1. ABSTRACT How Humor Affects Mood in a Challenging Task Preliminary Analysis
RESULTS
Breanna Williams and Samantha Bates • Reliability was analyzed for the self-created state
This study explored how people handle stressful situations using
humor as a coping mechanism. Participants completed a self-report Faculty Advisor: Dr. Dawn Blasko feelings questionnaire a Chronbach alpha = 0.72 was
measure on current mood and anxiety, before and after a stressful Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
found for the mood Portion.
task. Participants were then assigned to either a positive humorous, School of Humanities and Social Sciences
positive non-humorous or neutral video. They again rated their
Primary Analysis
moods and completed a Humor Styles Questionnaire. We found • Participants who viewed the humor video (M=5.69)
that those who viewed the positive humorous video had more had more positive mood scores than those who
positive mood scores than those who viewed the neutral video. We viewed the neutral video (M=10.94). A follow up T-
also found that participants rated their moods as being more
Test showed that participants rated their mood as
negative after completing the more difficult task than the least
difficult task. Finally, we found that those who viewed the neutral being more negative after completing the more
video were more strained (had a higher anxiety score) than those difficult task (M=14.48) than the least difficult task
who viewed the positive humorous video. (M=11.29).
INTRODUCTION DISCUSSION
Informed
•Relief Theory
Consent • Participants rated their mood as being more negative
•Shurcliff found that humor represents the sudden relief from after completing the harder task than the easier task.
strong distress such as anxiety (1968)
•Excitement and mental distress produces energy within us that
Based upon these results it leads us to believe that
is looking for a trigger of release (Smuts, 2009). A release Feelings Questionnaire the MA task created by Bogomolny (1996) increased
mechanism for this built up energy is the use of humor through participants working memory more so for the hard
laughter. task than for the easier task. By increasing the
•Incongruity theory Hard Task Easy Task demand on the participants working memory this
•Shultz found that detecting the hidden meaning of a joke before
the punch-line did not diminish the humor response (1974). allowed us to induce different levels of stress on the
•Types of humor Feelings Questionnaire
participants.
•Rod Martin and colleagues created the Humor Styles • Participants who were assigned into the humor
Questionnaire (HSQ) which identifies four dimensions of condition had overall lower negative mood score
humor: self-enhancing humor, affiliative humor, aggressive
humor, or self-defeating humor (2003). Positive Non- ratings than those who participated in the non-humor
Positive Humorous Neutral or control condition.
•Past Research Humorous
•McCrae found humor was as a response to a challenge (1984)
•Abel and Maxwell (2002) did an experimental study, found that CONCLUSIONS
those individuals who watched a video inducing laughter Feelings • Viewing a video can help when one is feeling
experienced greater reduction in anxiety and improvements in Questionnaire, HSQ, Demographic strained.
positive affects than those who watched the non-humorous video
under both low and high stress. • Viewing a humorous video, as opposed to viewing a
Effects of a Video on Mood
more neutral video, can reduce one’s state anxiety.
Before After Task After Video
CURRENT STUDY 12 FUTURE RESEARCH
The current study examined how individuals handled a stress-
induced math challenge using humor as a coping mechanism. A 10 •Future research should look at different types of
state feelings questionnaire was used to measure their change in
Mean Mood Score
mood and anxiety initially, and throughout the task. stressors, such as losses or threats to determine if
8
HYPOTHESES humor is an effective coping mechanism.
1.) Those who viewed the positive humorous video will have a 6 •Personality is also likely to play a role in how people
more positive mood score and lower worry and strain scores, than handle stress and in the effectiveness of humor as a
those who viewed the positive non-humorous or neutral video.
2.) Those who completed the hard task would have a more negative
4 coping mechanism.
mood than those who completed the easy task. •Future research should also attempt to use naturalistic
2
3. Women would rate higher in self-enhancing and affiliative humor observation to note the use of humor in various
while men would rate higher in aggressive and self-defeating stresses.
0
humor.
Humor Non-Humor Neutral
Video IMPLICATION
METHOD • When faced with a challenging day, one should
Participants
Effects of Task on Mood boost their mood by taking a few minutes to view a
• N = 101 participants ( 64 females and 37 males) Before After Task After Video comedy clip of their choice.
•Participant Age: 18-29, M = 18.81 years 12
•Recruited from introductory psychology courses at Penn State
Behrend REFERENCES
10
•Participants were treated according to the ethical standards of the Abel, M.H., & Maxwell, D. (2002). Humor and effective
Mean Mood Score
American Psychological Association. consequences of a
Stimuli and Materials 8
stressful task. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 21(2),
• Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), (Martin and Doris,2003) 165-190.
• Feelings Questionnaire (9=Mood, 6=Anxiety) 6 doi: 10.152/jscp.21.2.165.22516
• Modular Arithmetic (MA), (Bogomolny, 1996)
• Easy Task Examples: 7 = 2 (mod 5) – True, 7 = 2 (mod4) – Bogomolny, A. (1996). Modular arithmrtic. Retrieved May
4 3,2011,from http://www.cut-the-knot.com/blue/Modulo.shtml
False
• Hard Task Examples: 51 = 19 (mod4) – True, 51 = 19 Shurcliff, A. (1968). Judged humor, arousal, and the relief theory.
(mod3) – False 2 Journal of Personality and Social Psycology, 8(4), 360-363.
• Videos: Whose Line is it Anyways?, Documentary on Celine doi:10.1037/h0025493
Dion, How to draw a man sitting in a chair. 0 Shultz, T. R., (1974). Order of cognitive processing in humour
Easy Hard appreciation. Canadian Jouranal of Psychology, 4, 409-420
Time Scale Smuts, A. (2009). Humor. In Internet encyclopedia of philosophy.
Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/humor/