Humor research

Humor research (also humor studies) is a multifaceted field which enters the domains of linguistics, history, and literature. Research in humor has been done to understand the psychological and physiological effects, both positive and negative, on a person or groups of people. Research in humor has revealed many different theories of humor and many different kinds of humor including their functions and effects personally, in relationships, and in society.Humor research deals with a wide variety of issues, which can be categorized according to several theories of humor. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, humor research has many areas of study which aim to explain the phenomenon of humor.There are two adaptive styles of humor and two maladaptive styles of humor. Affiliative and self-enhancing humor are the two adaptive styles. The defining feature of affiliative humor is humor that is used to strengthen interpersonal relationships or ease tensions within those relationships. Self-enhancing humor involves the use of a humorous outlook on situations in life as a coping tool. In this instance, humor is used to mitigate stress without targeting others or the self in a hurtful way. The two maladaptive humor styles are aggressive humor, which uses sarcasm and other humor styles to target or put down others and self-defeating humor, which uses self-deprecating tactics for the enjoyment of others. Martin et al. (2003) found that higher levels of adaptive humor are related to psychological well-being in terms of lower levels of depression and higher self-esteem. Self-defeating humor contrasts with the adaptive types, and is associated with poorer psychological health. Kuiper and McHale (2009) found support for humor styles being mediators between self-evaluation and psychological well-being. Simply put, rather than humor styles directly affecting psychological well-being, they are involved with how people self-evaluate, which results in different amounts of psychological well-being.When someone finds something funny, there are different ways of expressing it. Common responses of humor include laughing and smiling. In 2008, a study was conducted using 155 undergraduate students at North London University in order to measure responses to humor using a British comedy. The participants were divided into one of three categories: watched a video of the comedy, listened to an audiotape of the comedy, or read a script of the comedy. Approximately half of the participants were observed by an overt video camera and half were observed by a covert video camera. Results showed that participants laughed and smiled much more frequently when watching a video of the comedy and listening to the audiotape of the comedy than when reading a script. The difference in the frequency of smiling and laughing between the video and the audiotape was not significant. Participants laughed and smiled more frequently when observed by a covert video camera than an overt video camera. Aspects of the video and audiotape such as visualization of the acting, auditory representation, and also the presence of audience laughter significantly increase the frequency of laughter and smiling.