Psychological Benefits of Humor
“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies.” - E.B. White
Victor Frankl, M.D., Ph.D., was an Austrian born Psychiatrist who survived, in remarkable fashion, the absolute horror of being a prisoner in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Frankl, in his renowned Man's Search for Meaning (1946) wrote, "Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.” Frankl continued, “The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent"
Norman Cousins was, among other things, a famous writer and editor. Cousins story speaks to the incredible
power of laughter. In his celebrated work An
Anatomy of an Illness, Cousin’s chronicles how he used humor,
specifically Marx Brothers films, to battle back from his own debilitating illness and the depression he suffered as a result has been widely publicized. He writes, "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep. When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval."
Patch Adams, trained as a medical doctor and
a clown, and his efforts to use laughter to promote healing have been widely
publicized as well as countless others who have extolled the virtues of using humor as a coping mechanism. Some theories, such as the Incongruity Theory of Humor, posit that Humor results from the contrast between two inconsistent ideas. We have the perception that a thing will turn out a certain way and we laugh when the actual outcome is something different altogether. We laugh at things that surprise us because they seem out of place.
The Superiority Theory of Humor purports that humor is nothing more than the unexpected positive emotions we experience when we feel a sense of eminence over others. The Superiority Theory is captured in the following Mel Brooks quote, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
”Freud (1960), in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious: Humor is employed as a substitute means of expressing aggressive impulses that would otherwise be socially restricted.From a psychoanalytic perspective, humor is seen as a way to cathartically release built-up psychic tensions.Since the superego
represses id oriented aggressive drives, one
must have a more socially accepted means of letting go of this energy. In this
way, the individual uses language or behavior that is humorous in nature to act
out these aggressions, thus providing the individual with a sense of relief in
a manner that is acceptable both to superego and to society.
Finally, the Benign Violation theory of HUMOR, Peter McGraw, PhD, University of Colorado Boulder, suggests that humor appreciation results from simultaneously perceiving something as a ‘violation’ and as benign. Benign meaning that the violation doesn’t pose a threat to them or their worldview, violation refers to one's personal dignity (e.g. falling down the stairs), linguistic norms (e.g. puns, unusual accents), or social or moral norms (e.g. a dirty joke). In other words, for something to be funny, three conditions must be met: 1. there must be a violation of the norm. 2. the violation must be perceived to be benign. 3. both these perceptions must occur simultaneously. Funniness can be predicted based on: 1.How committed a person is to the norm being violated (A dirty joke violates social or moral norms but won’t get a laugh if the person listening is offended, puns violate linguistic norms, but only cerebral types and grammarians care enough about the violation to chuckle etc.). 2. Psychological distance from the perceived violation (falling down the stairs is funny, but probably not if you’re the one falling).
Recent research by Rod Martin, Ph.D.,University of Western Ontario, asserts that sense of humor is multidimensional, potentially having both
adaptive and maladaptive properties:
Positive
(adaptive) humor styles
Affiliative:
someone who attempts to be funny in an effort to amuse others, sometimes to
enhance relationships and possibly as a way of bringing levity to a situation.
Self-enhancing:
someone who uses humor as a lens through which life is filtered, someone who
can laugh at life even when it is hard.
Negative
(maladaptive) humor styles
Aggressive:
using humor in a mean way, without regard for the impact that it might have on
others feelings, as might be the case when one is sarcastic or engages in such
behaviors as teasing or putting others down.
Self-defeating:
when one uses humor at their own expense, one who teases or puts themselves down
in an effort to amuse others.
Literature suggests that one’s
ability to use their humor to facilitate coping may depend on which type of
humor style they demonstrate, adaptive or maladaptive.
Sense of humor has been shown to moderate depression, anxiety, and stress, and using humor to cope has been associated with less loneliness, less irritability, and higher self-esteem. In one study undergraduate students
who scored high on a coping humor scale appraised
a stressful exam as less stressful and
more of a positive challenge than
those who scored lower on
the humor scale. In another study students were
given a series of tasks that had the effect of causing them to focus intently
on their own mortality.
Following the exercise, most participants indicated an increase in mood disturbance,
reporting more depression, tension, and anger. The exception to
this was a group who scored high on a measure assessing perspective-taking humor.It has been noted in the literature as well that humor is closely associated with optimal physical health. There is fairly consistent evidence that humor is associated with: increased pain tolerance, enhances recovery from illness, lower stress hormones, enhanced immune system functioning, and lower blood pressure. In one study, requests for pain medication in the days following orthopedic surgery were significantly fewer as were dosage levels needed in patients given the opportunity to watch funny films of their choosing during recovery.
Try and be able to
see that there are funny situations all around us. Create and share jokes. Most healing humor arises
spontaneously out of situations. If I was able to give a directive,
it would be to try and both initiate and appreciate humor with
people you interact with. But the big picture is to, in a
sense, develop a "comic vision"--a way of perceiving the world that
allows us to be receptive to the humor around and within us. Heightened
receptivity to humor can stimulate our ability to be increasingly interactive
with, and even proactive toward, the world around us.
Lee M. Stillerman, PhD
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