What Makes Us Laugh? Psychology of Comedy and Humor. A Cognitive Psychology Podcast Episode.

I flat out love comedy, laughing and having a great time. Some of my favourite comedians include the brilliant Mae Martin, Tig Nataro and Sarah Millican, but each of these comedians has a different comedy style. Also, I am a massive fan of The Handsome Podcast because it is just brilliant, funny and it always makes me laugh. However, what makes us laugh? What are the social psychology and cognitive psychology processes behind laughter? How does comedy impact our behaviour? In this cognitive psychology podcast episode, we’ll answer all those great questions and more. If you enjoy learning about humor psychology, mental processes and how our emotions impact our behaviour, then this will be a brilliant episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Personality Psychology and Individual Differences. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Introduction To the Psychology of Humor

For decades, psychologists have wondered what exactly makes something funny. Whether this is a well-timed joke, a normal situation that ends up making us laugh or a weird accident that is embarrassing for one person but makes everyone else laugh. Why does this happen? Therefore, over the past few decades, psychologists have come up with a wide range of different psychological theories that reflect different perspectives to help us understand what makes something funny. One of the earliest theories comes from Freud who had a few ideas about humor, then different theories have developed over time in response to the findings of various neuroimaging studies.

However, more importantly, we need to understand that whenever comedy or humor happens, this is a very cognitively demanding task. Since our brains need to help us understand what the joke is, our brains trigger the emotional roller coaster that we experience whenever we experience humor and our brains help us to experience the wide range of benefits of humor. For example, humor has social benefits, mental health benefits amongst others.

Personally, when my mental health used to be really severe during 2024, this was actually around the time that The Handsome Podcast started and in 2023, when I had a breakdown because of abuse and intense homophobia growing up. I started to get into Mae Martin, their comedy and comedy was such an amazing break from all the psychological distress that I was experiencing. Even now, if I’ve had a tough day, if I’m stressed and if I just need something to make me feel better, comedy is my first choice.

Good comedy never fails to make me feel better.

In addition, it’s important to note that laughter, comedy and jokes really do have social benefits. If you think about it, a lot of our friendships just wouldn’t be the same without laughter. One of the reasons why I really liked my ex Giyu (yes that is a fake name based on one of our favourite Demonslayer characters) was because we laughed a lot, we smiled and we were always joking with each other. And I think if you find someone you can joke around with, relax with and just be yourself with, then that has the potential to be a wonderful relationship.

Humor is a massive part of all friendships and romantic relationships.

But why does this happen? That’s something we’re going to be exploring in the rest of the podcast episode.

What Is Humor According To Psychology?

As psychology students and psychology professionals, we all know that psychology flat out loves a good definition, and humor is no different. Also, we need to realise here that what we think of as humor is different to how psychology perceives humor. To me and you, humor might be a funny joke, a funny head-shaking story or a WTF moment. Yet to psychology, humor is about investigating how and why do we find things funny and what does this show us about how our minds and social interactions work.

What Are Some Psychological Theories On Humor?

One of the earliest theories of humor as I mentioned earlier came from Freud, and before you automatically dismiss the theory because it came from Freud, I want to add my normal counterargument. Of course, Freud got a lot of stuff wrong, and I will not defend him because some of his theories were just whacky. Yet without Freud’s ideas, we wouldn’t be investigating sexuality, adverse childhood experiences, trauma and a number of other fundamentals that are critical in modern clinical psychology.

Anyway, Freud believed jokes allowed us to express taboo feelings or thoughts in a more socially acceptable way. This isn’t a perfect theory because it completely fails to explain how situations are funny, it doesn’t account for how social norms change the funniness of jokes over time and so on, but the theory laid the groundwork for several critical theories in the future.

Another important theory in humor psychology is incongruity theory. This theory proposes humor comes from the unexpected juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated ideas. Then the theory explains why we find wordplay as well as puns humorous, because they force our brains to make connections between disparate concepts. After we’ve made these connections, we experience a nice “aha” moment and we get the joke.

