Humor Sometimes Makes Stressful Situations Better
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Humor can be a great mechanism for dealing with stress. Jokes and witty conversation can make you feel closer to the people around you. In addition, a key element of jokes is that they force you to look at the same situation in different ways. Puns, for example, involve taking a word or phrase and recognizing that it can have two distinct meanings. This process of looking at situations in more than one way can also be applied to stressful situations themselves. Reappraising a difficult situation involves recognizing that it may have a hidden benefit or may not be as bad as it first appeared.
Not all humor may help with stress. For example, people may use humor to insult or belittle others in ways that may actually decrease social support from others. Or people may make jokes at their own expense, which might actually make people feel worse about themselves when times are tough.
The influence of humor on stress was explored in some detail in a paper in the June, 2017 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Heidi Fritz, Leslie Russek, and Melissa Dillon.
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