The political journalist Norman Cousins (1915-1990) was an ardent supporter of several popular causes. These included the campaign for Nuclear disarmament and the quest for world peace. What he may be remembered most for though, are the beliefs he espoused in the final years of his life. Battling heart disease and serious arthritis, Cousins found that the most effective medicines were Vitamin C and laughter. “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anaesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.” (Chapman & Foot 1976).
British comedy legend Graham Chapman died in 1989 at the age of 48. His memorial service was understandably a melancholy affair until his friend and fellow member of the Monty Python comedy troupe john Cleese took to the altar to eulogise. Cleese famously used the “F-word”, finishing his speech with the words “Good riddance, the free-loading bastard, I hope he fries.” The tension of the situation was promptly defused and those in attendance, in tears moments previously, were now laughing heartily. Following the eulogy, Cleese was joined on stage by the remaining members on the Monty Python troupe for a jovial rendition of “always look on the Bright side of life.”
Humour in Social Interaction
These anecdotes aim to convey two very important aspects of humour. Its therapeutic effects have long been the stuff of popular wisdom: “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine” (Psalms ); as have its benefits in social interaction. In his Nichomachean ethics, Aristotle lists one of the three qualities of friendship as being “entertainingness.” Laughter has been found to occur in social situations over 95% of the time (Province & Fisher 1989). It enhances social situations by producing pleasure in others. This is accomplished through simple contagious processes (Hatfield, Cacioppo & Rapsun 1992) and by rewarding others’ humorous actions (Weisfeld 1993). These factors in turn encourage further social activity.
Laughter can be an effective tool on an interpersonal level, in the form of one to one attraction (Keltner & Monarch 1996). This will be discussed later. Its effects are also considerable at group level. This was demonstrated by Blau (1955) where joking behaviour among interviewers in a competitive environment was found to play a strong role in social cohesion by “uniting a group in the pleasant experience of laughing together.” Similar findings have been shown by Vinton (1989).
Coser (1962) demonstrated how hospital patients brought together for the first time were able to establish an identity and arrive at a consensus together by using humour in the form of jocular griping. This humour facilitated the emergence of a group structure with definite boundaries. Humour in social situations can also be seen to have a face-saving value. A faux-pas can indicate lack of social graces, embarrassing people when the identity they are fostering is undermined. One way to avoid potential embarrassment is to joke about it, defusing tension. Evidence has been shown also that humour is important in other pro-social activities such as generativity.
We can see the influential role that humour plays at the group level. In fact a popular theory of the origin of laughter postulates its development as an adaptive behaviour at the group level. The tension build-up theory of jokes suggests that tension mounts as an initial paradigm is formed. The punch-line brings new and unexpected information and the subject must realign his thinking to deal with the contrast between the initial paradigm and the new one. It is hypothesized that the laughing response may have evolved to communicate to other group members that tension heightened (e.g. due to the presence of a predator) was a false alarm.
As stated earlier, humour can be a significant aspect of interpersonal attraction. De Konig & Weiss (2002) reported that sense of humour was found to be the 4th (for women) and 6th (for men) most important ingredient of a happy marriage. Murstein & Spitz (1974) also found evidence for humour’s importance in romantic attachments and friendship. They displayed that similarity of rating of humorous stimuli was associated with loving, liking and predisposition to marry. In fact, humour has been cited as an antecedent to interpersonal attraction by a variety of sources. It would seem that a cheerful demeanour is an invitation to interaction, communicating spontaneity and joy in relating to others. Metee, Hrelec &Wilkens (1971) showed that liking for a communicator in two conditions, (aloof and clownish), increased when the communicator told a joke.
Humour and Self-Enhancement
Thus it can be seen that humour can act as an effective catalyst in social interaction, but it can also be important on an individual level too. Numerous studies over the past three decades have allowed the view that humour can have powerful health benefits, to move from the realm of popular wisdom to that of psychological science. Its chief benefits are in the reduction of stress and anxiety (Kelly 2002). Stress in life is linked to psychological distress but humour can have a buffering effect on this (Hugelshofer & Kwon 2006). Furthermore, research reveals that a good sense of humour is related to muscle relaxation, pain control, positive moods and a healthy self concept (Ruch & Kohler 1998). Humour has also been shown to be an effective therapeutic intervention for the depressed and suicidal elderly (Richman 1995) and men with testicular cancer (Chapple & Ziebland 2004).