Personally, I think this is another nice enough theory because it explains why we find wordplay and puns funny. As well as I can think of a lot of times when I’m having a conversation, someone else will say a completely random idea that isn’t actually connected to my conversation (even though the other person swears it is) and this creates humor in the conversation.

A final psychological theory of humor is the cognitive-perceptual theory. This approach to humor sees comedy as a mental process that involves our perception of incongruity then it is resolved in a playful, non-threatening context. In essence, this theory sees humor as a mini puzzle that our brains workout and the punchline serves as a satisfying solution.

As someone who watches and listens to a lot of stand-up comedy, I definitely agree with this theory the most. For example, in Mae Martin’s Netflix comedy “Sap”, they tell a fun story about their parents apparently driving under a moose in their car before Mae was born. The idea of driving in Canada and a Moose, they are not weird concepts at all. Yet add in the element about their parents driving under a moose, and that is weird. Then the punchline, resolution and Mae playfully telling the rest of the story, that is a very good resolution that creates humor.

Overall, the field of humor psychology has developed a lot over the years as our understanding of key psychological elements change too. Since today, we understand that humor involves a wide range of emotional, social as well as cognitive elements, and unlike before, we understand that the joke isn’t everything in humor. The context the joke is told in plays a critical role too in creating humor. This is another reason why “you had to be there” explains why you can take the exact same event and tell them to two different audiences and one will find it funny and the other will not.

This is another explanation as to why the relationship between the comedian, the audience and the cultural norms is flat out critical. For example, as a massive fan of Mae Martin, and I will shamelessly admit that they are attractive, I listen to Mae on a lot of podcasts over the years. Once Mae explained how they needed to do a show in somewhere like Russia, but it wasn’t Russia, and the social norm over there is LGBT+ stuff is very taboo, it’s criminal and it’s outrageous. Yet a lot of Mae’s comedy comes from LGBT+ stories, so they bombed as you can expect.

This is because Mae’s jokes were in direct conflict with the social norms of the audience they were interacting with. Hence, why there was no humor in Mae’s set.

What Are The Types of Humor In Psychology?

Before we deep dive into the emotional and cognitive processes involved in humor, let’s explore the different types of humor that psychologists can study. We need to understand this because each type of humor has its own style, distinctive characteristics and potential impact on our social relationships as well as mental health.

Furthermore, understanding the different styles of humor can be very useful for all of us, because it can help us navigate different social situations, understand what is a good style of humor to use at a given moment and what style you should stay away from. As well as recognising your own humor style can be a powerful tool for self-growth because if you recognise you’re slipping into self-defeating or aggressive humor (more on that in a moment), then you start developing healthier, more adaptive communication habits. As well as you can start to use more self-enhancing humor to build your resilience in face of life’s stressors.

What is Self-Enhancing Humor?

Firstly, self-enhancing humor is when you maintain a humorous outlook on life even when you’re stressed or facing adversity. A good example of this is when you’re able to find the funny side in a frustrating situation or laugh at your own quirks. Research shows that this type of humor can be a powerful tool for personal growth as well as your own resilience, and people who are really good at self-enhancing humor tend to have better psychological wellbeing compared to people who aren’t as good at it. Also, these people are better able to cope with life’s challenges and this humor style seems to be a defence against decreased mental health.

As someone who comes from a clinical psychology background, I flat out love this type of humor. I think it’s brilliant that there is a way to use humor to protect your mental health, deal with the psychological stress in your life and most importantly, foster a sense of resilience. This is something I would say I am rather good at, because I can “bully” myself whilst making myself laugh very well. I remember joking with confused friends before who I didn’t get my jokes that I can easily entertain myself. Just something to think about.

What is Affiliative Humor?

Secondly, you have affiliative humor. This style of humor is the fun, warm kind that brings people together. For example, whenever you have inside jokes with your best friends, callbacks and light banter that improves the mood at family gatherings. These are all examples of affiliative humor. On the Handsome Podcast, there are a lot of inside jokes, callbacks and it helps to improve feelings of togetherness and it forms the “Handsome community” as the hosts put it.

