Abstract
The following theoretical position paper has the aim to outline two important future directions of humour intervention research. Firstly, existing humour trainings have not differentiated explicitly between different uses of humour or humour that may be virtuous or not. Within the realm of Positive Psychology, all virtuous forms of humour need to be identified and interventions developed that aim at fostering these benevolent/lighter forms. Secondly, most humour trainings have been adapted and conducted in one cultural context. Future trainings should consider cross-cultural perspectives to allow for comparative research and practice. Thus, the current paper first gives an overview on the extant literature on the distinction between lighter and darker forms of humour, as well as showing how humour can serve the virtues proposed by Peterson and Seligman (2004). Then, we elaborate on the findings on humour and well-being, as well as findings on existing humour interventions. The second section starts with open questions and hypotheses on how a new generation of trainings targeting lighter forms of humour could look like. Then, we discuss (potential) cultural differences in humour and how this may affect the design of interventions. When aiming for cross-cultural adaptations of the same humour program, several challenges have to be overcome, such as the term “humour” not having the same meaning in every culture, and cultural rules on what can be laughed at.
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Notes
- 1.
The distinction between lighter and darker forms of humour as used in this chapter focuses on the intention of the person producing or uttering the humour for the following reasons: Somebody who produces humour may have a good intention or not. Within PPIs, humour trainings should focus on good-intended humour that aims at fostering positive emotions, relationships and good character (i.e., lighter styles of humour). Yet, whether this well-intended humour is received as such depends on the context and the receiver. Thus, even the best intended benevolent humorous remark could potentially be taken negatively under certain conditions (e.g., when the person the humour is addressed to has a fear of being laughed at, cf. Ruch, Hofmann, Platt, & Proyer, 2014 for a review)—but this is not under the humourist’s control. Therefore, classifying humour by its outcome would make any kind of classification attempt impossible, as consequences may vary with every change of condition, social context and receiver. For this reason, we focus on distinguishing lighter and darker forms of humour based on the intentions of the individuals producing and communicating the humour.
- 2.
The term “comic styles” is used to acknowledge the origin of these eight humour styles.
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Hofmann, J., Ruch, W. (2019). Moving Forward in Fostering Humour: Towards Training Lighter Forms of Humour in Multicultural Contexts. In: Van Zyl, L., Rothmann Sr., S. (eds) Theoretical Approaches to Multi-Cultural Positive Psychological Interventions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20583-6_1
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