Positive Psychological Theory-
There are two dominating views and a plethora of methodological approaches to measuring humor. The aesthetic view defines humor as a specific subset of amusing and playful behavior (among wit, sarcasm, irony, satire, and like traits of a comic). The other, more popular view in American psychology conceptualizes humor as an umbrella term for all that is considered laughable. In positive psychology, humor is synonymous with playfulness. One of its marked characteristics is not only laughter, but smiling. Presently, there is no agreed upon terminology and no consensual definition in either psychology or positive psychology.
In constructing methodologies for measuring humor, there are nearly as many measuring systems as definitions. Popular measuring systems include Martin’s Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ), which focuses on human mirth in daily life, and the Coping Humor Scale (CHS), which deals more with humor being used as a coping measure for stress.Other important humor scales are the Humorous Behavior Q-Sort Deck, Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), WD Test of Humor Appreciation, and the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI). The different humor tests are indicative of the underlying diversity and lack of consensus in defining humor.
Humor itself eludes concrete and empirical definition for a number of reasons which stem from its identity as a trait, underlying behavior, or emotion, and the diversity in which it expresses itself in different cultures and societies. Sociologically, humor expresses itself differently across gender, culture, nationality, age, social setting, and a number of other factors amongst individuals.
Humor and Laughter-
One of the main focuses of modern psychological humor theory and research is to establish and clarify the correlation between humor and laughter. The major empirical findings here are that laughter and humor do not always have a one-to-one association. While most previous theories assumed the connection between the two almost to the point of them being synonymous, psychology has been able to scientifically and empirically investigate the supposed connection, its implications, and significance.
In 2009, Diana Szameitat conducted a study to examine the differentiation of emotions in laughter. They hired actors and told them to laugh with one of four different emotional associations by using auto-induction, where they would focus exclusively on the internal emotion and not on the expression of laughter itself. They found an overall recognition rate of 44%, with joy correctly classified at 44%, tickle 45%, schadenfreude 37%, and taunt 50%.Their second experiment tested the behavioral recognition of laughter during an induced emotional state and they found that different laughter types did differ with respect to emotional dimensions. In addition, the four emotional states displayed a full range of high and low sender arousal and valence. This study showed that laughter can be correlated with both positive (joy and tickle) and negative (schadenfreude and taunt) emotions with varying degrees of arousal in the subject.
This brings into question the definition of humor, then. If it is to be defined by the cognitive processes which display laughter, then humor itself can encompass a variety of negative as well as positive emotions. However, if humor is limited to positive emotions and things which cause positive affect, it must be delimited from laughter and their relationship should be further defined.
Humor and Health-
Humor has shown to be effective for increasing resilience in dealing with distress and also effective in undoing negative affects.
Madeljin Strick, Rob Holland, Rick van Baaren, and Ad van Knippenberg (2009) of Radboud University conducted a study that showed the distracting nature of a joke on bereaved individuals. Subjects were presented with a wide range of negative pictures and sentences. Their findings showed that humorous therapy attenuated the negative emotions elicited after negative pictures and sentences were presented. In addition, the humor therapy was more effective in reducing negative affect as the degree of affect increased in intensity. Humor was immediately effective in helping to deal with distress. The escapist nature of humor as a coping mechanism suggests that it is most useful in dealing with momentary stresses. Stronger negative stimuli requires a different therapeutic approach.
Humor is an underlying character trait associated with the positive emotions used in the broaden-and-build theory of cognitive development.
Studies, such as those testing the undoing hypothesis, have shown several positive outcomes of humor as an underlying positive trait in amusement and playfulness. Several studies have shown that positive emotions can restore autonomic quiescence after negative affect. For example, Frederickson and Levinson showed that individuals who expressed Duchenne smiles during the negative arousal of a sad and troubling event recovered from the negative affect approximately 20% faster than individuals who didn’t smile.
Humor can serve as a strong distancing mechanism in coping with adversity. In 1997 Kelter and Bonanno found that Duchenne laughter correlated with reduced awareness of distress. Positive emotion is able to loosen the grip of negative emotions on peoples’ thinking. A distancing of thought leads to a distancing of the unilateral responses people often have to negative arousal. In parallel with the distancing role plays in coping with distress, it supports the broaden and build theory that positive emotions lead to increased multilateral cognitive pathway and social resource building.
Humor and Aging-
Humor has been shown to improve and help the aging process in three areas. The areas are improving physical health, improving social communications, and helping to achieve a sense of satisfaction in life.
Studies have shown that constant humor in the aging process gives health benefits to individuals. Such benefits as higher self-esteem, lower levels of depression, anxiety, and perceived stress, and a more positive self-concept as well as other health benefits which have been recorded and acknowledged through various studies. Even patients with specific diseases have shown improvement with aging using humor. Overall there is a strong correlation through constant humor in aging and better health in the individuals.
Another way that research indicates that humor helps with the aging process, is through helping the individual to create and maintain strong social relationship during transitory periods in their lives. One such example is when people are moved into nursing homes or other facilities of care. With this transition certain social interactions with friend and family may be limited forcing the individual to look else where for these social interactions. Humor has been shown to make transitions easier, as humor is shown reduce stress and facilitate socialization and serves as a social bonding function.Humor may also help the transition in helping the individual to maintain positive feelings toward those who are enforcing the changes in their lives. These new social interactions can be critical for these transitions in their lives and humor will help these new social interactions to take place making these transitions easier.