In addition, affiliative humor is generally good-natured, aims to amuse others without causing offense and it’s inclusive. This is why people who typically use affiliative humor are typically extroverted, enjoy better relationships and experience higher self-esteem.

Personally, me and my family have a lot of affiliative humor because it’s fun, it’s great entertainment and recalling funny moments when we make a funny mistake can create a nice moment as a family. There is one example involving evergreens that springs to mind, but I won’t share that publicly on the podcast as it wasn’t me who’s the butt of that joke. Yet looking back at my own life, it’s easy to see how affiliative humor is the social glue that makes social groups more fun, entertaining and just lovely to be around.

Social relationships without affiliative humor just aren’t as fun.

Finally for this section, as someone who’s previously worked with a wide range of different students. This is a form of humor I very much encourage and I don’t shutdown, because I want the students to banter, have fun and have those great moments with their classmates. This might lead to more friendships, a more positive perception of school and these positive outcomes could lead to better academic performance.

What is Self-Defeating Humor?

I remember once when I was listening to Mae Martin, they were explaining how the main difference between UK comedy and US comedy is in the UK, there is a large focus on self-deprecating humor. This involves making fun of yourself excessively as well as allowing yourself to be the butt of other people’s jokes. Normally, this type of humor can be endearing, fun and it can be very amusing for everyone involved, but you need to be careful about self-defeating humor. If you do humor style excessively or take it to the extreme, then this reflects low self-esteem and it could be covering up deeper emotional difficulties that you might want to work on with a psychology professional. Also, research shows that overusing self-defeating humor can lead to negative mental health outcomes and have a negative impact on social relationships.

I think I have an example of this, even I acknowledge because this came from an emotionally abusive relationship that this might be taken to the extreme. Yet because I felt weakened, that I wasn’t able to stand up to this former friend and I couldn’t challenge that without my formerly severe mental health being blamed for why I was feeling a particular way, I used to allow myself to be the butt of their jokes so my mental health history couldn’t be used against me. Being the constant butt of jokes made me feel awful about myself, it decreased my self-esteem and made my already tenuous mental health even worse. Thankfully, that person is no longer in my life and this is one of the great benefits.

What Is Aggressive Humor?

The final main style of humor is aggressive humor. This is where a person uses humor to manipulate and/ or criticise others through ridicule, teasing and sarcasm. Whilst this can be done playfully, aggressive humor has the potential to create social tension as well as harm social relationships, because aggressive humor is a good example of why humor is a double-edged sword. Humor can be funny but it can also hurt. This is one of the reasons why there are certain white straight male comedians that I just do not watch because their aggressive humor shows a clear lack of understanding of the difficulties that other social groups face.

Interestingly, research shows that women tend to appreciate and use aggressive humor less than men, and this could reflect boarder gender differences in social norms as well as communication styles.

More On Humor Styles and Psychology

It's important to note that humor isn't a set category and in most situations, people use a range and combination of humour styles. I'm sure that you've seen that in some of my examples. For example, Mae Martin tends to use a lot of self-defeating and affiliative humor. Because they focus a lot on bringing people together through comedy, often without realising it. 

Yet most people do have a dominant style of comedy. As well as Mae Martin has spoken openly about this, so I don't really see the issue with me rehashing some of it. Mae Martin's early use of a lot of self-defeating humor could have been a reflection of their poor mental health throughout their life. For example, their struggles with addiction as a teen and gender dysphoria, depression and anxiety as an adult. Thankfully, Mae Martin seems to be doing better now as they explain on The Handsome Podcast in January 2026. 

Nonetheless, this raises another interesting question about comedy. What are the humor styles that are less easy to define and categorise?

What is Dark Humor In Psychology?

Me and my family are terrible for darkish humor, and this is one of my favourite types depending on my mood, what the joke is about and a few other factors. For example, dark humour jokes about immigrants, foreign people and fascism I do not find funny because to me, these are real world issues and innocent people are dying. Yet tell me another type of morbid joke and I'll probably die of laughter. 

