Humorous Communication and Coping In Relationships

Over the holidays my family and I took a long road trip. To help make this long trip more enjoyable, we decided to listen to stand-up comedy. We heard sets by Patton Oswald, Pete Holmes, and Dave Chappelle (among others). Why would we do this? On the surface the answer is obvious: to help pass the time. But, this choice to listen to comedy points to a deeper human fact: we like to laugh…and it feels good to laugh.

Given our affinity for humor, it is no surprise that social scientists have dedicated considerable time to understanding humor. My own doctoral advisor, Melanie Booth-Butterfield, has directed her research efforts toward identifying and understanding humor orientation. One’s humor orientation describes his/her predisposition toward communicating humor, and I have written previously about this topic here.

Relevant to romantic relationships, studies suggest that humorous communicators tend to cope better with difficult events. Consider work by LaBelle, Booth-Butterfield, and Weber (2013), who found that individuals with high humor orientations reported being better able to cope with relational transgressions in their romantic relationships. Relatedly, work by Frisby, myself, and Booth-Butterfield (2016) suggested that the type of humor one communicates is important in post-divorce recovery. In conjunction with the findings about humor reviewed in my earlier entry (referenced above), it appears that humorous communicators handle challenges better.

The advice, then, when faced with difficult events would be to find ways to laugh through tough times. This could be through your own production of humor, your funny friends, or watching funny movies/shows.