Summary: Researchers report that using and appreciating humor supports overall wellbeing and psychological health.
Source: The Conversation
Humor appears in all cultures and at every age. For much of the history of psychology it received little respect, often being cast in a negative light as a sign of vulgarity, superiority, or as a defensive mask. In recent decades, however, experimental psychology has embraced humor as an important human behavior and a legitimate subject for scientific study.
Historically, psychologists sometimes interpreted humor as a way people demeaned others, inflated their own worth, or hid uncomfortable feelings. That perspective discouraged systematic study. Today, the field of positive psychology recognizes humor as a character strength that contributes to social connection and emotional resilience.
Positive psychology highlights how humor can make others feel good, help build intimacy in relationships, and buffer stress. Alongside strengths such as gratitude, hope and spirituality, a sense of humor belongs to a group of strengths that help people find meaning and connect with the world. Appreciation of humor also correlates with qualities like wisdom and a love of learning, and participating in humor-related activities often boosts emotional wellbeing and optimism.
Because of these benefits, experimental psychologists now study humor to understand how people comprehend, appreciate and produce it. Research explores the cognitive steps involved, how humor links to memory and time perspective, and the role it plays across different ages and cultures.
What it takes to get a joke
Understanding and creating humor involve a sequence of mental operations. Cognitive researchers commonly describe a three-stage process for getting a joke. To “get” a joke you typically must:
- Form a mental representation of the joke’s setup.
- Detect an incongruity between multiple interpretations.
- Resolve that incongruity by inhibiting the literal interpretation and appreciating the alternative, humorous meaning.
Our knowledge is organized into mental schemas. When we perceive a scenario, the relevant schema is activated and brings related knowledge to mind. For example, seeing cows in a familiar context activates a bovine schema. If a cartoon reverses roles—cows driving cars while people graze—the mind holds two competing representations. By suppressing the literal expectation that cows belong in the field, we can enjoy the comic absurdity of the role reversal. In many verbal jokes, the second schema is revealed at the punchline.
That’s not funny
Sometimes a joke fails. Two common reasons explain why we don’t always find something funny. First, the punchline must be able to evoke a distinct mental representation that conflicts with the setup; timing and social cues help listeners recognize that a different interpretation is possible. Second, listeners must be able to inhibit the initial, literal interpretation to allow the humorous one to register.
Offensive jokes that reinforce harmful stereotypes or depictions of cruelty can block the inhibition process: listeners may be unwilling or unable to suppress the hurtful meaning, and so they fail to experience humor. Cognitive decline in older adults can also make it harder to hold multiple representations in mind or to shift between them, reducing their ability to detect and resolve incongruity. Yet when older adults do succeed in resolving the incongruity, they often report strong appreciation of the joke and greater life satisfaction compared with peers who do not see the humor.
At the same time, older adults may have advantages in other humor-related capacities. Wisdom, which tends to grow with age, correlates with wellbeing and supports an understanding of when to use humor or laugh at oneself. Intuition, which develops with experience, can help rapidly form schemas and make quick incongruity resolutions that produce amusement.
Traveling through time
Humor is linked to our uniquely human ability to mentally travel through time—reflecting on past experiences, imagining future scenarios, and richly representing the present. People differ in how vividly they can detail memories and future plans, and these time perspectives affect subjective wellbeing.
For example, focusing on concrete “how” details when recalling an event tends to elicit vivid memories and is associated with greater life satisfaction than dwelling on abstract “why” explanations. Research shows that individuals who use humor in positive ways often hold more positive perspectives on their past, present and future. Conversely, people who habitually use self-defeating humor tend to dwell on negative past perspectives. This pattern suggests that cultivating positive uses of humor may improve the emotional tone of our memories and daily thoughts.
Clinical psychologists are increasingly incorporating humor into therapeutic approaches to enhance subjective wellbeing. Preliminary research also indicates that people who score highly on measures of humor character strengths tend to focus more on pleasant aspects of their temporal perspectives, and those who actively seek humor concentrate on positive elements of their current lives.
Ongoing studies continue to investigate how the cognitive processes that support mental time travel relate to the ability to detect and resolve incongruities that produce amusement. Better understanding these links could explain why individuals differ in when and how they find things funny.
Learning to respect laughter
Experimental psychologists are revising earlier dismissive attitudes toward humor, acknowledging its value for daily life and its connections to memory, reasoning, wisdom, intuition and wellbeing. Studying humor offers a window into many fundamental cognitive processes and illuminates how people across ages and cultures use laughter to bond, cope and make meaning.
While people will always disagree about what is funny, there is growing consensus in psychology that humor is a serious and relevant topic for research. That recognition reflects an important shift: laughter is not only enjoyable but also informative about how the mind works.
About this psychology research news
Source: The Conversation
Contact: Janet M. Gibson – The Conversation
Image: The image is in the public domain