study, the Cognitive Flexibility Scale (CFS) developed by Bilgin (2009b) was used to determine the cognitive flexibility level and Humor Styles Scale (HSS), developed by Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray and Weir (2003) and adapted to Turkish by E.E.Yerlikaya (2003), was used to determine humor styles. The validity and reliability study of the HSS, which was developed on university students, was carried out by N. Yerlikaya (2007). Analysis of research data was completed by using the Mann Whitney U-Testi, Kruskal Wallis-H Testi, Spearman-Brown Sequence Differences correlation analysis. In the study, while there was a positive correlation between cognitive flexibility levels of high school students with participatory humor and self-enhancing humor styles; there was a significant negative correlation between cognitive flexibility levels and offensive humor styles. On the other hand, the relationship between cognitive flexibility levels and self-destructive humor styles of high school students was not significant. The research revealed that the cognitive flexibility levels and self-enhancing humor styles of high school students did not show a significant difference according to the gender variable. In the study, it was concluded that participatory humor style significantly differentiated in favor of female students; offensive humor and self-destructive humor style differed significantly in favor of male students. Cognitive flexibility levels and humor styles of high school students do not show a significant difference according to the grade level variable. The findings of the research were discussed within the framework of relevant literature and recommendations were further presented.