The Use of Humor in Counseling: The Laughing Cure

The benefits of humor are briefly reviewed, and the ways in which humor can be effectively used in the client—counselor relationship are explored (i.e., using humor as a diagnostic tool and as a therapeutic tool). Finally counseling vignettes are provided and admonitions regarding the improper application of humor in counseling are reviewed.     

The Use of Humor When Counseling African American College Students

According to the literature, humor is a critical tool to enhance the counseling process because it can reduce stress, build rapport, and aid in the increase of the client's self‐efficacy. In recent years, the critical nature of using humor appropriately from a cultural perspective has been explored. In this article, the authors further explore the cultural foundations, purpose, effectiveness, and implications of using humor when counseling African American college students.     

Humor in Counseling: Leader Perspectives

This article explores the existence of humor in counseling from the perspectives of several leaders in the field. Specifically, the last 5 authors describe some of their thoughts and experiences regarding the emergence of humor in counseling.     

A Process Analysis of the Effects of Humorous Advertising Executions on Brand Claims Memory

We report 2 studies that examined how the strength of humorous advertising executions and their relevance to the brand claims in the advertisement influence consumer memory for the claims. We infer the underlying memory processes by testing claims memory using recall, recognition, and indirect tests following incidental exposure to advertisements manipulating humor strength and claims relevance. Memory for the humor component was checked as corroborating evidence. We also validated these inferences by contrasting these effects on claims and humor memory with those under instructed elaboration. Study 1 shows that for humor of low claims relevance, brand claims memory is an inverted U‐shaped function of humor strength. Compared to both nonhumor and high‐strength humor, moderate humor facilitates both encoding and retrieval of the claims. The patterns of humor memory and instructed elaboration effects suggest that low‐relevance humor is not spontaneously linked to the claims even when processing resources are available. Study 2 shows that when strong humor is made more relevant, brand claims memory improves even during incidental exposure. Corresponding humor memory and instructed elaboration effects imply that relevance encourages the formation of humor‐claims links that facilitate encoding and retrieval of the claims. The results show that although strong humor inhibits the processing received by the brand claims, enhancing its claims relevance can compensate for such inhibition.     

Ethnic Diversity and the Use of Humor in Counseling: Appropriate or Inappropriate?

Humor can reflect the healthy release of feelings during the counseling process, the type of emotional release that leads to significant therapeutic gains. It can also be a disturbing distraction, possibly causing early termination, if used inappropriately. Counselors need to exert particular caution before attempting to apply humor in working with a client from a culture different from the counselor's. This article explores the available literature and offers contributions on the subject from 4 “ethnically diverse” perspectives. Finally, a general approach based on existential theory is presented along with 5 general conditions to ascertain the appropriate use of humor.     

The Clown or Contrary Figure as a Counseling Intervention Strategy With Native American Indian Clients

Humor via the door motif in Native American Indian cultures can be pervasive and perverse. Helping professionals are alerted to down humor as a positive counseling intervention for this population. Background information, possible cautions, and illustrations are offered, with the need for additional empirical support strongly encouraged.     

The Path of Good Medicine: Understanding and Counseling Native American Indians

This article presents a brief overview of Native American cultural values, beliefs, and practices concerning the tribe, elders, family, and spirituality. Native American Indian communication style, humor, and cultural commitment are briefly discussed and recommendations are given for counseling with Native American Indians.     

Those who laugh are defenseless: how humor breaks resistance to influence

Three experiments illustrate that humor in advertisements prevents the development of negative brand associations due to resistance. Previous research on humor in advertising suggested that humor can counter negative responses during ad processing, but less is known about the effect of humor on the development of negative brand associations in memory. Brand associations are important because there is often a time delay between ad exposure and brand decisions. We separately manipulated two typical aspects of humor processing, that is, distraction and positive affect, and examined their effects on the development of respectively negative and positive brand associations. All experiments were conducted with university students as participants. The results showed that resistance causes negative brand associations (Experiments 1 and 2), and humor prevents the development of these negative brand associations more than nondistracting positive stimuli and neutral stimuli (Experiment 2 and 3). The prevention of negative brand associations was caused by the distractive properties of humor. Irrespective of resistance, the positive affect engendered by humor enhanced positive brand associations. Experiment 3 showed that distraction and positive affect in humor uniquely contribute to brand preference. Together, these results illustrate that the effect of humor on resistance follows a two-step process: humor forestalls the development of negative brand associations because of its distractive properties (cognitive mechanism), and engenders positive brand associations because of its positive emotional outcomes (affective mechanism). These effects of humor on brand associations jointly promote brand preference.     

