Humour

[wrbones]

The Psychology of Humour
Dr Mike Lowis, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University College, Northampton.


"It's a funny thing, humour" is a book title I would have loved to have been the first to think of but, to my regret, I was beaten to it by Chapman and Foot (1977, Oxford: Pergamon).



So what is humour, and why do we laugh? Humour is a personal disposition, a state of mind, a way of looking at the the world. Humour, like art, is all around us; we will observe it if we use a little creativity and adopt a playful attitude. Freud regarded humour as a defense mechanism, noting that it was one of the greatest measures devised by humankind to avoid the compulsion to suffer. My own research showed that the necessary conditions for joke appreciation included at least an adequate intelligence, the development of appropriate language skills (for verbal humour), and sufficient life experience to know what is "normal" (humour has a way of twisting "normality"). For example, we find jokes about awkward bosses more amusing if we have worked for people like this; we laugh more at jokes about wives, husbands and children if we ourselves have a family. Perhaps humour has survived because it helps us deal with ambiguous or strange situations, or a seemingly unjust world, without us always having to explain things in terms of logic and reasoning.



Humour has many uses: it encourages group cohesion, it is a social lubricant, it allows us to exercise quite a lot of control over members of the group who may stray from the fold. Political satirists of today continue the work of court jesters and buffoons that dates right back to ancient Greece: such people were the only ones who could get away with criticising those in power. Humour can be used in teaching and learning, to help students to become more receptive to the serious message. An editor of the Jewish Talmud wrote in about 350AD: "start every lesson with a humorous illustration".



Perhaps the greatest interest is in the use of humour in healing and psychotherapy. Psychologists may encourage clients to tell jokes so that they can gauge their level of self-esteem or neurosis; they can link humour to creativity and encourage the client to explore a variety of causes and solutions for their difficulties. Laughing itself releases endorphins, catecholamines and immunoglobulin-A, all of which help the body to heal itself. Humour therapy is a truly holistic approach to medicine, as it both promotes physiological healing whilst developing psychological coping mechanisms.



For more on this interesting topic, you can find three of my articles on either PsychLit or BIDS journal abstracts.

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the psychology of humopur as a college course




http://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/368g/

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More than you really want to know......


http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/WWW/MathNat/Ruch/Teaching_humor.html

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More education on humour



http://www.educ.uvic.ca/connections/Conn98/ZukDalton.html

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dark humour defined
the psychology of humour
slap stick comedy defined
satire defined
sarcasm defined
American comedy
clowns



These are some of the terms I used in my search. There are thousands more references on the net concerning this topic.

It seems hunour is a serious sort of business.....not to be taken lightly!