For instance, there's a scene in the Big Bang Theory that I love. A character was signing what she thought was a retirement card, but it was a Get Well Soon card because this person was in the hospital after a terrible car accident so she wrote "To Name, best of luck. You deserve this,"

Even now I'm smiling about that scene. 

Anyway, dark humour makes light of serious or taboo subjects and this sense of humour doesn't fit into the four categories that we mentioned above. 

However, we still need to understand dark humour because it is critical for some psychological and social functions. Dark humour is very important in times of crisis as well as in high-stress professions. Without dark humor, there would be nothing to break the tension, make the team members feel supported and create a sense of togetherness. 

I will admit one of my potential flaws, which I am way better at now compared to as a child, is I am not always great in a crisis as perceived by other people. Because I laugh as a coping mechanism, but some people think I'm laughing at the awful news, dire situations or I'm being insensitive towards them and their news. 

Not always ideal. 

Anyway, the sheer diversity of humour styles that we have access to reflects the sheer complexity of human behaviour and our social interactions. Since humans need to adapt their language, as well as their humour styles, to different social situations and audiences. Humor's flexibility is another reason why it is a powerful tool in our emotional and social toolkit. 

Lastly, to wrap up this section, I want to remind us why understanding different styles is important. Once you understand different humour styles, you can become more aware and intentional with your use so over time, these styles might become second nature to you. For example, if you're at an office Christmas party, a university social or you're in the break room at work, you might want to use affiliative humor. If you and your team have had a hard day supporting clients, you might want to use self-enhancing humor. As well as you might want to use self-deprecating just slightly to show humility.

Understanding humor styles and when to use them appropriately can help you come across as funnier, more empathetic and more understanding as a whole. 

Which in our profession as psychologists is flat out critical.

What Are The Emotional and Cognitive Processes of Humor?

For a joke to be funny, we actually need to get it, understand it and then the emotional response of humor and laughter needs to be triggered. Yet how does this happen? What makes something funny? What makes us laugh? This is what we're going to be focusing on in this section and we need to start with our cognitive processes. Since whenever jokes and humour are being used around us, several cognitive mechanisms are happening in our brains to ensure we find it humorous, or not. 

Firstly, the cognitive process of perception is important because we need to recognise that something is meant to be humorous. For example, we've had times when a joke has completely gone over our head because we didn't understand it was a joke in the first place, we didn't laugh and find it funny. 

Secondly, there is incongruity detection. This cognitive process happens because our brain is always searching for patterns, making predictions and helping the world to make ordered sense to us. Yet when our brain detects an incongruence, something that humor typically uses, it catches our brains off guard. 

Thirdly, we have the cognitive process of resolution. This is because after our brains have detected the incongruity, our brains work out to resolve it. This is seen in everyday life as the 'aha" moment that comes in that split second we finally get the joke. 

Finally, we have appreciation because if we successfully resolve the incongruity in a way that's pleasurable or satisfying, we experience humor appreciation. 

On a side note, I am a massive fan of "Would I Lie To You?". I only started watching it a few months ago, and for our international audience, it is essentially when a group of celebrities tell outrageous stories in a hilarious way and they need to work out if it is a truth or lie. And last night I was watching it, a subtle pun was mentioned, my parents got it immediately but it took me a bit longer and I literally went "aha" when I got it.

Moving onto the emotional side of humor, whenever we find something funny, we experience a range of positive emotions. For example, you might feel happy, surprise, amused and sometimes you might feel a little bit of delight at the really bad joke. I know when I hear some dark humor jokes about things we shouldn’t really say whether this is in the workplace or in my family life, I feel surprised, shocked and I’m really amused.

It is these powerful emotional responses that humor triggers that gives humor an important and delightful role in our lives.

As a result, you might believe that the relationship between cognition and emotions is easy to understand, because when we get a joke because of our cognitive processes, it should trigger a positive emotional reaction. In reality, the relationship between emotional responses and cognition isn’t that straightforward.

