A little variation this week on the usual Friday humor jokes and stories.
Rather than present for your amusement a joke or two, below is an article that I came across recently that discusses the nature of humor itself, and, of particular interest, the different kinds of sense of humor that people have, according to some psychologists.
Different kinds of sense of humor? Something a little different for a Friday humor thread, I'd say.
From the article linked below:
Humor can be scientifically studied using
" ... the Humor Styles Questionnaire, the first scientifically validated measure of humor. In 2003, Martin and his colleagues published the HSQ in the Journal of Research in Personality; today, it’s in common use all over the world."This model divides humor into four main types:
Affiliative-
"cracking jokes, engaging in banter, and otherwise using humor to make others like us." Self-Enhancing-
"an optimistic, coping humor, characterized by the ability to laugh at yourself or at the absurdity of a situation and feel better as a result." Aggressive-
" ... is characterized by sarcasm, teasing, criticism, and ridicule." Self-Defeating-
" ... is attempting to get others to like us by putting ourselves down."Although it also points out that
" ... the lines between humor styles aren’t hard and fast, however, nor are the categories mutually exclusive — everyone’s individual sense of humor is a unique combination of all four styles."and
" ... (There is) a link between certain humor styles and certain traits: Affiliative and self-enhancing humor are linked to extraversion and openness to new experiences, and self-defeating humor to neuroticism. Affiliative and self-enhancing humor are also generally adaptive, both correlated with greater mental well-being, while aggressive and self-defeating humor are generally maladaptive."
"From an evolutionary perspective, we evolved as a social animal. We needed other people to survive. So anything that can enhance the cohesiveness of groups of people (like humor) was adaptive.”And finally,
“It’s really the way we use humor that is most important ... Not so much how funny you are, but how you use humor in advancing relationships or in detrimental ways.” So feel free to take the quiz in the article below and see what it tells you your own sense of humor style is. It may be self-instructive to do so, or help you to understand better the humor of those around you.
And while there may be a tinge of pop psychology in quizzes such as these, they probably do still have the effect of prompting us to think about
our own sense of humor, and how it impacts both ourselves and those around us.
And that's probably a good thing.
https://www.thecut.com/article/whats-your-humor-style.html(When on site, need to page down a screen to see article and quiz).