HUMOUR
It has long been recognised that both humour and laughter are closely related. Humour is a playful activity in which people often engage throughout the day, during both leisure and non-leisure times. Such activity contributes to the individual‘s mental health and well-being.
The notion that humour and laughter play an important role in protecting the individual from stress and enhancing one’s sense of well-being has been emphasized by many authors. For example, Freud viewed a sense of humour as the highest of the defence mechanism, describing it as “a rare and precious gift”. By means of humour, stated Freud, “one refuses to undergo suffering, asseverates the invincibility of one’s ego against the real world, and victoriously upholds the pleasure principle, yet all without quitting the ground of mental sanity». Similarly Dixon (1980) suggested that humour may have evolved in humans as a cognitive substitute to stress, allowing the individual to take a more playful respective on a stressful event and thereby reduce the often deleterious emotional consequences.
In order to examine the relationship between daily humour and emotional well-being, Mannell and Mac-Mahon (1981) had 31 university students keep “a humour dairy”, recording all experiences of humour for one day. The subjects were also asked to complete self-report mood in the morning and evening of the same day. These subjects reported an average of 18.1 daily humour incidents, 13.4 of which involved overt laughter. The subjects who had more experiences of humour during the day showed an increase in positive moods such as vigour and surgency, and a decrease in negative moods such as anxiety, fatigue and hostility. These findings showed that humour as playfulness contributed to psychological and emotional well-being.
Conclusion
It is important to recognise that humour may be used in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Besides being an effective way of coping with stress, enhancing self-esteem and increasing cohesion in relationships, humour may also be used defensively to avoid dealing constructively with problems and as means of denigrating others who are less fortunate. The healthy and playful sense of humour may serve to protect people from the aversive effects of life stress. What’s more some physical illnesses and some aspects of immunity may be healed by positive humour.
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