We’ve all been in situations when we understand someone’s joke but we don’t find it amusing. I remember once near Christmas, in 2024 I believe, I was watching a so-called comedy special with my parents. For context, they are two late fifties white heterosexual adults who are middle-class. In the comedy special, the so-called comedian was trying to make jokes about why transphobia didn’t exist and why no one killed transgender people (the official statistics tell a very different story). I understood the bad and deeply offensive jokes he was making, but as you can probably tell by my tone. I didn’t find it funny.

Then there are plenty of less serious examples too.

All in all, we can understand jokes without always finding them funny.

On the other hand, we can find jokes hilarious without truly understanding them.

One of the factors that can be used to explain this mismatch between cognition and emotional response in humor is surprise. Since research shows that the unexpected twists in wordplay can trigger positive emotions, but surprise isn’t always enough. The incongruity needs to be resolved in a meaningful and satisfying way to the audience.

What Role Do Individual Differences Have On Humor?

In psychology, we know that individual differences play a massive role in our behaviour. For example, in clinical psychology terms, two people can go through the exact same event at the exact same time, but because of individual differences in cognitive styles, attention biases and child upbringing, they can have completely different behaviours after the event. Such as, a person developing depression after the death of a loved one and another person who doesn't. 

Individual differences also play a massive role in our ability to appreciate and perceive humor. These individual differences can include cultural background, cognitive styles and life experiences. 

Going back to my example from earlier, the reason I didn't find the "no transphobia" jokes funny is because as a non-binary person with a lot of transgender friends, I've experienced transphobia, hate and I know people are murdered because of their gender identity. This is no joke so a white straight heterosexual man who knows nothing about transgender people, making jokes about such a serious topic isn't funny to me. 

This is an example of how life experiences impact humor. 

Another individual difference that's important in humor psychology is "need for cognition". This is when people enjoy engaging in complex thought. People high in need for cognition tend to appreciate more sophisticated forms of humour more than people lower in need for cognition. Whereas people with a higher tolerance for ambiguity tend to find surreal or absurdist humor more entertaining. This helps us to understand why people differ in what they find funny. 

In addition, our emotional as well as cognitive responses to humor change over time as we learn, grow and develop. For instance, if we think about stereotypes here, teenagers tend to laugh about sex jokes and even sexually implied words, like penis, can make teenagers die of laughter. Yet as the teenager learns more, experiences things and develops into adulthood, the same words and jokes might not make them die of laughter. 

Overall, when we consider how important humor is in our daily lives, our social interactions and how we cope with the stress of everyday life. This shows just how important understanding the cognitive as well as emotional responses in humor are. 

Especially, when we consider the wide-ranging benefits of humor.

What Social and Emotional Functions Does Humor Have?

Besides from being fun, humor serves a wide range of important social and emotional functions. We'll focus on these over the next few sections.

Firstly, humor is a powerful tool for social cohesion because humor can create a sense of belonging as well as togetherness in social groups. This is even more important in workplaces when the appropriate use of humor can ease tensions, boost productivity and increase teamwork. 

And what I think's really interesting is that the type of humor that teams use can reveal a lot about their group dynamics. For instance, using aggressive amongst other types of humor can establish social hierarchies and exclude others. Like if you constantly make jokes at the detriment of a peer then that peer might feel excluded from the team because of your humor style. Whereas inside jokes can strengthen bonds within the team by creating a shared history and language with each other. 

All in all, this social function highlights the complex role that humor plays in our social interactions.

The second major function of humor is stress reduction, because when we laugh, our body releases endorphins. This improves our mood. Yet humor has a psychological benefit too because when we laugh in a stressful situation, it acts as a psychological buffer that helps us to maintain our emotional health and gain perspective.

Thirdly, humor improves emotional regulation because it helps us to process and express difficult emotions in a socially acceptable way. Some people compare this function of humor as the same as releasing a pressure vale in our minds so we can tackle tough topics by making it look like a joke. This is probably one of the reasons why myself and my family can have very dark humor at times, especially around accidents, deaths and scary experiences. When I’m nervous, I can strongly lean into these forms of humor, because it helps me deal with the topic more effectively than without humor.

