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.     

Humor styles impact the relationship between symptoms of social anxiety and depression

Recent research suggests that examining humor styles may contribute to our understanding of clinical problems, such as risk and resiliency. The goal of the current study was to examine whether humor styles moderate the association between social anxiety and depressive symptoms in an unselected sample. Three-hundred and six participants (66% female) at a large Southern US university completed self-report measures of humor styles and symptoms of social anxiety and depression. Regression analyses suggested that affiliative and self-defeating humor styles individually moderated the relationship between social anxiety and depressive symptoms. Clinical implications regarding the monitoring of humor use as a means of understanding the maintenance of depressive symptoms among socially anxious individuals are discussed.     

African-American Humor and Trust

Human Studies - One can understand humor in terms of one or some combination of the three types of humor (incongruity, release, superiority) and also by envisioning humor as a finite-province of...     

Humor as an Optics: Bergson and the Ethics of Humor

Although the ethics of humor is a relatively new field, it already seems to have achieved a consensus about ethics in general. In this paper, I implicitly (1) question the view of ethics that stands behind many discussions in the ethics of humor; I do this by explicitly (2) focusing on what has been a chief preoccupation in the ethics of humor: the evaluation of humor. Does the immoral content of a joke make it more or less humorous? Specifically, I analyze whether a sexist joke is more humorous because of its sexism. Contra recent trends in the ethics of humor, I answer this question affirmatively. To this end, the paper presents a detailed and novel reading of Bergson's philosophy of humor, which I argue connects most easily and significantly to the alternate view of ethics I have in mind.     

Humor and Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

Fifty married Israeli couples were administered a humor test measuring humor creation and humor appreciation, as well as a questionnaire measuring marital satisfaction. Each spouse completed the measurement for self and for his or her partner. Results obtained showed that marital satisfaction was related to perception of the partner's humor more than the spouse's own humor. There was a significant relation for husbands between their scores on humor appreciation and their marital satisfaction. No relation was found for wives between their humor scores and their marital satisfaction. Multiple stepwise regressions on humor scores showed that complementarity between spouses' perceptions of partners' humor explains most of the variance of marital satisfaction.     

Humor and interpersonal attraction

A humor test composed of cartoons, comic strips, and jokes was administered to 30 college couples (26 single, 4 married) who rated them for humor. Subjects also stated how much they loved and liked their partner, their probability of marrying the partner, and filled out Rubin's Liking and Love Scales. The hypotheses were that similarity of rating of the humorous stimuli would be associated with loving, liking, and predisposition to marry. Hypotheses were confirmed.     

Humor styles and borderline personality

The present study examined the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between four humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating) and four dimensions of borderline personality disorder (affective instability, identity disturbance, negative relationships, self-harm) as well as a total borderline personality disorder score. Participants were 574 same-sex Australian adult twin pairs. At the phenotypic level, the two adaptive humor style dimensions (affiliative and self-enhancing) were found to correlate negatively with borderline personality and the two maladaptive humor style dimensions (aggressive and self-defeating) were found to have positive correlations with borderline personality. Bivariate genetic analyses demonstrated significant genetic, common environment, and unique environmental correlations. These results indicate that a large component of the phenotypic association between borderline personality disorder and humor style arises from the influence of shared familial and environmental factors associated with both phenotypes.     

Humor and strengths of character

Humor in the Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths is conceptualized as a unipolar and unidimensional strength and is subsumed under the virtue of transcendence. Its scope is intentionally restricted to forms of humor that serve some moral good. The present study (N?=?203) investigated the relation between five dimensions of humorous conduct, sense of humor, and the VIA-Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS). Results show (1) that the VIA-humor correlated with socially warm and competent humor, and the sense of humor, all with a common basis in humanity. (2) Each humor style showed relations to strengths. Additionally, strengths related to the virtue of temperance were also related to not showing mean-spirited and earthy forms of humor. Hence, humor in the VIA-IS can be well-located in established humor taxonomies, but does not cover all of the virtue-related humorous behaviors. Further research is requested to investigate the role of virtue in humor.     

Humor and the Limits of Incongruity

ABSTRACT

Humor often plays an important role in creativity and, contrary to the widely held belief that groups interfere with creativity, groups often facilitate humor. This article argues that the Incongruity Theory (IT) of humor comprehension is unable to account for a broad range of humorous events. This argument is supported by detailing the inability of IT to successfully explain a case involving a lack of humor response to a purported incongruity. The notion of the joke-transaction is used as a starting point for an investigation into the psychology and biology of laughter and humor. The findings offer an accurate definition of portions of the joke-transaction concept and contribute to our understanding of creativity in groups.     

Humor, abstraction, and disbelief

We investigated humor as a context for learning about abstraction and disbelief. More specifically, we investigated how parents support humor understanding during book sharing with their toddlers. In Study 1, a corpus analysis revealed that in books aimed at 1-to 2-year-olds, humor is found more often than other forms of doing the wrong thing including mistakes, pretense, lying, false beliefs, and metaphors. In Study 2, 20 parents read a book containing humorous and non-humorous pages to their 19-to 26-month-olds. Parents used a significantly higher percentage of high abstraction extra-textual utterances (ETUs) when reading the humorous pages. In Study 3, 41 parents read either a humorous or non-humorous book to their 18-to 24-month-olds. Parents reading the humorous book made significantly more ETUs coded for a specific form of high abstraction: those encouraging disbelief of prior utterances. Sharing humorous books thus increases toddlers' exposure to high abstraction and belief-based language.     

Religion and Humor: Estranged Bedfellows

In an earlier article (Capps, 2006), I presented evidence that humor has important psychological benefits. It would seem, therefore, that religion and humor would be allies, for religion is also considered compatible with psychological well-being (Capps, 1985). In fact, however, while religion and humor are not enemies, neither are they, for the most part, allies. I review theoretical works that reflect religion's mistrust of humor, then focus on the empirical studies by Vassilis Saroglou that confirm this mistrust. Building on Saroglou's own theoretical analysis of this mistrust, I suggest that some grounds for this mistrust are legitimate, but most are not. I conclude that religion and humor should overcome their current estrangement.     

Humor and the coronary-prone behavior pattern

The belief is widely held that humor is related to recovery from, and perhaps an increased resistance to, coronary and other stress-related diseases. Such generalizations do not typically distinguish between benign and hostile humor. In the present research, the relationship between a measure of proneness to coronary heart disease (CHD) and appreciation of hostile and nonhostile humor is examined. In two studies, one with college students and one with patients suffering from CHD, the relationship between humor preferences and the coronary-prone (Type A) behavior pattern was examined. Each subject was given the Jenkins Activity Survey as a measure of the coronary-prone personality type, and aggressive and nonaggressive jokes to rate for funniness. Hostile humor was preferred to nonhostile humor by all groups, but among those suffering from CHD, those who could be classified as “Type B’s” preferred nonhostile humor. The results indicate that those less prone to CHD appreciate both hostile and nonhostile humor, while Type A’s seem to enjoy hostile humor only.