Is humour a good strategy for coping with emotional events like anxiety and fear?
Are all types of humour equally effective methods of emotion regulation?
I was a police officer for many years before my academic career, and one of the things I always found striking with emergency service workers and later when I was doing research with disaster managers around the world, was their sense and recourse to humour, particularly in stressful situations. Occupations like the military, the police, fire and medical staff are renowned for their humour. This, most clinicians and researchers will tell you, is a coping mechanism for dealing with the stress and regulating their emotions and is a vital strategy in terms of emotional resilience.
However is the use of humour really an effective method for dealing with fear and anxiety and emotion regulation?
It would appear so, however not all forms of humour is effective. An interesting study to be published later this year in the Journal Cognition & Emotion by colleagues at the Department of Psychology , Stanford University looked into the use of humour (or humor if you are American) as an emotion regulation strategy.
They found that positive or good natured humour has an automatic, what is called ‘down regulating effect’ on negative emotions. In other words, appropriate good natured positive humour, funny stories and jokes do all reduce anxiety and fear and is a viable emotion regulation strategy.
They also found that negative mean spirited humour, such as laughing at someone or disparaging jokes at another’s expense for example have no effect in helping people in coping with negative situations, in reducing anxiety and fear and cannot be considered to be effective strategies for emotion regulation.
So if you are stressed, get funny!
Reference
Samson, A.C., & Gross, J.J. (2011) Humour as emotion regulation: The differential consequences of negative versus positive humour. Cognition & Emotion (To be published August/Sept 2011)
