ArticleCurrent issues in personality psychology2026
"I have problems and I have fun": Funniness ratings of memes about psychological problems reflect how people relate them to themselves and correlate with rumination, reflection, self-liking, and self-competence.
Article in Current issues in personality psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
backgroundSome internet memes relate to specific psychological problems, such as pessimism, anxiety, procrastination, depression, masking feelings, social isolation, and coping with problems. We compared participants' funniness ratings and perceived self-relatedness of these memes, moderated by humor styles. Moreover, we investigated the relationships between ratings of the funniness and relatedness of memes and cognitive processes of rumination and reflection and participants' self-liking and self-competence, controlling for humor styles. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE: A sample of 225 Polish participants (58 men and 167 women) aged 20 to 35 (
resultsParticipants found memes about depression the funniest, and they found procrastination memes the most relatable to their situation. Rumination correlated more with relating memes about psychological problems to one's situation, and reflection correlated more with ratings of the funniness of these memes. Self-liking and self-competence correlated negatively with ratings of the funniness and relatedness of memes about psychological problems. Affiliative humor predicted relatedness of psychological problems memes negatively, and aggressive and self-defeating humor predicted such relatedness positively.
conclusionsOur study is the first to examine perceptions of internet memes about a broad range of psychological problems. Our results show the interplay between psychological variables and the reception of humorous messages about serious contemporary issues.
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