SPP515006 566. - Leeds School of Business

1 Psychological and Personality Science online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 2014 5: 566 originally published online 11 December 2013 Social Psychological and Personality ScienceA. Peter McGraw, Lawrence E. Williams and Caleb WarrenThe Rise and Fall of Humor: Psychological Distance Modulates Humorous Responses to Tragedy Published by: behalf of: Society for Personality and Social Psychology Association for Research in Personality European Association of Social Psychology Society of Experimental and Social Psychology can be found at:Social Psychological and Personality ScienceAdditional services and information for Alerts: : : : What is This? - Dec 11, 2013 OnlineFirst Version of Record - Jun 2, 2014 Version of Record >> at UNIV OF COLORADO LIBRARIES on June 3, from at UNIV OF COLORADO LIBRARIES on June 3, from ArticleThe Rise and Fall of Humor:Psychological Distance ModulatesHumorous Responses to TragedyA.

2 Peter McGraw1, Lawrence E. Williams1, and Caleb Warren2 AbstractHumor is a ubiquitous experience that facilitates coping, social coordination, and well-being. We examine how humorousresponses to a tragedy change over time by measuring reactions to jokes about Hurricane Sandy. Inconsistent with the belief thatthe passage of time monotonically increases humor, but consistent with the benign violation theory of humor, a longitudinal studyreveals that humorous responses to Sandy s destruction rose, peaked, and eventually fell over the course of 100 days. Time cre-ates a comedic sweet spot that occurs when the psychological distance from a tragedy is large enough to buffer people from threat(creating a benign violation) but not so large that the event becomes a purely benign, nonthreatening situation.

3 The finding canhelp psychologists understand how people cope and provide clues to what makes things funny and when they will be , psychological distance, time, emotion, copingHumor is an important psychological response that facilitatescoping, social coordination, and the pursuit of happiness. Whentragedies strike, humor may be an effective coping tool, but it isnot always easy or appropriate to joke in the face of intuition and recent evidence suggest that viewingsomething from afar facilitates humorous responses to tragicexperiences. But does distance uniformly make tragediesfunnier?The benign violation theory explains why psychological dis-tance helps humor up to a point but suggests that too much dis-tance hurts humor (McGraw & Warren, 2010; McGraw,Warren, Williams, & Leonard, 2012).

4 Distance reduces threat,helping transform tragedy (a violation) into comedy (a benignviolation), but too much distance can make comedy seem tameand uninteresting (a benign situation). In a longitudinal study,we find that the passage of time initially increases humor inresponse to jokes about Hurricane Sandy. The passage of addi-tional time, however, decreases the humor perceived in thosesame of Understanding HumorHumor is a psychological response characterized by amuse-ment and the tendency to laugh (Martin, 2007; McGraw &Warren, 2010; Veatch, 1998). Humor is ubiquitous, occurringregularly in response to social interactions ( , inside jokes,awkward situations) and entertainment ( , standup comedy,Internet surfing). Humor has received significant attention asa topic of philosophical and scientific inquiry.

5 However, unlikeother emotional experiences whose antecedents are generallyagreed on ( , embarrassment, grief), the necessary and suffi-cient conditions that precede humor are still hotly debated(Martin, 2007).We examine humor prompted by tragedy. It is critical toexamine the factors that increase and decrease humor bornfrom aversive experiences, given the important role humorplays in coping and social coordination. The human capacityfor taking a source of pain and transforming it into a sourceof pleasure is a critical feature of the psychological immunesystem (Gross, 2008; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Humor helpspeople cope with minor grievances as well as more serious tra-gedy and loss (Keltner & Bonanno, 1997; Lefcourt & Martin,1986; McDougall, 1922; Samson & Gross, 2012; Smyth,1986). Further, humor facilitates social interactions, increasinglikability, mating success, andperceptions of intelligence(Greengross & Miller, 2011; Martin, 2007).