This is another explanation as to why people joke about death and our own mortality because humor is a strategy to help grapple with our impending death and limited time on Earth.

A final cognitive function of humor for this section is humor can enhance learning and memory retrieval. Since humor can create links and unexpected connections between ideas. In turn, this can improve our problem-solving and creative skills, so when we understand a joke, we’re giving our brains a mental workout that benefits our cognition.

As a result, humor can be a powerful memory aid when we’re learning new information. As well as this is why a lot of educators incorporate humor into their teaching methods so learners can remember a silly mnemonic device compared to the dull, boring lecture-style method of some teachers.

Personally, as an aspiring educational psychologist, this is very useful to learn about, and as someone who works in education at the time of writing, this gives me some food for thought. Whenever I teach, I don’t always use humor because my brain doesn’t naturally work like that, but I have seen how effective it is in teaching French first-hand. For instance, previously, I worked in a class who was learning the weather in French and the teacher made up a silly action for “il pleut”. Which is French for “raining” and the students automatically remembered the French word because of his silly action.

Therefore, as an aspiring educational psychologist, in the future, if I was trying to support a teacher to improve student motivation and engagement in their lessons. I might suggest, in addition to a lot of other psychological tips, that they incorporate humor into their teaching.

This is even more important when we learn that humor can capture students’ attention, create a more positive classroom environment and make lessons more memorable. Since you can use humor to maintain engagement, reduce anxiety around challenging subjects and illustrate concepts to students.

On the whole, this section teaches us how powerful humor is and it’s useful for navigating a wide range of life challenges that we are bound to experience at some point in our lives. Humor can help us to boost our creativity, cope with stress, improve our social relationships and teamwork amongst others.

How Does Humor Improve Mental Health? Applying Humor In Therapy Settings

Of course, I need to stress upfront here as someone with a clinical background, please do not think I am going to suggest that you start becoming a stand-up comedian with your clients. Do not do that. Do not try to make everything a joke with your client who is experiencing mental health difficulties. Yet psychologists can use humor and laughter in therapy to help them decrease tension, to build rapport with clients and help clients to see new perspectives on their difficulties.

Personally, in my experience of counselling, some of my favourite moments was when I could laugh, joke and smile with my counsellor. It removed the power imbalance, it helped to remind me that my counsellor is human like me and they aren’t a judgemental, uptight person who I needed to be guarded in front of. It’s really, really helpful and humor is an amazing tool like that.

On the other hand, we have to remember that humor varies between cultures as well as different individuals within the same culture. This is important for psychologists because a great joke that relieved tension in your last therapy session might be offensive to your client after that one. This brings us back to an earlier point in this podcast episode. Always remember your audience and the context of the joke.

Such as, and to use a crystal-clear example, if you have a client with severe depression and the trigger was the death of a loved one. Do not joke about death.

Another example of using humor in therapy is that in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, a therapist might use humor to help a client challenge their negative thought patterns. Since a playful reframe or a well-timed joke might help cut through the client’s cognitive distortions more effectively than logical arguments alone. As well as in a group therapy setting, shared humor can reduce feelings of isolation and create a sense of community.

I remember a few years ago in a clinical psychology lecture, my lecturer was telling us how he’s literally had clients in therapy who have said to him “I understand what you’re saying and logically my thoughts and fears make no sense, but I feel that they are,”. This paraphrased sentence shows the power of our automatic thoughts and why they are difficult to change without professional help. Therefore, humor might be a useful way to overcome these difficulties.

In fact, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of a therapist or counsellor getting you to imagine your anxiety or negative automatic thought as a person, you make them look silly and you interact with them like they’re a real person. It’s something along those lines, and this does sound silly and a little humorous, but it is a useful technique.

I remember when I was doing my cognitive and interpersonal therapy workbook for my anorexia, one of the exercises was to imagine your anorexia as a person, so you visualise the anorexic self. And it was useful.

Anyway, a final way how humor can be used in the therapy room is by using humor in visual forms, like cartoons, to address mental health difficulties in a less threatening as well as more accessible way. In a way, this reminds me of the importance of social stories, because these cartoons serve as a conversation starter with a client so you can help people to articulate their feelings and experiences that they might struggle to put into words.

