Are Thoughts of Death Conducive to Humor?

From DeGruyter:
A New Study Shows an Increase in Humorous Creativity when Individuals are Primed with Thoughts of Death.
Humor is an intrinsic part of human experience. It plays a role in every aspect of human existence, from day-to-day conversation to television shows. Yet little research has been conducted to date on the psychological function of humor. In human psychology, awareness of the impermanence of life is just as prevalent as humor. According to the Terror Management Theory, knowledge of one’s own impermanence creates potentially disruptive existential anxiety, which the individual brings under control with two coping mechanisms, or anxiety buffers: rigid adherence to dominant cultural values, and self-esteem bolstering.
A new article by Christopher R. Long of Ouachita Baptist University and Dara Greenwood of Vassar College is titled Joking in the Face of Death: A Terror Management Approach to Humor Production. Appearing in the journal HUMOR, it documents research on whether the activation of thoughts concerning death influences one’s ability to creatively generate humor. As humor is useful on a fundamental level for a variety of purposes, including psychological defense against anxiety, the authors hypothesized that the activation of thoughts concerning death could facilitate the production of humor.
For their study, Long and Greenwood subdivided 117 students into four experimental groups. These groups were confronted with the topics of pain and death...

Source: The Situationist - October 19, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: The Situationist Staff Tags: Ideology Social Psychology Source Type: blogs