Laughter: A signal of ceased alarm toward a perceived incongruity between life and stiffness

Main aim of this study is to determine what causes humor, and secondarily, to find out why rhythmic laughter is its expression. In this review, we have analyzed the characteristics of humor and laughter, their effects on health and social behavior, and their correlations with several areas of the brain. Then, we have described the features of laughter, its rhythmic shape and its correlations with other rhythmic human behaviors. We have noticed that the most plausible theory for humor is that of incongruity/resolution, where a) an incongruous event or object provokes a sense of wonder, and b) it is followed by something that reassures the bystanders about its innocuity; but c) not all incongruities provoke humor, but just those that introduce something stiff and stereotyped into a vital and fluid event. What this study adds to what is known, is that not all incongruities produce humor, but only those between a living process and any stereotipy or stiffness we find in it. Laughter is the stigmatization of this unnatural incongruity, through its loud and rhythmic shape, as a sort of signal of ceased alert after the shock induced by what seems hazardous to the fluidity of life.     

Humor in therapy: the case for training therapists in its uses and risks

Formal humor training for therapists is proposed as an elective part of their academic curriculum. The paucity of rigorous empirical research on the effectiveness of this historically controversial form of clinical intervention is exceeded only by the absence of any training for those practitioners interested in applying humor techniques. A representative sample of its many advocates' recommendations to incorporate humor in the practice of psychological therapies is reviewed. Therapeutic humor is defined, the role of therapists' personal qualities is discussed, and possible reasons for the profession's past resistance to promoting humor in therapy are described. Research perspectives for the evaluation of humor training are presented with illustrative examples of important empirical questions. In addition to its potential salubrious effects on clients, therapeutic humor might have the positive side effect of preventing or minimizing professional burnout in therapists. This potentially major psychotherapeutic resource, highly praised by some, remains insufficiently evaluated and essentially untapped.     

Language ability and sex affect humor appreciation.

Subjects (63 men and 63 women) completed a humor appreciation scale and 20 trials on a word-recognition task using a divided visual field. Factor analysis extracted eight factors from the humor scale most of which differentiated subjects on the basis of liking for various humorous contents including disparagement and non-sense humor. Subsequent analyses showed that greater liking for specific types of humor was associated with basic language abilities. The results also support sex differences in humor preferences and Freud's tripartite taxonomy of humor contents.     

Index to Volume 129

This study addresses the basic structure of playfulness in adults from a psy-cho-lexical approach and its relationship with the sense of humor. Using items derived from a corpus analysis of written accounts in the German language, five factors were derived (N = 195); that is, (a) cheerful-engaged; (b) whimsical; (c) creative-loving; (d) intellectual; and (e) impulsive. Their contents strongly overlap in comparison with an earlier study using this approach. However, the correlation of the intellectual component with two current measures of adult playfulness was low, and the impulsive component was not correlated with these measures. The question arises as to whether these aspects exist only as components in the implicit psychological and linguistic theories. The sense of humor was most strongly related with the cheerful-engaged factor while some “humor skills” were particularly related to other factors; for example, finding humor under stress with the intellectual component. This study helps toward a better understanding of the basic structure of playfulness in adults.     

Humor as a protective factor against anxiety and depression

Background/ObjectivesEven though humor its part of everyday life, only in the last 40 years has Psychology begun to discern its impact on mental health. The aim of this paper is to explore the role that humor styles may have as protectors against anxiety and depression and their relationship with optimism.MethodA sample of 804 participants (M = 39.28; SD = 14.71) was used to analyze the uses of humor, optimism and clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression. In addition, the influence of sociodemographic variables such as sex, geographic location, age and educational level on different uses of humor was studied. Through an analysis of structural equations, the variables that had a protective or facilitating role in depression and anxiety were analyzed.ResultsMen and women differ in the use of a more aggressive humor style, and the use of affiliative humor styles decreases with age. The structural equation model indicated a good fit to the proposed theoretical model.ConclusionsHumor is a tool of everyday life and it can act for or against an individual’s mental health.     

