Laugh it off is not always good advice to give to someone who’s experiencing stress or pain. In fact, it can be harmful to expect people to be able to brush off serious issues, to buck up, take it on the chin, or whatever euphemism you want to use for suppressing your emotions. But it turns out that in some cases, a good sense of humor really may help reduce stress levels, according to a series of new studies from Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin.
In the first study, researchers at Clarkson University in upstate New York had 22 subjects with the chronic pain condition Fibromyalgia Syndrome take an intake survey about their “physical health, psychological state, their tendency to see the funny side of things (for example, they were asked whether they would typically experience mirth in situations such as a waiter spilling a drink over them), how much socializing and support they’d had with friends and relatives recently, and how much they tended to reappraise challenges, such as looking for the positives in a difficult situation.” They then had the subjects keep detailed diaries for the next four days, noting their physical and emotional states. Researchers found that the subjects more likely to find humor in more situations had a better emotional state at intake, and better physical states through the intake.
In the second study, researchers surveyed over 100 undergraduate students about their psychological and emotional states, their tendency to make jokes and find humor in everyday situations, and how much a past traumatic event still affects them. Overall, those who said that the past traumatic event still impacts them greatly had a higher likelihood of psychological and emotional distress. Except for those who were more likely to find things funny – while some of those subjects said a past trauma still impacts their life, they were less likely to be distressed.
Of course, there’s always a question of causation vs. correlation. Did the subjects who were more likely to find situations funny find it easier to laugh because they were already in less physical and emotional distress, or did their heightened sense of humor in fact help reduce their symptoms? These first two studies don’t address that question.