Journal ArticleDOI
Humor, coping with stress, self-concept, and psychological well-being
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For example, this paper found that greater levels of humor are associated with a more positive self-concept when considered in terms of actualideal discrepancies, self-esteem, and Standards for self-worth evaluation.Abstract:
This paper provides an overview of our current research program focusing on the relationships between humor, self-concept, coping with stress, and positive affect. This research builds upon past work demonstrating a moderating effect of humor, wherein high humor individuals display less negative affect for adverse life circumstances than low humor individuals. The three studies described here address several limitations ofthis moderator research. These include a need to empirically document the precise relationship between humor and self-concept, a need tofocus on the cognitive appraisals underlying the moderator effect, and a need to specifically examine the enhancing effects of humor by measuring positive mood states in response to various life events. Overall, the findings from these studies indicate that greater levels of humor are associated with (1) a more positive self-concept when considered in terms of actual-ideal discrepancies, self-esteem, and Standards for self-worth evaluation. (2) more positive and self-protective cognitive appraisals in theface of stress, and (3) greater positive affect in response to both positive and negative life events. Tahen together, these findings offer empirical supportfor the proposal that humor, in addition to buffering the effects of stress, may also play an important role in enhancing the enjoyment of positive life experiences. We conclude by briefly describing future research directions in the empirical study of humor. Ever since Norman Cousins (1979) published an account of bis recovery from a serious disease through humor and laughter, much attention has been given in the populär media to the importance of humor for physical and psychological health. Over the years a number of psychological theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Rollo May, Gordon Allport, and Humor 6-1 (1993), 89-104. 0933-1719/93/0006-0089 $2.00read more
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What Good Are Positive Emotions
TL;DR: A new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love, that serve to broaden an individual's momentary thought–action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources.
Journal ArticleDOI
Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires
TL;DR: Two experiments with 104 college students tested the broaden‐and‐build theory, which hypothesises that positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires and negative emotions, relative to a neutral state, narrowed thought‐ action repertoires.
Journal ArticleDOI
Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire
TL;DR: The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) as mentioned in this paper assesses four dimensions relating to individual differences in uses of humor: relatively benign uses of humour to enhance the self (Self-enhancing), use of humor to enhance relationships at the expense of self (Aggressive), and self-defeating.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Undoing Effect of Positive Emotions
TL;DR: Positive emotions are hypothesized to undo the cardiovascular aftereffects of negative emotions, and contentment-eliciting and amusing films produced faster cardiovascular recovery than neutral or sad films did.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cultivating Positive Emotions to Optimize Health and Well-Being
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop the hypothesis that intervention strategies that cultivate positive emotions are particularly suited for preventing and treating problems rooted in negative emotions, such as anxiety, depression, aggression, and stressrelated health problems.
References
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Stress, appraisal, and coping
Richard S. Lazarus,Susan Folkman +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a detailed theory of psychological stress, building on the concepts of cognitive appraisal and coping, which have become major themes of theory and investigation in psychology.
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Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales.
TL;DR: Two 10-item mood scales that comprise the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) are developed and are shown to be highly internally consistent, largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period.
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A global measure of perceived stress.
TL;DR: The Perceived Stress Scale showed adequate reliability and, as predicted, was correlated with life-event scores, depressive and physical symptomatology, utilization of health services, social anxiety, and smoking-reduction maintenance and was a better predictor of the outcome in question than were life- event scores.
Journal ArticleDOI
THE DYNAMIC SELF-CONCEPT: A Social Psychological Perspective
Hazel Rose Markus,Elissa Wurf +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, an alternating sequence of first overgeneralizing self-conceptions and then differentiating differentiating beliefs is described. But the authors do not specify the order of the overgeneralization.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods.
TL;DR: In this paper, three studies were reported that investigated the hypothesis that a sense of humor reduces the deleterious impact of stressful experiences and found that subjects with low humor scores obtained higher correlations between negative life events and mood disturbance.