Laughing when it hurts

Humorous Coping and Serious Reappraisal: Short-Term and Longer-Term Effects

The management of unhelpful negative emotions has been addressed by two literatures, one focused on coping via humor, and the other focused on emotion regulation. In the present study, we directly compared humorous coping with conventional (serious) reappraisal. We expected humorous coping to be more effective than serious reappraisal in the short and longer term. Fifty-seven participants used either humorous coping, serious reappraisal, or attended naturally while viewing negative pictures and then rated their positive and negative emotional responses. One week later, participants viewed and rated the pictures again. In the short-term, while humorous coping was more difficult than serious reappraisal, it was more effective in down-regulating negative and up-regulating positive emotions. In the longer-term, both strategies had beneficial effects on positive emotions while humorous coping was more beneficial than serious reappraisal in down-regulating negative emotions. This is the first study that empirically shows short and longer-term beneficial effects of humorous coping versus serious reappraisal in the context of emotions elicited by negative stimuli.

Affective sex: Beauty, race and nation in the sex industry

This article considers the role of beauty in Costa Rican sex work. In the context of sex tourism, beauty operates as affective labour performed by sex workers, labour that is mediated by deeply contradictory understandings of race and nation. Theorising beauty as a form of affective labour means thinking about beauty as value, as something that circulates, can be exchanged and is ultimately relational. While Costa Rica's national mythology has long focused on claims to white origins, sex tourists identify local women's ‘exoticism’ and non-whiteness as particularly appealing. Commercial sex does not simply depend on an imperial male gaze, but rather requires us to consider how particular national mythologies about race are linked to ideals of attractiveness in complex ways. I also explore how women experience and manage their sexual attractiveness to foreign tourists in their daily lives and work.

Understanding high-risk behavior among non-dominant minorities: a social resistance framework

Across different societies, non-dominant minority groups, compared to the dominant group, often exhibit higher rates of involvement in high-risk behaviors, such as smoking, drug and alcohol use, sexual risk behaviors, overeating, and unsafe driving habits. In turn, these behaviors have a well-documented impact on chronic disease, morbidity, and mortality. Previous studies have emphasized macro-structural or micro-agentic explanations for this phenomenon. Such explanations suffer from mirror-image shortcomings, such as, by emphasizing structural barriers, macro-level explanations leave out individual agency ("the over-socialized conception of the individual"), while micro-level theories give short shrift to structural constraints that prevent individuals from engaging in health-promoting behaviors ("the under-socialized conception of the individual"). Moreover, most current theories regard individuals as passive players who are influenced by the social environment or by psychological problems, or who make "bad" choices. The current paper develops an integrated theoretical framework that incorporates structural inequalities while leaving intact the role of individual agency. According to the social resistance framework, power relations in society encourage members of non-dominant minority groups to actively engage in everyday resistance practices that include various unhealthy behaviors. The paper develops propositions from which testable hypotheses can be generated, and discusses the implications and contributions of the social resistance framework.

Female sex workers and the social context of workplace violence in Tijuana, Mexico

Gender-based violence in the workplace impacts the physical and emotional wellbeing of sex workers and may lead to other health problems, such as PTSD and depression, drug abuse, and a greater likelihood of sexually transmitted infections. This study examines the social context of workplace violence and risk avoidance in the context of legal regulations meant to reduce harms associated with the industry. Ethnographic research, including 18 months of extended field observations and interviews with 190 female sex workers, is used to illustrate how sex workers in Tijuana, Mexico, experience and manage workplace violence. Multiple subthemes emerge from this analysis, including deciding where to work, working with a third party, avoiding theft, and dealing with police. These findings support the idea that the risk of violence is part of a larger "hierarchy of risk" that can result in a "tradeoff" of harms.