Humour’s effectiveness as a coping strategy may be explained by the role that it plays in cognitive appraisal of tension or stress-inducing events. According to Kuiper and Martin (1998), sense of humour may give rise to more positive appraisal and more realistic processing of information in the environment. As mentioned earlier, humour has been described as producing a cognitive-affective shift that causes us “to deal with the contrast between an initial paradigm and new, unexpected information”. This causes a restructuring of the situation so that it is less tense or threatening and a release of emotion with the realisation that the threat is not actual. (Lazarus 1993).
It has been suggested that personality variables such as hardiness can explain individual differences in the reaction to novel or threatening situations (Lazarus 1993). Hardiness gives rise to positive appraisal but traits such as neuroticism predispose one to negative appraisal and subsequently, to negative affect (McCrae 1990). Kuiper, McKenzie & Bellamy (1995) found that higher levels of appraisal were related to higher motivation levels for task performance and higher positive affect. Kuiper thus suggested that: “an increased sense of humour does help the individual deal in a more positive and growth-oriented fashion with a variety of life circumstances and situations.”
Newman & Stone (1996) did further study into the relationship between humour and appraisal, strengthening the foundations laid by Kuiper et al (1995). Participants were 80 males, 40 high and 40 low in trait humour. The subjects were randomly assigned into groups that had to compose either a serious or a humorous narrative about carefulness in the workplace. Skin-conductance, heart-rate and skin temperature were monitored before, after and throughout the film. Subjects in the humour-production condition scored lower for negative affect, tension and psychophysiological reactivity for both groups.
Similar results were found in a sample of female executives by Fry (1995). This study measured the moderating effects of humour, optimism and perfectionism on the subjects’ ability to cope with daily hassles. Again, high sense of humour was associated with reappraising stressful life events in positive ways. Also, it was associated with existential coping strategies whereby participants viewed stressful events as challenging and as an opportunity for personal growth.
Subsequent to this, Lefcourt, Davidson, Prkachin & Mills (1997) postulated two strategies by which we use humour to cope. They proposed a defensive mechanism by which we find humour in a stressful situation, thus attenuating stress and a problem-focused coping strategy which involves using humour to alter the situation itself. This echoed the findings of Rim (1988) who found significant relationships between measures of humour and defensive mechanisms such as “minimisation” or accentuating the positive and “reversal” i.e. trying to find something funny about a distressing situation.
In a review of research in this area, published between 1974 and 1995, Martin (1996) concluded that a good sense of humour is related to more effective coping strategies of individuals, via their use of more realistic cognitive appraisals. In this context a good sense of humour referred to high production and appreciation of humour. However, as Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray and Weir (2003) were later to show, perhaps surprisingly, there are some styles of humour that can be deleterious to one’s health.
The Humour Styles Questionnaire was developed in 2001. It assesses individual differences in four different ways of using humour. These are: Affiliative, Self-Enhancing, Self-Defeating and Aggressive humour. Affiliative humour involves telling jokes and stories for the amusement of others. It involves being spontaneous humour but is not hostile and is affirming of self and others. Self-Enhancing Humour involves taking a humorous view on life and being amused rather than stressed by the incongruities it delivers. It is essentially personal. Aggressive or ‘put-down’ humour entails using sarcasm, teasing and disparagement of others to enhance the self at the expense of others or to enhance the in-group at the expense of the out-group. The fourth dimension suggested by Martin et al. (2001) is self-defeating humour. Self-Defeating humour involves the disparagement of the self for the amusement of others and laughing along with others when being ridiculed. This humour style is reminiscent of the idea proposed by Klapp (1950) of the fool in a social group. The fool represents incompetence and failure; causes that are lost and values that are rejected. However the fool is accepted by the wider group because as an exemplar of the antithesis of what they value, he reinforces those values they hold dear. Affiliative and Self-Enhancing humour are positively correlated to agreeableness, openness and high self-esteem. Aggressive humour is negatively related to psychological wellbeing. Self-Defeating humour is negatively related to emotional stability, security in attachment and self-esteem. The scale used to investigate these constructs (Humour Styles Questionnaire, Martin et al. 2001) has been validated in several samples.
