The roles of humor and sense of humor in responses to stressors

Sense of humor and a humorous external event were evaluated as possible fac tors affecting individuals' emotional responses to a stressor. Participants ' anxiety and affective state were assessed prior to and after observing a stress-arousing segment from a movie. Following this stressor, participants received a treatment which involved viewing either a humorous videotape, a nonhumorous videotape, or waiting without distraction, before providing a final measure of affect and anxiety. The results revealed that the stressor elevated anxiety and lowered positive affect. The humor treatment successf ully reduced anxiety and raised positive affect relative To the waiting con dition. The nonhumorous videotape treatment also reduced anxiety, but did n ot increase positive affect. Nine measures of sense of humor were used in r egression analyses to pi edict anxiety and affect at each point in the proc edure (pre-stressor, post-stressor, posttreatment). The Metamessage Sensiti vity scale of the Sense of Humor Questionnaire (Svebak 1974) was the most u seful predictor across the different measures of anxiety and affect, althou gh other measures were significant at some points in the procedure or for p articipants receiving one of the treatments. The overall results from the r egression analyses, and a comparison of the relationships among the various measures of sense of humor, suggest that there is a common element of sens e of humor that involves an appreciation for the personal and social utilit y of humor that may be closely related to emotional responses to life event s. Taken together with the results from the treatment manipulation, the res ults indicate that an external humorous event can have a significant impact on negative emotional responses to stressors, but that one's sense of humo r also plays an important role.