For two weeks, 286 participants used the Rochester Interaction Record to describe their social interactions. They also completed the Coping with Humor Scale and measures of depression, social skills, loneliness, and social anxiety. Scores on the CHS were positively related to how pleasurable people found their interactions, how confident they felt in their interactions, and how much time they spent with others. Moreover, the strength of these relationships was moderated by depression, but not by other measures of adjustment. These relationships were stronger for people who were less depressed.

In contemporary society the world over, humor and laughter are frequently presumed to be means people can use to cope with life's difficulties (Ziv 1988). Such cultural beliefs are reflected in slogans such as``Laughter is the best medicine,''and in lyrics such as``Let a smile be your umbrella''and``Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.''Consistent with such recommendations, research on the relationships between laughter and coping with stress has found that people can and do use humor to cope with stress and adversity. Moreover, this research suggests that there are meaningful individual differences in the extent to which people do this. The present study was intended to expand our understanding of people's use of humor as a coping mechanism by examining the relationships between this construct and people's day-to-day social lives and their general psychological adjustment. The study was guided by the general hypothesis that the use of humor as a means of coping would be positively related to the quality of people's social lives. This hypothesis was based