Bringing humor theory into practice: An interdisciplinary approach to online humor training

Do humour styles moderate the association between hopelessness and suicide ideation? A comparison of student and community samples

Research has found that humour styles can moderate the relationship between various facets of mental health and well-being. Most of these studies have used college student samples, however, and the generalizability of these findings has not been firmly established. This study examined how humour styles moderate the relationship between hopelessness and suicide ideation in both student and community samples. Community participants from the U.S. and Canada (n = 554) and student participants from a Canadian university (n = 208) completed several self-report measures including the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Analyses revealed differences in humour styles between the samples, as well as differences in humour styles between men and women. Regression analyses showed that self-defeating humour moderated the relationship between hopelessness and suicide ideation for student participants but not for community participants. Conversely, self-enhancing humour moderated the relationship between hopelessness and suicide ideation for community participants but not for student participants. These results suggest that high levels of self-defeating humour and self-enhancing humour may be uniquely maladaptive for these respective samples. These and other findings point to the necessity of recruiting diverse samples to better understand the beneficial and detrimental associations between humour styles and mental health. The potential to use measures of humour style as a tool to help identify at-risk individuals and to inform the development of intervention programs is discussed.

Relieving pain and distress symptoms in the outpatient burn clinic: The contribution of a medical clown

CONTEXT

High levels of pain and emotional distress characterize the experience of patients, at burn outpatient clinic and reflect on their accompanying persons and the medical personal.

OBJECTIVES

To examine the effect of a medical clown presence on: the patients' pain and distress levels as perceived by the patient and by their accompanying persons, and the emotional response of healthcare personnel.

METHODS

A yearlong prospective observational comparative study in the burn outpatient clinic, operating twice a week, with a medical clown's presence once a week [Exposure Group - EG] versus clinic without clown presence [Non exposure Group- NEG]. Patients and accompanying persons filled pain [WBS, VAS] and emotional distress [SUDS] questionnaires regarding the patient's experience: before (T1) and after treatment (T2). The clinic personnel filled SUDS at the beginning and the end of the clinic working hours.

RESULTS

Significantly lower WBS, VAS, and SUDS scores were reported at T2 in the EG as compared to the NEG both in patients and in the accompanying persons' evaluations. Personnel SUDS were affected in a similar manner.

CONCLUSION

Presence of a medical clown induced a positive atmosphere in the clinic. It is possible that the effect of humor through stress reduction mechanism lessened agony. Furthermore, the distraction the clown evoked played a role in the decrease of pain and emotional distress. We recommend implementing psychosocial oriented interventions such as those performed by a medical clown to improve the emotional atmosphere in the ambulatory clinic of patients, accompanying persons and healthcare personnel.

Psychological Flexibility, Coronavirus Anxiety, Humor and Social Media Addiction During COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey

Psychological flexibility is associated with psychological health and affected by various factors. The aim of the present study is to examine the role of coronavirus anxiety, humor and social media addiction on psychological flexibility during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. Variables were measured with online self-report surveys and data were gathered from December 2020 to January 2021 in Turkey. The sample consisted of 376 people (295 female, M = 29.88, SD = 11.05). The relationships between the variables were tested with path analysis using structural equation modelling (SEM). According to results, the constructed model showed that COVID-19 anxiety significantly and directly increased social media addiction (β = .17, p < .01), decreased coping humor (β = -.11, p < .05) and decreased psychological flexibility indirectly through social media addictions (β = -.08, p < .01). Humor coping significantly and directly increased psychological flexibility (β = .25, p < .01), and social media addiction significantly and directly decreased psychological flexibility (β = -.31, p < .01). Findings indicated that psychological flexibility is influenced by coronavirus anxiety, social media addiction and humor coping.  Supporting humor coping and reducing anxiety and problematic social media use would be helpful to enhance psychological flexibility of individuals during the pandemic.

Effectiveness of a Humor-Based Training for Reducing Employees' Distress

An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that humor can impact interpersonal relationships in organizations and employee well-being. However, there is little evidence coming from intervention studies in organizational settings. In response, we developed a training following the principles of positive psychology that aims at improving employees’ adaptive use of humor as a successful mechanism to deal with stress. In this study, we assess the effectiveness of such training and its impact on employee well-being. Results from this one-group intervention study in an emergency ambulance service (N = 58) revealed that the participants reported higher levels of cheerfulness (Z = −3.93; p < 0.001) and lower levels of seriousness (Z = −3.32; p < 0.001) after being exposed to the training. Indeed, the participants reported lower scores on psychological distress after the training (Z = −3.35; p < 0.001). The effect size of the training was medium (r = 0.31 to 0.36), suggesting that interventions to improve adaptive humor at work can be a useful resource to deal with workplace stress and foster employee well-being. These results may have interesting implications for designing and implementing positive interventions as well as for developing healthy organizations.

Humor as a protective factor against anxiety and depression

Background/Objectives

Even though humor its part of everyday life, only in the last 40 years has Psychology begun to discern its impact on mental health. The aim of this paper is to explore the role that humor styles may have as protectors against anxiety and depression and their relationship with optimism.

Method

A sample of 804 participants (M = 39.28; SD = 14.71) was used to analyze the uses of humor, optimism and clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression. In addition, the influence of sociodemographic variables such as sex, geographic location, age and educational level on different uses of humor was studied. Through an analysis of structural equations, the variables that had a protective or facilitating role in depression and anxiety were analyzed.

Results

Men and women differ in the use of a more aggressive humor style, and the use of affiliative humor styles decreases with age. The structural equation model indicated a good fit to the proposed theoretical model.

Conclusions

Humor is a tool of everyday life and it can act for or against an individual’s mental health.