Background: Patients receiving hemodialysis experience high levels of anxiety and stress. Objectives: This study aimed to examine the effect of humor on anxiety in patients receiving hemodialysis. ...Methods: This open-label, randomized, controlled trial was conducted in 2018, on 63 patients receiving hemodialysis in Sabzevar, Iran. The participants were randomly assigned to an intervention and a control group using a permuted block randomization method. The intervention group participated in humor therapy sessions twice a week for 3 weeks. The control group received no intervention. Data were collected using Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) before and 3 weeks after the intervention. Data were analyzed using the independent samples and the paired t tests. Results: The mean age of the participants was 61.85 ± 7.93 and 54.61 ± 5.89 in the intervention and control groups, respectively (P = 0.217). The mean baseline and posttest trait anxiety (TA) scores were not significantly different between the two groups (P = 0.152 and 0.170, respectively). Also, the mean baseline scores of state anxiety (SA) in the intervention and the control groups were 48.45 ± 14.21 and 47.28 ± 15.12, respectively (P = 0.133). However, after the intervention, the mean score of SA decreased to 27.45 ± 16.65 in the intervention group (P < 0.001), but this score increased to 49.43 ± 15.42 in the control group (P = 0.227). Conclusion: Humor therapy was effective in reducing SA. Hence, nurses working in hemodialysis departments are advised to use humor therapy as an easy, low-cost, and effective complementary therapy to reduce patients' anxiety during a hemodialysis session.
When people high in prejudice censor prejudice in one setting, they can experience a prejudice rebound effect-subsequently responding with more prejudice than otherwise. Disparagement humor fosters ...the release rather than suppression of prejudice. Thus, two experiments tested the hypothesis that exposure to disparagement humor attenuates rebound effects. Participants suppressed prejudice by writing fewer anti-gay thoughts about same-sex adoption (Experiment 1) or by reporting greater support for same-sex civil rights (Experiment 2) when expecting to share their responses with others (non-prejudice norm condition) but not if others first exchanged anti-gay jokes (prejudice norm condition). High-prejudice participants then exhibited prejudice rebound in the non-prejudice norm condition only. They rated a gay man more stereotypically (Experiment 1) and allocated greater budget cuts to a gay student organization (Experiment 2) in the non-prejudice norm condition.
This book addresses the fact that Americans tend to live under a considerable amount of stress, tension, and anxiety, and suggests that humor can be helpful in alleviating their distress. It posits ...that humor is a useful placebo in this regard; cites studies that show that humor moderates life stress; considers the relationship of religion and humor, especially as means to alleviate anxiety; proposes that Jesus had a sense of humor; suggests that his parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard has humorous implications for the relief of occupational stress; explores the relationship of gossip and humor; and suggests that Jesus and his disciples were a joking community. It concludes that Jesus viewed the kingdom of God as a worry-free existence.
The article investigates the manipulative potential of humor in business media discourse and its application in Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) teaching. Recognizing humor as a tool for ...simplifying complex ideas and engaging a broad audience, the study aims to identify the functional-stylistic means through which humor is conveyed in business media, focusing on its capacity to influence audience perceptions and attitudes. Employing continuous sampling along with descriptive, comparative, and discursive methods, the research analyzes utterances from Russian- and English-language business media to explore humors various functions such as persuasion, focus-setting, and entertainment and how these can be harnessed to facilitate linguistic manipulation. The findings reveal that humor, through rhetorical devices like metaphors, idioms, understatement, allusion, sarcasm, and oxymoron, plays a key role in making business concepts accessible and engaging. A starter pack of tools is identified for LSP education, equipping students to recognize and utilize humors manipulative power in professional contexts. This toolkit aims to prepare future business communicators to craft and recognize humorous statements. Implications for LSP educators, students, and business communication professionals are significant, advocating for an integrated approach in curricula that balances the creative and manipulative implementation of humor. This prepares students for global business communication, emphasizing humors strategic importance in effective leadership.
Technological advances have enabled firms to automate customer service by employing artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. Despite their many potential benefits, interactions with chatbots may still ...feel machine‐like and cold. The current study proposes the use of humour by chatbots as a gateway to humanizing them and thereby enhancing the customer experience. Across three experimental studies, the results reveal that (i) the use of humour enhances service satisfaction when it is used by a chatbot but not when it is used by a human agent, (ii) this chatbot humour effect is serially mediated by enhanced perceptions of anthropomorphism and interestingness of the interactions with the chatbot, and (iii) whilst both positively and negatively valenced chatbot humour may enhance the interestingness of the interactions, socially appropriate (i.e., affiliative) humour as opposed to inappropriate (i.e., aggressive) humour leads to enhanced service satisfaction. This study extends the understanding of the humanization processes of chatbots and provides guidelines for how firms should use chatbot humour to positively influence consumers' service satisfaction.
Introdução: O Bicycle Motocross (BMX) é um esporte que pode sofrer influência de diversas variáveis, dentre elas o estado de humor dos atletas. Objetivo: Verificar o estado de humor de atletas da ...Seleção Brasileira de BMX no Campeonato Brasileiro e no Campeonato Mundial de BMX. Materiais e Métodos: A amostra compreendeu 8 atletas masculinos da categoria elite, com média de idade de 19,3 ±2,3 anos. O instrumento utilizado para verificar o estado de humor dos atletas foi o BRUMS. Os dados foram submetidos ao teste de normalidade Shapiro Wilk e de acordo com a distribuição estes foram comparados através do teste t de Student, com nível de significância de p≤0,05. Para a análise estatística utilizou-se o pacote estatístico Graphic Prism 6.0. Resultados: Os resultados mostraram que foram encontradas diferenças significativas apenas na variável fadiga durante o Campeonato Brasileiro de BMX e o Campeonato Mundial de BMX (p˂0,05). Conclusão: Podemos concluir que o volume de treinamento parece mediar mudanças na percepção psicológica de fadiga, de atletas de alto rendimento, no Campeonato Brasileiro e Campeonato Mundial de BMX.
