By Andrea Hunsaker
It was a black night. Two dozen figures with narrow eyes directed at me crouched silently beyond the campfire eager to eat me alive. I was frozen, my heart thundering in my head drowning out logical thought. I knew they could smell my fear as they waited for my next move.
I was at a retreat giving a presentation around a campfire to a group of teenage girls and had just asked a question. Silence. No, whatever sound contempt makes, that’s what I heard. That and the mocking of my self-critic in my head. But then I noticed something else - crickets. Loud actual crickets in the nearby forest. The situation struck me as funny, so I remarked, “Crickets!? Tough crowd,” with a dramatic tug on my collar. The girls chuckled, transformed from predators back to partially grown humans, and my brain rebooted, I skillfully reworded the question, and several girls volunteered thoughtful responses.
Humor is one of the original 24 human strengths proposed by Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology. Barbara Fredrickson, another expert in the field, includes amusement as one of the top 10 positive emotions. Humor has the potential to help a person cope with stressful circumstances, see problems from a new perspective, create distance from difficult emotions, and connect us with others. Happily, you don’t necessarily have to be funny to benefit. The ability to produce humor is surprisingly unrelated to the ability to appreciate it (Moran et al., 2014), and you don’t have to be born with a sense of humor - this skill can be learned.
What makes us laugh? Among the theories, Peter McGraw has proposed the benign violation theory which means that something is funny if it is simultaneously “wrong yet okay, threatening yet safe, doesn't make sense yet makes sense,”(McGraw & Warner, 2014). It’s that place between boring and offensive where my grandfather noticed my sister’s bangs were in her eyes and offered to help her out by pulling out his pocket knife, both of them laughing as he tried to hold her still. The violation was benign until he shocked us all by actually cutting off a chunk, at which point my sister stopped laughing, which only made it funnier. Wrong yet okay.
Wielding the power of humor can be tricky. It’s one of those weapons that can be used for good or ill. Research indicates there are four types of humor; two that enhance well-being and two that are detrimental (Martin et al., 2003):
Adaptive Humor
One. Humor that connects - Using affiliative humor fosters relationships with others and reduces interpersonal tensions. This involves finding humor in everyday life occasions, being playful, and joking with others. Because quality relationships are so vital to a meaningful life, anything that strengthens these bonds is going to be a valuable tool. Affiliative humor might look something like this:
Two. Humor for coping - Using self-enhancing humor in stressful life events enables a person to take a step back from the situation, see a broader perspective and get some emotional distance. The ability to laugh at yourself or your situation is about taking an optimistic view and looking for the funny side. If you were to take the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), a question to measure this style would be:
“If I am feeling upset or unhappy I usually try to think of something funny about the situation to make myself feel better.”
Both these humor styles are associated with greater well-being, resilience, optimism, gratitude and savoring.
“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.”
Maladaptive Humor
Three. Humor that is overly self-deprecating - Using self-defeating humor is aggressive toward the self. There is a fuzzy line between not taking yourself so seriously and making yourself the butt of a joke at your own detriment. Some may put themselves down preemptively to avoid others insults, laughing to cover up the sting. Pay attention to how it affects you - If it makes you feel ‘less than,’ it’s maladaptive. HSQ questions include:
“If I am having problems or feeling unhappy, I often cover it up by joking around, so that even my closest friends don’t know how I really feel.”
“When I am with friends or family, I often seem to be the one that other people make fun of or joke about.”
“I often go overboard in putting myself down when I am making jokes or trying to be funny.”
This style is associated with lower self-esteem and higher levels of depression and anxiety (Martin et al., 2003).
Four. Humor that demeans others - Using aggressive humor denigrates others. It uses insults or put downs to get a laugh at another’s expense. Some types of sarcasm, teasing and making fun of others can be hurtful even if the target is laughing along. This does the opposite of connecting, so it’s not surprising this humor style is associated with greater hostility, lower levels of gratitude, and reduced relationship quality (Martin, 2019).
Growing Your Funny Bone
There are actually interventions that have been found effective to increase a person’s sense of humor (Ruch & McGhee, 2019). Just for laughs, I gave one a try and for a couple weeks each time I found myself in a stressful situation, I made an effort to think from a humorous perspective. Much like my meditation practice serves to take a seat in the nosebleed section and kindly observe my experience, this experiment lifted me out from under the shade of my serious umbrella and gave me space to see how bright life really is. With fun on my radar I feel lighter, more grateful, and in touch with a younger me. The other day I laughed so hard, I couldn’t stop. I can’t remember the last time I did that. Isn’t that the good life? Besides, as Robert Frost wrote, “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.”
Here are some ideas from humor interventions you can try to keep a smile on your face:
Watch T.V. sitcoms and relate the funny situations in the show to your own life.
Make a list of commonly occurring problems you face and think of ways to have a lighter attitude when they come up.
Make a list of things you are sensitive about in yourself and think of ways to hold them a little lighter and laugh at yourself.
Keep a ‘3 funny things’ journal and at the end of each day write a list of 3 funny things that happened that day.
After a stressful event, think of ways you could have handled it with humor.
“May you go laughing”
REFERENCES
Moran, J. M., Rain, M., Page-Gould, E., & Mar, R. A. (2014). Do I amuse you? Asymmetric predictors for humor appreciation and humor production. Journal of Research in Personality, 49, 8–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.12.002
McGraw, P., & Warner, J. (2014). The humor code : a global search for what makes things funny / Peter McGraw, PhD and Joel Warner. Simon & Schuster.
Martin, R. A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J., & Weir, K. (2003). Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(1), 48-75. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00534-2
Martin, R. A. (2019). Humor. In M. W. Gallagher & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Positive psychological assessment: A handbook of models and measures (pp. 305–316). American Psychological Association.
Ruch, W., & McGhee, P. E. (2014). Humor intervention programs. In A. C. Parks & S. M. Schueller (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 179–193). Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118315927.ch10