Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Humour and social bonding

Humour and social bonding:
How does humour facilitate social bonding?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

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Overview

Picture This! Figure 1. Visual illustration of the scenario highlighting the role of humour in facilitating social bonding. Imagine you are stuck in a broken elevator with a group of strangers. At first, the atmosphere may seem awkward with everyone standing silently, unsure of what to do or say. There may even be tension as people become annoyed at the inconvenience this has caused. Suddenly, someone decides to break the ice with a joke, a light-hearted comment eliciting chuckles from everyone there. Before you know it, the atmosphere shifts as conversation start to flow and smiles are exchanged. A group of strangers once disconnected now bonded through humour, even if only for a short while. See Figure 1. for illustration.

In current times where people are becoming increasingly connected through digital platforms, it is becoming challenging to develop and sustain meaningful interpersonal relationships. This may be one such cause for the rising levels of loneliness and social isolation being reported globally (Emerson et al., 2020). These trends provide cause for concern as prolonged states of social isolation and loneliness are often associated with increased risk of several adverse health conditions (Leigh-Hunt et al., 2017). This only emphasize the need for people to engage in social bonding as a means of avoiding these adverse states.

Engaging in social bonding is a foundational process for maintaining physical and psychological health as well as a positive sense of wellbeing. Evolutionary perspectives of psychology has shown humans, like many other species are social creatures.

180 to 330 words.

Suggestions for this section: Explain the problem and why it is important Outline how psychological science can help Present focus questions

What is social bonding?

The act of social bonding relates to the process of forming, strengthening and maintenance of affiliative connections (bonds)

What is humour?

• Briefly provide a comprehensive definition of humour based on the academic literature read so far. Something like "humour is a emotional response whereby individuals perceive a stimulus as amusing due to its incongruities, absurdities or novel nature. This response is often represented through actions such as telling jokes, smiling or laughter" (Gonot-Schoupinsky & Garip, 2021).
• talk about humour and laughter through an emotional context and why they are relevant - eliciting positive emotions.
• Acknowledge the variation of humour cross-culturally
• Introduce there are many types of humour, each with varying functions.
• mention its role as a socio-cultrual tool for conversation and social bonding.

Types of humour

Affiliative humour

• define affiliative humour as a more positive and friendly variation (Gugercin et al., 2023)
• explain how it is often cited as a good way to build social relationships through shared experience.

Case study: Communication among first respondents For first responders to the scene of an emergency such as police and ambulance drivers, it is key that your communication is on point. However, when communicating to each other, both police and ambulance drivers report using humour as an essential tool for communitcating with one another. Using cultrually differeing but mutually understandable jokes strenghens the bond between the two occupations and ensures a good working relationship. This was found to be the case in a 2013 study which conducted interviews between the two sirvices and expanded our understanding of just how important humour can be in social bonding (Charman, 2013).

Self-enhancing humour

• define self-enhancing as a positive form of humour that makes light of undesirable predicaments (Turliuc et al., 2021)
• emphasis its strength as a tool for relief which can be shared by individuals.
• shared relief strengthens bonds

Observational humour

• Define observational humour through the use highlighting quirks of everyday stimuli (Buiting et al., 2020)
• Emphasis on the transformation of the mundane to the amusing.
• Highlight its function as a conversation starter.

(Note: look into the potential for swapping out observational humour with more convention literature choices such as aggressive humour)

Neurophysiology of humour

• Discuss how observing and practicing humour activates areas of the brain that regulate emotional response such as the amygdala (Chan et al., 2023).
• Discuss how observing and practicing humour stimulates the release of neurotransmitters such as endorphins (Djajasasmita et al., 2021).
• (importance of this highlighted in next section).

Humour as a tool for bonding

• set up the group work from the proceeding theories that will be discussed - the development of our understanding of how theory has highlighted the role of humour in facilitating social connection.

Incongruity theory

• discuss the core concepts of incongruity theory such as how unexpected situations or details can invite humour and elicit laughter through the cognitive process of reconciling with a violation of expectation (Tanaka et al., 2022).
• explain how these situations can invite the opportunity for social bonding.
• highlight with an examples of how this is seen through puns.
• highlight criticism of this theory - lack of comprehensiveness.

Incongruity theory is a thoroughly researched area of humour theory that relies on contradiction between what is expected and what actually happens. This arises when there is a deviation from a norm or there’s a mismatch between expectation and reality, and this is perceived to be humourous (Tanaka et al, 2022). Incongruity theory typically presents itself as verbal jokes or in the media through memes, social media posts, comedy mediums, films and literature.