幽默的社会理论及其应用研究

幽默的社会理论强调幽默在社会交往情境中娱乐基础上的交际功能,可更好地解释人们日常生活中的幽默现象。根据幽默的社会理论,研究者从幽默发出者的幽默创作、幽默接收者的幽默理解以及各种社会交往情境的幽默应用等角度来探讨幽默。文化背景对幽默的创作和理解具有重要影响,中西方幽默存在文化差异。最后指出社会理论框架下的幽默研究的不足并提出一些建议。     

Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressful events and psychological distress: a prospective analysis

Previous research has indicated that one's sense of humor serves as a moderator of the deleterious effects of negative stressful life events. However, because this research has been only cross-sectional in nature, such conclusions remain tentative. The purpose of this study was to provide for a more rigorous test of the humor as a stress-buffer hypothesis by using a prospective design that also attempted to control for the variance attributable to prior level of distress. Additionally, two measures of humor were included to increase the construct validity of the findings. Results from a series of regression analyses indicated that humor served as a moderator of stress for depressive, but not anxiety, symptomatology, regardless of the measure of humor that was used in the analyses. Implications of these findings for future research are noted.     

The effects of humor-induced arousal upon aggressive behavior

The present experiment attempted to reconcile previous results in the area of humor and aggression. It was hypothesized that humor serves two functions, arousal and attentional shift, with regard to its influence on the relation of prior anger arousal and aggression. As a test of this assumption, subjects in the present experiment were subjected to three forms of humor (high arousing, low arousing, nonhumor) after being angered or treated in a neutral manner by a confederate. In an analysis on subsequent aggression toward the confederate, it was found that female subjects reduced their aggression after exposure to low arousing humor while maintaining aggression at a high level for high arousing stimuli. Male subjects were not influenced by humor exposure. Possible reasons for this sex difference are examined in light of the arousal and attentional shift properties of humorous stimuli.     

When You Care Enough to Do Your Very Best: Genetic Counselor Experiences of Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue is a phenomenon that occurs when a caregiver feels overwhelmed by repeated empathic engagement with distressed clients (Figley, 2002). Research demonstrates its existence among nurses, physicians, and mental health professionals, but to date no published study has specifically investigated the nature and prevalence of compassion fatigue among genetic counselors. The present study was an initial attempt to identify and describe the phenomena in genetic counseling by conducting focus group interviews with 12 genetic counselors. Data analysis yielded several themes: a) compassion fatigue occurs and may compromise professional and personal functioning; b) prevalent triggers include delivering bad news and difficult patient issues (e.g., terminal illness, anger, psychopathology); c) effective coping strategies include consulting with colleagues, setting boundaries, and humor; and d) risk factors include personality characteristics and traumatic memories. Training, practice, and research recommendations are provided.     

在线学习环境中教师幽默对学习投入的影响：一个多水平的结构方程分析

以教学幽默风格模型（Instructional Humor Styles）和教学幽默加工理论（Instructional Humor Processing Theory）为基础,通过构建多水平的结构方程模型探索在线学习环境中,教师幽默与学习投入关系。结果表明：（1）教师幽默与学习投入无显著相关;（2）在学生层面,仅学生感知的与课堂相关的教师幽默与学习投入呈显著正相关;（3）学生感知的与课堂相关,与课堂无关和攻击性的教师幽默均能通过积极情绪和消极情绪对学习投入产生影响。此外,自我贬低的教师幽默仅通过消极情绪对学习投入产生作用。本研究首次将教学幽默风格理论模型拓展至在线学习环境中,从教师层面和学生层面验证了该理论在我国的适应性。此外,本研究验证了教学幽默加工理论,揭示了教师幽默对学习投入的内在机制,这对改善在线学习环境中学生的学习投入具有一定的指导意义。     

Signaling trustworthiness: The effect of leader humor on feedback-seeking behavior

ABSTRACT

Given its capacity to cultivate a range of positive outcomes in the workplace, humor has been recognized as a valuable tool for leadership purposes. However, the theoretical understanding of leader humor remains relatively limited and the mechanism through which it influences follower outcomes has not been clearly identified. Drawing on signaling theory, we developed and empirically tested a model which delineates the relationship between leader humor and a specific follower behavior – proactive feedback seeking. We collected data from 304 employees and their respective leaders working in a large Canadian retail organization. Results of our analyses indicate that leader humor can impact subordinate feedback-seeking behavior via its influence on subordinates’ affect-based and cognition-based trust in the leader.