Associations between psychological needs satisfaction, humor styles, and psychological distress in emerging adults

Introduction: Emerging adulthood is a developmental period marked by increased psychological vulnerability due to rising demands related to autonomy, identity development, and social relationships. Self-determination theory (SDT) posits that satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness is essential for psychological adjustment, whereas unmet needs are associated with psychological distress. While the direct association between needs satisfaction and distress is well documented, less is known about the psychological processes that may account for this relationship. Humor may represent one such process, as it is a common emotion-regulation and interpersonal coping strategy. However, humor styles differ in their adaptability, and potential sex differences in these pathways remain insufficiently explored. Methods: This cross-sectional study examined 226 university students aged 18-30 years (67.3% female). Participants completed self-report measures of psychological distress, psychological needs satisfaction, and humor styles. Correlation analyses, mediation models, and moderated mediation models were used to examine the associations between psychological needs satisfaction, humor styles, and psychological distress as well as sex-specific differences in these relationships. Higher satisfaction of psychological needs was associated with lower psychological distress, with relatedness showing the strongest association. Results: Higher levels of needs satisfaction were positively associated with adaptive humor styles, particularly self-enhancing humor, and negatively associated with self-defeating humor. Self-enhancing humor was negatively correlated with psychological distress, while self-defeating humor was positively correlated with it. Statistically, both humor styles accounted for part of the association between psychological needs satisfaction and distress. Moderated mediation analyses revealed sex-specific patterns: the indirect association between autonomy satisfaction and distress via self-defeating humor was stronger in males. In contrast, the indirect association via self-enhancing humor was stronger in females, particularly with regard to relatedness and competence. Discussion: These findings underscore the significance of humor styles as correlates of motivational processes and psychological distress in emerging adulthood. Psychological needs satisfaction is associated with lower distress, in part due to adaptive emotion-regulation tendencies reflected in humor use. Distinct patterns are observed for men and women. These results emphasize the importance of considering motivational context, coping tendencies, and sex differences when examining mental health during this critical developmental period.