This paper intends to analyze the humorous manifestations in the podcast Medo e delírio em Brasília, using the theoretical and methodological assumptions of French Discourse Analysis. The aim is to ...observe whether the chaotic podcast aesthetic is an element of humor production. The results of the analyzes show that this aesthetic configuration generates unusual effects, and it is argued that these effects are primarily responsible for promoting humor in the program. Additionally, it is argued that chaotic aesthetics, unusual effects and humor may be associated with the abundant intertextuality that necessitates an exercise in recognizing the interlocutor while revealing the interdiscursive functioning, thereby situating the language manifestations of the program within the Brazilian political spectrum.
Este artigo pretende analisar as manifestações humorísticas do podcast Medo e delírio em Brasília, partindo dos pressupostos teóricos e metodológicos da Análise do Discurso francesa. O objetivo é observar se a estética caótica do podcast é um elemento da produção do humor. Os resultados das análises mostram que essa configuração estética gera efeitos insólitos e argumenta-se que são estes que promovem majoritariamente o humor no programa. Argumenta-se ainda que estética caótica, efeitos insólitos e humor podem ser associados à intertextualidade abundante que exige um exercício de reconhecimento do interlocutor ao mesmo tempo que revela o funcionamento interdiscursivo posicionando as manifestações linguageiras do programa no espectro político brasileiro.
Este artículo pretende analizar las manifestaciones humorísticas del podcast Medo e delírio em Brasília, utilizando los fundamentos teóricos y metodológicos del Análisis del Discurso Francés. El propósito es observar si la estética caótica del podcast es un elemento de producción de humor. Los resultados de los análisis muestran que esta configuración estética genera efectos insólitos y se argumenta que son estos los que principalmente promueven el humor en el programa. Además, se sostiene que la estética caótica, los efectos insólitos y el humor pueden estar asociados a la abundante intertextualidad que exige un ejercicio de reconocimiento del interlocutor revelando el funcionamiento interdiscursivo, posicionando las manifestaciones del lenguaje del programa en el espectro político brasileño.
We compared the metabolomic profile of aqueous humor from patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG; n = 26) with that of a group of age- and sex-matched non-POAG controls (n = 26), all ...participants undergoing cataract surgery. Supervised paired partial least-squares discriminant analysis showed good predictive performance for test sets with a median area under the receiver operating characteristic of 0.89 and a p-value of 0.0087. Twenty-three metabolites allowed discrimination between the two groups. Univariate analysis after the Benjamini–Hochberg correction showed significant differences for 13 of these metabolites. The POAG metabolomic signature indicated reduced concentrations of taurine and spermine and increased concentrations of creatinine, carnitine, three short-chain acylcarnitines, 7 amino acids (glutamine, glycine, alanine, leucine, isoleucine, hydroxyl-proline, and acetyl-ornithine), 7 phosphatidylcholines, one lysophosphatidylcholine, and one sphingomyelin. This suggests an alteration of metabolites involved in osmoprotection (taurine and creatinine), neuroprotection (spermine, taurine, and carnitine), amino acid metabolism (7 amino acids and three acylcarnitines), and the remodeling of cell membranes drained by the aqueous humor (hydroxyproline and phospholipids). Five of these metabolic alterations, already reported in POAG plasma, concern spermine, C3 and C4 acylcarnitines, PC aa 34:2, and PC aa 36:4, thus highlighting their importance in the pathogenesis of glaucoma.
How does the relation between two words create humor? In this article, we investigated the effect of global and local contrast on the humor of word pairs. We capitalized on the existence of ...psycholinguistic lexical norms by examining violations of expectations set up by typical patterns of English usage (global contrast) and within the local context of the words within the word pairs (local contrast). Global contrast was operationalized as lexical-semantic norms for single-words and local contrast was operationalized as the orthographic, phonological, and semantic distance between the two words in the pair. Through crowdsourced (Study 1) and best-worst (Study 2) ratings of the humor of a large set of word pairs (i.e., compounds), we find evidence of both global and local contrast on compound-word humor. Specifically, we find that humor arises when there is a violation of expectations at the local level, between the individual words that make up the word pair, even after accounting for violations at the global level relative to the entire language. Semantic variables (arousal, dominance, and concreteness) were stronger predictors of word pair humor whereas form-related variables (number of letters, phonemes, and letter frequency) were stronger predictors of single-word humor. Moreover, we also find that semantic dissimilarity increases humor, by defusing the impact of low-valence words-making them seem more amusing-and by enhancing the incongruence of highly imageable pairs of concrete words.
Workplace humor is ubiquitous, yet scholars know little about how it affects employees’ behaviors in organizations. We draw on an emerging psychological theory of humor—benign violation theory—to ...suggest that a leader’s sense of humor often conveys counter-normative social information in organizations. We integrate this theory with social information processing theory to develop hypotheses about the effects of a leader’s sense of humor on follower behavior. We suggest that although a leader’s sense of humor is positively associated with leader–member exchange and ultimately work engagement, it can also signal to followers the acceptability of norm violation at work. These perceptions in turn are positively associated with followers’ deviance. Furthermore, we propose that these indirect effects are moderated by leader aggressive humor. Data from two three-wave field studies in China and the United States provide support for our hypotheses. Taken together, our results suggest that a leader’s sense of humor can be a mixed blessing and elicit unforeseen negative behaviors from their followers.
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