Positive Humor Styles and Psychological Resilience: The Mediating Role of Self-Compassion Among Final-Year Undergraduate Students

<title>Abstract</title> <p>The stressful, uncertain conditions of today’s world expose university students to various challenges in both their educational and career development processes. In this context, psychological resilience is an important resource that enables students to cope with these problems and respond to changing conditions. Therefore, examining individual resources that may enhance psychological resilience is of considerable importance. Among these resources, positive humor styles and self-compassion can be considered supportive factors that help students. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of positive humor styles on psychological resilience and to explore the role self-compassion as a mediator in this relationship. To achieve this aim, data were collected via a survey from 158 university students enrolled in Business and Economics programs at public universities in Istanbul. The hypothesized relationships were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicated that (i) positive humor styles had a positive effect on self-compassion (β = 0.652, p &lt; .001), (ii) psychological resilience was positively predicted by self-compassion (β = 0.602, p &lt; .001), and (iii) self-compassion fully mediated the effect of positive humor styles on psychological resilience (β = 0.393, p &lt; .001). The direct of positive humor styles on psychological resilience was not statistically significant (β = 0.114, p = .187). These results extend positive psychology research by showing that self-compassion is a key mechanism through which positive humor styles contribute to psychological resilience among final-year undergraduate students.</p>