The more pronounced the participants’ sense of humour, the lower their psychological distress at the start of the study and the better their physical symptoms through the diary stage. But against the researchers’ expectations, the apparent benefits of humour weren’t explained by sense of humour being linked with a tendency to reappraise situations, nor to better social relations.
A second study involved just over 100 undergrad students answering questions about their psychological and emotional state, their tendency to find things funny and make jokes, and they also recalled a previous distressing event and how much it continued to affect them.
Overall, the more that the students said the past trauma continued to affect them, the higher they scored for signs of psychological distress. But crucially this wasn’t the case for the students who were most inclined to humour and seeing the funny side of things – they said the trauma was still affecting their lives, but based on their emotional scores, they weren’t experiencing heightened distress.
