How To Understand The 8 HUMOR styles
According to experts back in 2011 and 2018, humor can tell listeners and readers how the person communicating humor might be feeling!
That would mean you either feel good or bad depending on the joke you’re telling or thinking. Science now shows what might make people choose different types of jokes and why, and how it’s connected to their personality. Sarcasm, as an example, is not as good as you might think even though it is a humor style.
So by listening to yourself cracking jokes or someone else telling jokes you can understand both yourself and others way better and therefore require less time with a therapist or strengthen that relationship.
The experts say that there are eight humor styles that we know of today.
They are Fun, Humor, Nonsense, Wit, Irony, Satire, Sarcasm and Cynicism. These eight are grouped into two styles namely good or bad humor styles.
Humor either make us feel good and help us getting along with others in a good way, and make friends or feeling better about themselves. Or the humor style is putting ourselves or others down and makes us and those we put down feel bad or worse.
So my own guideline that laughing with (good) or about (bad) someone does in fact hold up purely scientifically speaking.
These are the positive humor styles
#1. Fun
This humor style jokes to spread happiness and is friendly.
The ones using this kind of humor are social and nice. As it turns out, fun might indicate vitality and extraversion. Those who use fun as a humor style also show psychological well-being.
Being gentle and kind with humor can help protect against feeling really down, anxious, or stressed out.
#2. Humor
The Humor style is laughing about everyday mistakes or weird things, being kind about it, and feeling sorry for others’ mishaps.
The great thing about Humor is related to character strengths of the heart. It reduce your depression and anxiety levels and increases your quality of sleep. Basically naturaly medicating your brain.
I guess women who selects funny men are on to something!
#3. Nonsense
Nonsensically joking around without any specific reason, making fun of silly things that don’t make sense.
People who like nonsense enjoy playing with ideas that don’t always make sense. Because they don’t try to make sense of it all, they might end up thinking a lot about negative stuff in their lives, which can make them feel more upset. Therefore, nonsense is primarily associated with depression, anxiety and stress.
But nonsense can also indicate depression and stress simply because it is silly and strange and ridicules without no specific purpose.
#4. Wit
Being smart with ideas and making clever connections between them, even if they seem unrelated.
Wit is the only humor style that seams to be correlated with (verbal) intelligence. Being quick in turning anything into something funny seams to protect against feeling anxious. The female personality is high in anxiety.
So once again we see why women might favour a witty man as her partner in life.
The positive humor styles FUN, HUMOR, WIT and NONSENSE is used to lower depression, anxiety and stress throughout the day as a coping mechanism.
The more positive jokes you tell or hear throughout the day will reduce the negative consequences of thoughts related to depression, anxiety and stress. Sort of not giving the negative space to grow. Positive humor also reduces negative emotions which reduces neuroticism.
We know from other research that being low in neuroticism keeps your blood pressure low which is good for your life span.
The negative and darker humor styles
Darker styles of humor lack positive emotion and usually contain mockery and ridicule.
Because they do not have the positive part. They tend to be percieved more negative and not so friendly. Basically mean humor. Naturally you would argue that the person using this humor style is a bad person.
I suggest you lift your gaze when judging them and see that they are instead suffering from the pain circuit.
#5. Irony
The humor style of irony is when you say something that means the opposite to confuse people who don’t get the joke.
Irony is the best predictor of anxiety and stress which is part of neuroticism. Anxiety is when you feel worried or tense about things that might not actually be scary and when people feel anxious, they often see things in a negative way and focus on the bad parts of situations. Since irony is confusing to most people, it can make some people feel stressed out.
So when you worry a lot, it’s hard to pay attention to good things, and irony might make people notice only the bad stuff.
Dealing with problems using humor is linked to worrying a lot, which is how we think about problems.
Worrying is a product of avoiding problems. And avoiding problems is the very definition of Anxiety. So when people use irony to show they can handle tough situations.It might make them feel more anxious.
Basically, “Don’t paint the devil on the wall” because you become what you focus your attention to or hang out with.
Irony in conversations is also used to make others feel less important, which might be related to feeling down or sad, like in depression or narcissism.
So people who use irony might be in a very bad place and inflict harm on those around them. Simple because they do not resolve their own personal issues. Which in itself is a self-centred approach to life. Being selfe-centered is one of facets of being a narcissist.
#6. Satire
Making fun of bad things to try to make them better.
It’s like making fun of something while also trying to fix it. This style has a moral goodness. Morality is found in the Honesty & Humility trait and within Agreeableness.
Both personality traits are pro social traits.
#7. Sarcasm
Sarcasm as a humor style is using mean jokes to criticise or make fun of people, groups, or things.
This style does not have moral goodness. So it is the opposite of Satire. So that would imply it is bad to use sarcasm.
This might surprise you but there does not seam to be a connection to depression, anxiety or stress.
#8. Cynicism
Cynicism as a humor style is making fun of good things, not believing in good ideas, and mocking what most people think is important.
This style does not have moral goodness. It is the only (positive) predictor of depression and clinical depressed people have been found to use self-defeating humor more and self-enhancing humor less than non-depressed. Using dark humor like cynicism, sarcasm, and irony, which often make fun of things, can be linked to being unfriendly or disagreeable.
When we use mocking jokes to show what’s wrong with the world, it might make our relationships not as good and can affect how we feel.
Some humor improves your life and makes it longer. Others opens the door to the darker parts of life within you even though you think you’r hurting others. Sort of choosing to digg your own grave and falling into it. So the takeaway about humor is.
“Be careful what type of humor you use when thinking to yourself or with others. Because they tell everyone else how you feel and can either make better relationships or destroy them.”