Emotional Maturity, Humor Styles, and Relationship Adjustment in Married and Unmarried Young Adults: A Correlational Study

Abstract

Research shows that emotional maturity and humor style are closely related, as individuals with great emotional maturity tend to use an adaptive humor style. Emotional maturity also significantly influences how individuals navigate conflicts, communicate, and maintain long-term commitments; hence, it highly influences relationship stability. This study aimed to explore and understand these relationships in both married and unmarried couples. Data was collected from 60 couples (120 individuals) through snowball sampling. Three scales, Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), Emotional Maturity Scale (EMS), and Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), were used to collect data. The research was only on adaptive humor style. As such, out of the 60 couples, 22 married and 26 unmarried couples were taken, and 54 females and 50 males who portrayed adaptive humor style were taken. For statistical analysis of the data Spearman’s correlation-coefficient was calculated for studying relationship between variables. It was found that emotional maturity was correlated with relationship adjustment in both male and female samples along with married and unmarried samples. Emotional maturity was correlated with humor in both married and unmarried samples. Further research may be done across a larger sample and various cultural contexts.