6 Hence, under-standing what enhances humor in the face of adversity isimportant, as both coping skills and social acceptance improvepsychological well-being (Baumeister & Leary, 1995;Bonanno, 2004; Cohen & Wills, 1985). Conversely, failing to1 University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA2 Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USAC orresponding Author:Peter McGraw, University of Colorado, UCB 419, Boulder, CO 80309, : Psychological andPersonality Science2014, Vol. 5(5) 566-572 The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and : at UNIV OF COLORADO LIBRARIES on June 3, from be funny can be costly, prompting disapproval and potentialsocial isolation (Smeltzer & Leap, 1988). Thus, it is also impor-tant to understand the factors , Distance, and Benign ViolationsPsychological distance is thesubjective set of experiencesassociated with objective distance (Ross & Wilson, 2002; VanBoven, Kane, McGraw, & Dale, 2010).

7 We propose that psy-chological distance can play a critical role in shaping humorousresponses to tragedy. There are four commonly accepted formsof distance: temporal (now vs. then), spatial (here vs. there),social (self vs. other), and hypothetical (real vs. imagined; Lib-erman & Trope, 2008). Psychological distance alters people scognitive representation of information (cf. construal-level the-ory; Trope & Liberman, 2010) and emotional responses toappetitive and aversive stimuli (Mobbs et al., 2007; Williams& Bargh, 2008).Research and intuition suggest that each form of psychologi-cal distance increases humorous responses to highly aversivesituations (McGraw et al., 2012). For example, disgusting thingsare more amusing when they are ostensibly fake, seem far awayin space or time, or afflict someone else (Hemenover &Schimmack, 2007; McGraw et al.)

8 , 2012). However, contrary tointuition, psychological distance tends to decrease humorousresponses to mildly aversive situations. Whereas people reportthat getting hit by a car would be more humorous if it occurred5 years agothan if it happened yesterday, they also report thatstubbing a toe would be more humorous if it occurredyesterdaythan if it happened 5 years ago (McGraw et al., 2012).Most humor theories have difficulty accounting for evi-dence that distance sometimes helps and sometimes hurtshumor (Gruner, 1999; Morreall, 2009). To motivate our inves-tigation, we draw on the benign violation theory of humor,which makes unique predictions regarding why psychologicaldistance would help transform tragedy into comedy. The theoryproposes that humor arises when something that threatens aperson s well-being, identity, or normative belief structure( , a violation) simultaneously seems okay, safe, or accepta-ble ( , benign; McGraw et al.

9 , 2012; McGraw & Warren,2010; Veatch, 1998). Physical attacks, such as tickling, playfighting, and slapstick, are humorous when they are not harm-ful. Similarly, puns and other wordplay misuse language butare humorous because they make sense given an alternative lin-guistic or logical benign violation theory highlights the two ways a situ-ation can fail to be humorous. A situation may be purely violat-ing ( , being tickled by a creepy stranger) or purely benign( , tickling oneself); neither produces humor. Humorrequires threat but not too much or too little. Thus, the theoryexplains why factors that decrease feelings of threat canenhance the humor associated with highly aversive events( , crashing cars) yet can also reduce the humor associatedwith mildly aversive events ( , stubbing toes).

10 Psychologicaldistance is one such factor, as distance has been shown toreduce feelings of threat (Mobbs et al., 2007; Williams &Bargh, 2008). For example, a negative event is less threateningwhen it happens to someone else (social), in another place (spa-tial), at a distant point in time (temporal), or when imaginary(hypothetical; Andrade & Cohen, 2007; Blanchard et al.,2004; Huddy, Feldman, & Weber, 2007; Pfefferbaum et al.,2000; Wohl & McGrath, 2007). Because of its threat reductionproperties, distance increases the humor associated with tragicevents by making it easier to perceive the situation as , when events are mildly aversive, distance decreaseshumor by reducing the threat to the point that the situationbecomes purely research demonstrates that psychological distance caneither help or hurt humor, depending on the severity of the vio-lation (McGraw et al.)