I’m studying biological psychology at the moment, and in one of the articles set for us to read I came across a reference to research showing the powerful effect of mental attitude.
The study is called “Does humor moderate the effects of experimentally-induced stress?” (Newman & Stone, 1996, published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine 18:2, DOI 10.1007/BF02909582).
photo credit: Looking Glass
What they did was to find 80 people, half of whom tested high for the trait of “humour” and half of whom tested low. They split each group – high-humour and low-humour – in two and assigned them different tasks. All of them watched the same stressful silent film, but half the participants were asked to write a humourous monologue to go with the film, while the other half wrote a serious monologue.
The experimenters tested the participants’ heart rate, skin conductance level, and skin temperature, which are three markers of stress, continuously for the fifteen minutes before, during, and fifteen minutes after the film. They also asked them to rate their own mood and tension level before and after the film.
What they found was that “Compared to the production of a serious narrative, humor production led to lower negative affect, lower tension, and reduced psychophysiological reactivity for both high and low trait-humor groups.”
photo credit: Rui Almeida (Portugal)
Now, this is an especially important result, because a strategy that only worked for people who were already naturally inclined to humour, while useful, would be a lot less useful than one that apparently works whether you have a “good sense of humour” or not.
The other important point I want to highlight is this: Everyone watched the same film. The difference between the people who experienced more stress and those who experienced less stress was not in what they saw but in how they approached it.
I used to be quite a cynical and negative person (and mildly depressive, for quite a long time). Over the years I’ve gradually learned to be more optimistic and look at life more positively. As a hypnotherapist, it’s part of my job to phrase things positively, because negative suggestions don’t tend to work very well – they just focus people’s minds on the things they want to stop, and they end up doing those things even more. I’m sure my work is doing me a great deal of good, because I’m continually exercising the skill of finding the positive in all kinds of situations.
So next time you find yourself in a stressful situation, try it out. Compose a humourous monologue in your head, and see if it makes a difference.
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