Summary: The Social Benefits Of Humor

Nowadays, the term humor is considered “as the highest and richest form of comedy, denoting anything witty or anything that makes us laugh” (Weaver & Cotrell, 2001). Additionally, “humor is understood as a collection of mental processes that are involved in both creating and perceiving an amusing stimulus, as well as the affective response in the enjoyment of this stimulus” (Martin, 2007). In the communicative context, humor is ‘‘any communication perceived by any of the interacting parties as humorous and leads to laughing, smiling or a feeling of amusement’’ (Robinson, 1977). Furthermore, Lovorn (2008) states that laughter is described by humor researchers, as a response to pleasurable and/or amusing physical, emotional and/or intellectual

The first one is the “Physiological Benefits of Humor”, in which he states that humor can improve human’s health. The second one is the “Psychological Benefits of humor”, on this context the author claims that humor helps learners to have a good time while they are learning. The third context is “Social Benefits of Humor”, in which he states that humor benefits teacher-learners as well as student-student relationships. Finally, the fourth context is “Educational Benefits”, in which the author mentions that humor helps learners to lower their anxiety and

The first component that Martin mentions is the social context, describing humor as a social phenomenon. He states that we usually laugh when we are with other people or when we are alone doing an activity that involves other people, like watching a TV show or reading a book. The second component is the cognitive-perceptual process which is related with the perception of an amusing stimulus. Here, Martin presents the term “incongruity” referring to how the brain detects an odd and unexpected event causing a humorous response. He defines it as ‘the simultaneous presence of two incompatible elements that produces an unexpected violation of expectations, convention, fact, or intention, and results in cognitive arousal’. In the third component, the emotional response, Martin states that a ‘pleasant emotional response’ is evoked by the perception of humor. Also, he mentions that humor activates the reward network in the limbic system in our brain, which is also associated with other pleasurable activities, like eating, ingestion of drugs, listening to enjoyable music, and sexual activity. Finally, the fourth component mentioned by Martin refers to laughter as the ‘expressive component’ of