HUMOR

Written on 10:18 PM by Anonymous

Communication, is serious business, and the breakdown in communication could bring in catastrophe. However, there is a touch of humor in the breakdown of communication, a lighter side of communication.

Humor is the experience of incongruity.
In one's environment the incongruity may be experienced when someone falls down in a situation when they are not expected to fall down, or the incongruity can be between concepts, thoughts, or ideas often illustrated by the punch line of a joke or the caption of a cartoon. James Thurber has stated, "Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity." This occurs frequently when people are experiencing a crisis, and at some later time the crisis situation is perceived as humorous.

The experience of the "forbidden" (laughing in church), or "getting away with" something (often seen with children) is often experienced as humorous... Humor is comprised of three components: wit, mirth, and laughter.

• Wit is the cognitive experience,
• mirth the emotional experience, and
• laughter the physiological experience.
  

We often equate laughter with humor, but you do not need to laugh to experience humor. As individuals we tend to experience humor by either "getting it" (which tends to be cognitive or intellectual response), by feeling it (which tends to be an emotional response), or by laughing at it (which is more of a physiological response). There is a wide range of life's experiences that are experienced as humorous. Humor is essential to mental health for several reasons.

First, it assists us to connect with others. Our needs to affiliate with others is enhanced through humor.

Second, humor reduces stress by assisting us to view the world with perspective. Humor shifts the ways in which we think, and distress is greatly associated with the way we think. It is not situations that generate our stress, it is the meaning we place on the situations. Humor adjusts the meaning so that the event is not so powerful. Shakespeare has said, "Nothing is good or bad. It is thinking that makes it so."

Third, humor helps us by replacing distressing emotions with pleasurable feelings. Humor and distressing emotions cannot occupy the same psychological space. You cannot feel angry, depressed, anxious, guilty, or resentful and experience humor at the same time. Most of us have experienced a time when we have been angry and someone, while in the throws of our being angry, does or says something humorous. A typical response is, "Don't make me laugh. I want to be angry." Intuitively we know that we cannot maintain distress and experience humor simultaneously.

Fourth, humor changes how we behave, when we experience humor we talk more, make more eye contact with others, touch others, etc. Humor increases energy, and with increased energy we may perform activities that we might otherwise avoid.

Fifth, humor changes our biochemical state by decreasing stress hormones and increasing infection fighting antibodies. It increases our attentiveness, heart rate, and pulse.

Finally, humor is good for mental health because it feels good!

Enjoy this funny yet intelligent man in this beer ad.

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