Humor As a Stress Moderator in the Prediction of Blood Pressure Obtained during Five Stressful Tasks

‘‘Covert Coping’’ in Extreme Environments: Insights from South African Submarines

“…However, through humor, covert venting became an effective way of emotional release, and its ''undercover'' nature allowed the emotive load in the submarine to remain within manageable levels. Lefcourt, Davidson, Prkachin, and Mills (1997) proposed two forms of coping strategies linked to humor, which has been supported in subsequent studies (Abel, 2002): firstly, using an emotion-focused coping strategy as a defensive measure, by finding humor in a stressful situation and thus reducing negative emotional reactions; secondly, a problem-focused coping strategy using humor to alter the stressful situation itself. Alternatively, the use of humor has also been described as a mechanism of impression management-where humor may be used to make oneself appear to be coping, rather than used to cope (Moran, 2003).…”

Humor use in power-differentiated interactions

“…Indeed making fun of the failings of others, especially those who obstruct the completion of our goals, reduces the psychological distress caused by others while producing Brought to you by | University of Iowa Libraries Authenticated Download Date | 5/27/15 8:36 PM some feeling of delight at their expense. Humor that allows individuals to see the amusing side of problems has been shown to help individuals cope with stress (Bellert 1989;Booth-Butterfield et al 2007;Lefcourt et al 1997;Miczo 2004;Nelek and Derks 2001;Wanzer et al 2005). For example, Booth-Butterfield et al (2007) found that the higher the general predisposition to communicate humor, the stronger the sense that one can cope with job difficulties.…”

“…Although the origin of such sex differences is beyond the scope of this paper, 1 Hay (2000) has suggested that women are less concerned than men with appearing witty and use humor primarily to create solidarity by highlighting similarity or shared experiences rather than using "one-liners". Lefcourt et al (1997) argued that women use humor more effectively as a coping mechanism and as a means of social support than do men. Since the current study uses same-sex problem-solving discussions, we would expect women to use more humor, and especially positive humor, in order to build rapport with their partner and offer social support when the problem is a difficult one to solve: H1: Women will use (a) more positive humor and (b) less negative humor in problem-solving discussions.…”

Social competence: Cardiovascular activity and humor as mediating mechanisms.

“…There is evidence linking types of humor to maladaptive health outcomes and we are interested in whether this might work through changes in the variability of the heart rate (Lefcourt, Davidson, Prkachin, & Mills, 1997;Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003) As you can probably appreciate, the deception that we used is crucially important for the study to be realistic and successful. Consequently, we ask that you do not talk about this aspect of the experiment with other potential participants.…”

“…Lefcourt, Davidson, Prkachin, and Mills (1997) showed a significant difference in blood pressure between individuals scoring low versus high on a coping humor measure with the low humor scores having higher blood pressure recordings. Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, and Weir (2003) found that negative types of humor such as aggressive teasing and sarcasm may negatively influence social interactions.…”