Every Harry Potter fan knows how to banish a boggart. For those unfamiliar with the Potter universe, boggarts are shape-shifting creatures that take the form of their beholder's worst fear but can be banished with a simple spell said while reimagining one's fear into something funny.
Who knew this hilariously fantastical scene from a movie featuring wizards and werewolves could be rooted in truth?
A study conducted at Stanford observing the role of humour in emotional regulation showed participants pictures of disturbing themes such as car accidents, violent animals, and even corpses and asked the participants to rate the intensity of positive or negative emotions they felt. In the second part of the experiment, they were asked to reinterpret the imagery into humorous scenarios before reporting their emotional response. The researchers found that individuals who took part in this exercise reported increased positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions.
Humour can be classified into four “styles” – positive humour styles encompass affiliative and self-enhancing approaches, whereas negative humour styles entail aggressive and self-deprecating approaches. Interestingly, the same study observed that those instructed to use a positive humour style reported a higher increase in positive emotions. According to these findings, negative humour helps cope with the disturbing situation by distancing oneself from it, and a positive humour style facilitates a real reappraisal of the situation and brings about a change in perspective. Individuals with an optimistic humour style also exhibited increased verbal fluency as humorous reappraisals enable them to experience higher levels of creativity and cognitive flexibility. It bolsters the theory that humour changes cognitive processing.
Further investigation into humour styles has brought out some interesting findings. The humour style of an individual can have a far-reaching effect on their experience of life satisfaction. Individuals high in ability emotional intelligence — the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in the self and others — frequently utilize self-enhancing humour to cope with emotional situations, which allows them to experience more positive and fewer negative emotions that ultimately translates into enhanced life satisfaction. This might be because those inclined towards self-enhancing humour are more likely to see incongruities in life as humorous and use humour as a way to relieve tension, deal with stress, and increase courage. On the other hand, those with an aggressive and self-deprecating style of humour experience lower levels of self-esteem and optimism, leading to a deterioration in their overall mental health and well-being.
In work environments, humour is often dismissed on the grounds of being distracting. However, contrary to this belief, it affects one's persistence behaviour positively. While observing performance in a business task as well as a math task, individuals exposed to humour made almost double the number of attempts on the assigned task and spent at least fifty per cent longer, on average, than those who were not exposed to humour. Employees are also generally more engaged on days when they use positive humour styles, but appear to be more emotionally exhausted when they express negative humour styles. In fact, it has been observed that negative self-evaluation leads to more use of self-defeating humor, resulting in lower social self esteem and higher levels of depression. Thus, it may be beneficial for human resource professionals to provide specific guidance, especially to managers and individuals in leadership roles, on how to express humour such that it is advantageous.
Apart from its abstract applications, humour and laughter have exhibited physiological benefits as well. When measured on a pulse oximeter, three minutes of continuous mirthful laughter have been reported to bring about increased ventilation, increased muscle activity, increased minute volume, and forceful exhalation, resulting in mobilization and removal of pulmonary secretions. Laughter induced eustress has been observed to reduce cortisol and catecholamine levels while also bringing about increased production of antibodies, constituents of the adaptive immune system, and endorphins, which are the body’s natural pain killers. This is probably why it has often been seen that exposure to humour helps tolerate greater amounts of pain. Another study in cardiology proposes a link between laughter and the healthy functioning of blood vessels. It documents that during laughter, the endothelium facilitates vasodilation and an increase in blood flow.
Not long ago humor was dismissed as inconsequential, if not wasteful, in the process of cognitive development. But as the recent findings suggest, the efficacy of humour is no longer a laughing matter. There is scope for further research into specific implementable strategies to capitalize on these findings, especially in the areas of organizational behaviour and mental health.
Pranjal Tipnis