Cognitive Psychology Conclusion

At the end of this psychology podcast episode, we've learnt a lot about humor and its psychological basis. We've looked at how cognitively demanding it is to "get" a joke then we've seen the great emotional and social functions of humor. From how humor reduces stress, improves our mental health and how humor can help educators and therapists improve their work. 

Furthermore, our investigation of humor revealed the early Freudian and more modern theories of humor, as well as the importance of appreciating humor, and the cognitive and emotional processes that humor relies on. This led us to realise the importance of surprise, resolution as well as incongruity in humor. These elements all help us to create that "aha" moment and the positive emotional response that humor is famous for. 

Ultimately, I have to admit that we've looked at a lot of great topics and I think this is one of those episodes that I'm going to keep coming back to. Especially, given how humor can be a powerful tool in clinical psychology and educational psychology to create a sense of belonging, togetherness, decrease barriers and increase engagement. I definitely think I'll be using that information in the future.

Speaking of the future, when it comes to the psychology of humor, there is still a lot to research, understand and study. Especially, given the constant evolving nature of research methods, in particular neuroimaging, because these new and exciting research methods give us new opportunities to understand how the brain's mechanisms impact humor appreciation as well as perception. Also, there needs to be more cross-cultural studies exploring how humor operates in different social and cultural contexts, so we can expand our understanding of humor even more.

At the end of this episode, I want to leave you with a few "simple" questions to help you start applying this content to your own life:

·       What is your dominant type of humor?

·       Think about how you adapt your humor styles in different contexts. Perhaps without even realising it. 

·       How could you use humor more thoughtfully in your professional life?

I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.

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Cognitive Psychology References and Further Reading

Becker, A. B. (2021). When comedy goes to extremes: The influence of ideology and social identity on source liking, credibility, and counterarguing. Psychology of Popular Media, 10(1), 39.

Berk, R. A. (2001). The active ingredients in humor: Psychophysiological benefits and risks for older adults. Educational Gerontology, 27(3-4), 323-339.

Feibleman, J. (2022). In praise of comedy: A study in its theory and practice. Routledge.

Gelkopf, M., & Kreitler, S. (1996). Is humor only fun, an alternative cure or magic? The cognitive therapeutic potential of humor. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 10(4), 235-254.

Gkorezis, P., Hatzithomas, L., & Petridou, E. (2011). The impact of leader’s humor on employees’ psychological empowerment: The moderating role of tenure. Journal of Managerial Issues, 23(1), 83-95.

https://neurolaunch.com/psychology-humor/

Kafle, E., Papastavrou Brooks, C., Chawner, D., Foye, U., Declercq, D., & Brooks, H. (2023). “Beyond laughter”: a systematic review to understand how interventions utilise comedy for individuals experiencing mental health problems. Frontiers in psychology, 14, 1161703.

Kuiper, N. A., & Martin, R. A. (1998). Is sense of humor a positive personality characteristic? In W. Ruch (Ed.), The sense of humor: Explorations of a personality characteristic (pp. 159-178). Mouton de Gruyter.

Lambek, S. (2023). Comedy as dissonant rhetoric. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 49(9), 1107-1127.

Lefcourt, H. M. (2001). Humor: The psychology of living buoyantly. Springer Science & Business Media.

Martin, R. A., & Ford, T. (2018). The psychology of humor: An integrative approach. Academic Press.

Mayrhofer, M., & Matthes, J. (2021). Laughing about a health risk? Alcohol in comedy series and its connection to humor. Psychology of Popular Media, 10(1), 59.

McGraw, A. P., & Warren, C. (2010). Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1141-1149.

Olah, A. R., Junkin, J. S., Ford, T. E., & Pressler, S. (2022). Comedy Bootcamp: stand-up comedy as humor training for military populations. Humor, 35(4), 587-616.

Ruch, W. (Ed.). (2007). The sense of humor: Explorations of a personality characteristic. Walter de Gruyter.

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