Relief theory

• explain the core concepts of relief theory such as the importance of humour to induce laughter which helps with emotional release and catharsis (Gyasi, 2023).
• Acknowledge the work of Freud and Spencer in developing the theory.
• explain how this induces shared laughter which can aid in the process of social bonding.
• Highlight the similar criticism of lacking comprehensiveness.

Neurophysiological influence

• discuss how the findings of the previous section on the physiological mechanics relate to how humour can facilitate social bonding
• discuss how the release of dopamine and endorphins can elicit positive emotion
• Touch on affective priming and positive association
• emphasis on empirical research in this section.
• limited in explaining other dynamics of explaining the phenomenon.

Conclusion

• Humour has been developed as a socio-cognitive tool through evolution as a tool that severe several key emotional and cognitive functions
• Humour can have several forms (as listed)
• A range of theories can explain several dynamics of how humour can facilitate social bonding
• The Conclusion is arguably the most important section
• Suggested word count: 150 to 330 words
• It should be possible for someone to only read the Overview and the Conclusion and still get a pretty good idea of the problem and what is known based on psychological science

Suggestions for this section: What is the answer to the sub-title question based on psychological theory and research? What are the answers to the focus questions? What are the practical, take-home messages? (Even for the topic development, have a go at the likely take-home message)

See also

• Humour and stress relief (Book chapter, 2024)
• Theories of humour (Wikipedia)
• Alternative page - Humour (Wikipedia)

Suggestions for this section: Present in alphabetical order Use sentence casing Include the source in parentheses

References

Buiting, H. M., de Bree, R., Brom, L., Mack, J. W., & van den Brekel, M. W. M. (2020). Humour and laughing in patients with prolonged incurable cancer: an ethnographic study in a comprehensive cancer centre. Quality of Life Research, 29(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-020-02490-w

Chan, Y., Zeitlen, D. C., & Beaty, R. E. (2023). Amygdala‐frontoparietal effective connectivity in creativity and humor processing. Human Brain Mapping, 44(6), 2585–2606. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26232

Charman, S. (2013). Sharing a laugh. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 33(3/4), 152–166. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443331311308212

Djajasasmita, D., Astutie, D. S., Kusuma, A. A., & Hidayatullah, F. N. (2021, July 24). The impact of humorous video in short term memory. Www.atlantis-Press.com; Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/ahsr.k.210723.012

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2022). Laughter and its role in the evolution of human social bonding. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 377(1863). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0176

Gonot-Schoupinsky, F., & Garip, G. (2021). The covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity for positive psychology to promote a wider-ranging definition of humour and laughter. The Palgrave Handbook of Humour Research, 459–478. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78280-1_23

Gugercin, U., Ozer, E., & Gugercin, S. (2023). “Why so serious?”. the role of interpersonal conflict management styles in affiliative humour. Организационная психология, 13(3). https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/why-so-serious-the-role-of-interpersonal-conflict-management-styles-in-affiliative-humour

Gyasi, W. K. (2023). Humor as an ice breaker in marital tension: A family communication perspective. Mediterranean Journal of Social & Behavioral Research, 7(2), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.30935/mjosbr/13076

Tanaka, K., Yamane, H., Mori, Y., Mukuta, Y., & Harada, T. (2022). Learning to evaluate humor in memes based on the incongruity theory (pp. 81–93). https://aclanthology.org/2022.cai-1.9.pdf

Turliuc , N., Candel, O., & Antonovici, L. (2021). Humour in romantic relationships. The Palgrave Handbook of Humour Research, 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78280-1_17

Suggestions for this section: Important aspects of APA style for references include: Wrap the set of references in the hanging indent template. Use "Edit source": {{Hanging indent|1= the full list of references}} Author surname, followed by a comma, then the author initials separated by full stops and spaces Year of publication in parentheses Title of work in lower case except first letter and proper names, ending in a full-stop Journal title in italics, volume number in italics, issue number in parentheses, first and last page numbers separated by an en-dash(–), followed by a full-stop Provide the full doi as a URL and working hyperlink The most common mistakes include: Incorrect capitalisation Incorrect italicisation Citing sources that weren't read or consulted

External links

• Practical workplace application (New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online)
• Application for peacebuilding (Dialnet)

Suggestions for this section: Only select links to major external resources about the topic Present in alphabetical order Include the source in parentheses after the link