The Health Benefits of Humor and Laughter: A Review of Research, Slides of Sociology

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HUMOR AND HEALTH:

Laughing Is Good for You--

But Just How Good Is Still Being

Investigated

The Bible tells us “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

Of course this picture of our laughing grandson makes us want to believe that laughter is good for people.

Modern writers who have explored the idea include:

• Patch Adams
• Regina Barecca
• Rod Martin
• Mary Kay Morrison
• Paul McGhee
• Norman Cousins
• William Fry
• Vera Robinson
• Patty Wooten

Martin also writes about a state-and- trait cheerfulness inventory.

• This inventory developed by Willibald Ruch, Gabriele Köhler, and Christoph van Thriel is called the “State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory.” It defines sense of humor as an emotional temperament (i.e., the tendency to be habitually cheerful and playful), which seems consistent with the way humor is most often conceptualized in the humor and health literature.
• Martin nevertheless warns that research on humor and health is “often simplistic, exaggerated, and unsubstantiated.” He is especially critical of methodological weaknesses in the research on humor and the immune system.

A Large Scale Sense of Humor

Questionnaire in Norway

• Sven Svebak, Rod Martin, and Jostein Holmen developed the “Sense of Humor Questionnaire” and administered it to the entire adult population of a county in Norway (65, participants).
• Correlations were determined between a person’s sense of humor and illness symptoms (nausea, diarrhea, pounding heart, dyspnea, musculuskeletal pain), blood pressure, overall health satisfaction, and body mass index (a measure of obesity).

Paul McGhee, in his The Laughter Remedy: Health, Healing, and the Amuse System, takes these kinds of criticism into his book but nevertheless advises:

“Become more playful; surround yourself with

humor you enjoy. Begin telling jokes and funny

stories. And laugh at yourself.”

John Morreall writes that hearty laughter:

• increases blood circulation,
• ventilates the lungs
• increases oxygen intake,
• reduces the water vapor and carbon dioxide in

the lungs

• And decreases the risk of pulmonary infection.

But Rod Martin cautions that hearty laughter may have deleterious as well as beneficial health consequences because while extroverts tend to laugh more, they also are likely to drink alcohol, to smoke cigarettes, and to be obese.

If Humor Is So Good For Us, Where Can

We Find It?

• One place is at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings where humor is often used to transcend the moment and attain a broader perspective.
• One member told how even when she was drunk or hung over, she tried to be what society expected her to be. She volunteered to help with her son’s Cub Scout troop on a day they were making moccasins.
• Of course she got a laugh when she reported, “I remember sewing it, honest-to-God I can still feel it, onto my finger.”

Two Other OMG AA Stories

• A man stood up and told about backing his car out of his driveway and accidentally running over his wife. Everybody laughed—even his wife who was sitting in the front row. She limped a little, but she nevertheless laughed.
• The 2007 winner of the Newbery Award given annually to the “best” children’s book was The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. It is both controversial and humorous because of what the ten-year-old protagonist learns as she listens in on the AA meetings when members tell their stories about “hitting rock bottom.” She eavesdrops while she is supposed to be sweeping up the litter that accumulates from the Gambler’s Anonymous, the Over-Eater’s Anonymous, and the AA meetings held at the Community Center in her small California desert town.

All Cultures Have Clowns

It takes nothing more than a prop of some kind to turn ordinary people into clowns.

More formal clowns include circus performers and character clowns.

• Charlie Chaplin was the first world-famous clown because he did not rely on language.
• Sports mascots are also mimes working in arenas, wearing over-sized costumes, doing acrobats, and using huge props.

Clowns Loved by Our Grandparents

• Emmett Kelly was so skilled at pantomiming the role of Weary Willie that Ringling Brothers allowed him to remain in the circus arena for the whole performance.
• His most famous act was sweeping a circle of light into smaller and smaller circles and then chasing it under a rug or into a trash can. - Harpo Marx was mute and communicated by honks, whistles, and pantomime. He wore a - Fright wig and an overcoat with enormous inside pockets from which he pulled out ice cream cones, cups of coffee, and once in a while, a blowtorch.

Clowns Protested When...

-... Bob Dole referred to President Clinton as “Bozo.”

Larry Harmon, the creator of Bozo, said he didn’t like his

character’s name being used as an insult.

-... One Halloween, a Paulsboro, New Jersey police

officer dressed as a clown managed to arrest 12

individuals, mostly wanted for routine traffic offenses.

He bragged that the costume got him inside homes

where if he had come in his uniform and asked for

someone by name, he would have most likely been

told, “He isn’t here.”

There is no end to the types of clowns

now being developed.

These “live” clowns at Disney World are plants.

• The newest clowns are connected to hospitals.
• In more than 100 U. S. hospitals, clowns either roam the halls pushing humor carts, giving out smiley faces, joke books, and clown dolls, or managing full scale “humor rooms” that are designed to reduce fears and anxieties.

NORMAN COUSINS Did More Than Any Other Writer

to Promote the Idea of Humor as a Healer

• In 1979, Cousins, a skilled writer and editor of the

Saturday Review of Literature, published his best-selling

Anatomy of an Illness.

• He had developed a serious collagen disease that

affected the connective tissue of his spine and joints.

The disease was life-threatening, his pain was intense,

and the doctors gave him little hope for a full recovery.

• He was frustrated by the hospital routines and his slow

progress, so he checked himself out of the hospital and

into a nearby hotel.

• Because of his celebrity status, the doctors continued to

see him and to deliver his medication, while he used

what he called “humor-intervention therapy.” He read

humorous books, and watched funny movies, and tapes

of TV’s Candid Camera.

• He found that the more he laughed, the longer his body

was without pain.

• He persuasively made the case that if it is possible to

have a psychosomatic illness, then it is also possible to

have a psychosomatic wellness.