Humor can also help aging individuals maintain a sense of satisfaction in their lives. Through the aging process many changes will occur, such as losing the right to drive a car. This can cause a decrease in satisfaction in the lives of the individual. Humor helps to alleviate this decrease of satisfaction by allowing the humor to release stress and anxiety caused by changes in the individuals life. Laughing and humor can be a substitute for the decrease in satisfaction by allowing individuals to feel better about their situations by alleviating the stress. This, in turn, can help them to maintain a sense of satisfaction toward their new and changing life style.
Humor Style:-
Affiliative Humor-
Affiliative humor is defined as the style of humor used to enhance one’s relationships with others in a benevolent, positive manner. This style of humor is typically used in a benevolent, self-accepting way. Individuals high in this dimension often use humor as a way to charm and amuse others, ease tension among others, and improve relationships. They are often spontaneous in their joke telling, frequently participate in witty banter, and enjoy laughing with others. Affiliative humor is similar to self-defeating humor because both styles of humor enhance the relationships with others. However, unlike self-defeating humor, affiliative humor is not used at one’s own expense.
A number of outcomes are associated with the use of affiliative humor. Individuals who report high levels of affiliative humor are more likely to initiate friendships. They are also less likely to exhibit depressive symptoms. In an organizational setting, affiliative humor has been shown to increase group cohesiveness and promote creativity in the workplace.Affiliative humor is also associated with increased levels of self-esteem, psychological well-being, emotional stability, and social intimacy. This style of humor is associated with decreased levels of depression and anxiety. Individuals who use affiliative humor tend to have higher levels of extraversion and openness to experience as personality characteristics.
Self-enhancing humor
Self-enhancing humor is a style of humor related to having a good-natured attitude toward life, having the ability to laugh at yourself, your circumstances and the idiosyncrasies of life in constructive, non-detrimental manner. It is used by individuals to enhance the self in a benevolent, positive manner. This type of humor is best understood as a type ofcoping or emotion-regulating humor in which individuals use humor to look on the bright side of a bad situation, find the silver lining or maintain a positive attitude even in trying times.
Self-enhancing humor is associated with a number of personality variables as well as psychological, physical and health-related outcomes. Individuals who engage more in the self-enhancing humor style are less likely to exhibit depressive symptoms. In an organizational setting, self-enhancing humor has been shown to promote creativity and reduce stress in the workplace. The self-enhancing style of humor has also been shown to be related to increased levels of self-esteem,optimism, and psychological well-being, as well as decreased levels of depression and anxiety. Individuals who use the self-enhancing humor style are more likely to exhibit extraversion and openness to experience as personality characteristics and less likely to exhibit neuroticism.
Aggressive humor-
Aggressive humor is a style of humor that is potentially detrimental towards others. This type of humor is characterized by the use of sarcasm, put-downs, teasing, criticism, ridicule, and other types of humor used at the expense of others. Aggressive humor often disregards the impact it might have on others. Prejudices such as racism and sexism are considered to be the aggressive style of humor. This type of humor may at times seem like playful fun, but sometimes the underlying intent is to harm or belittle others. Aggressive humor is related to higher levels of neuroticism and lower levels ofagreeableness and conscientiousness.
Individuals who exhibit higher levels of aggressive humor tend to score higher on measures of hostility and general aggression. Males tend to use aggressive humor more often than women.
Positive psychology in particular holds that humor, as a specific character trait, serves to increase Psychological resiliencein coping with adversity and also helps in cognitive development to increase both creativity and generativity by encouraging multiple pathway solutions and analysis of challenges.
To enjoy the benefits of humor, many programs have been designed to cultivate humor and playfulness for use in hospital, educational, and counseling settings, among other places. A representative example is found in Mcghee (1999). In his program, he outlines an eight-step program that encompass a range of difficulties. Although no published data exists on it, Simone Sassenrath reported that a group of adults had increased self-reported changes in humor, playfulness, and positive mood at one month after the end of the program.
Self-defeating humor-
Self-defeating humor is the style of humor characterized by the use of potentially detrimental humor towards the self in order to gain approval from others. Individuals high in this dimension engage in self-disparaging humor in which laughter is often at their own expense. Self-defeating humor often comes in the form of pleasing others by being the "butt" of the joke. This style of humor is sometimes seen as a form of denial in which humor is used as a defense mechanism for hiding negative feelings about the self.
A variety of variables are associated with self-defeating humor. Individuals who more frequently use self-defeating humor show increased depressive symptoms. Individuals who use this style of humor tend to have higher levels of neuroticismand lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness. Self-defeating humor is associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety and psychiatric symptoms. It is also associated with lower levels of self-esteem, psychological well-being and intimacy. This style of humor also tends to be more common in men than in women.
Humor can serve multiple psychological functions, whether it is conceptualized as a personality trait, a strength of character, a coping mechanism, a world view, an attitude, an emotion-based temperament, an aesthetic preference, an ability and competence, or a virtue. As a character strength and virtue, humor is especially applicable in psychology. Because of the great cultural and individual variation of what people find humorous, and because of the ambivalence of how humor itself is defined in a cognitive and social sense, a great variety of measuring methods have developed for humor. However, despite how the different methods have shaped how humor is measured and its effects, its major correlation with resilience to adversity and long-term creativity and generativity in cognitive development render it an invaluable trait in the field ofpositive psychology. As a coping mechanism, it is apparent that the merely distracting nature of humor makes other methods desirable for more negative stimuli. Cultivating humor may prove to be a valuable approach to helping individuals strive for happiness and to help cope with daily stresses.
