investigating the relationship of humor styles, emotional intelligence and social competence among university students in tehran

the aim of this study was investigating the relationship of humor styles, emotional intelligence and social competence in university students of tehran. the sample of this descriptive-correlational study included 395 students (196 male and 199 female) from faculties of technical sciences and humanities in universities of tehran, shahid beheshti and kharazmi who were selected through cluster random sampling method. to collect the data, humor styles questionnaire (hsq), trait emotional intelligence (tet) and social competence questionnaire (revised version) (tcq-r) were administered to the sample. the results of correlation analysis showed positive significant relationship of positive humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing) with emotional intelligence, and social competence and their subscales. there was also negative significant relationship between negative humor styles (aggressive and self-defeating) and emotional intelligence and its subscales. there was a significant negative relationship between self-defeating negative style and social competence, and a significant negative relationship between negative styles with some of the social competence subscales. there was also a positive significant relationship between emotional intelligence and social competence and their subscales, except for subscales of self-disclosure, emotional control and optimism, for which no significant relationship was found. the results of multiple regression analysis showed that emotional intelligence and self-enhancing styles are predictors of social competence in students. the result of two-way anova showed that participants’ gender influenced the negative humor styles. it was also found that the students’ field of study had an impact on affiliative humor style.