Summary

In their article, McGraw, Williams, & Warren, (2014) identified humor as a ubiquitous experience that is essential in enhancing a person’s coping, social coordination and well-being abilities. Their main aim for carryo8ng out the research was to examine the changes in humorous responses to a tragedy among people over time by measuring the reactions to jokes about Hurricane Sandy. After conducting the study, they found out that humorous experiences tend to rise, peak and then fall as time changes. They further realized that time tends to create a comedic sweet spot which occurs when the psychological distance and variation from a known tragedy is large enough thereby buffering people from such any kind of a threat, which in turn creates a benign violation. However, such distance is not large enough to the extent that the situation becomes purely benign and is not characterized by any threat. By understanding such a concept, psychologists would be in a position to understand the humorous responses of the people by understanding how individuals cope with as well as offer hints to what makes things funny and the actual time when such events would be funny.

This longitudinal study involved an experimental research whereby the independent samples included participants who were recruited a day before the hurricanes hit the Northeastern United States and one of the things that made the hurricane to be a good dependent variable was because it was easily measurable and predictable, and it could be easily tracked and publicized before its harmful landing took place. In comparison to most tragedies which happen unexpectedly, hurricanes would permit an exploration of the humor that could be derived from the tragedy and transitions would be marked easily since the participants were recruited during different times in relation to the landing of the hurricanes. In the study, a total of 1064 online panelists were also included to participate in the study.

To monitor the transition in humor, the participants focused on three tweets whereby short messages related to the hurricane were posted, and the reactions of the people were noted down. The participants of the study provided their demographic details including their names, gender as well as geographical location. The participants used the responses to the posts as a measure of humor as perceived in each of the three stimuli created. The timing was done between the participant dependent variable, the stimulus which was participant-within variable and the geographical variation was just used as a covariate, which meant that it did not have any significant impact on the changes that were observed and recorded in the research. After conducting the study, it was clear that the level of provocation of humor by the hurricanes varied over time. Timing remained consistent across all the tweets that were posted to ensure that timing also did not contribute to any significant differences as a variable.

The Bonferroni family-wise error correction method was used to establish the differences as observed among the three posts. The humor changes were observed from a day before the landing of the hurricane whereby people were generally humorous. However, in the course of the next few days, and after people had received reports about the losses that were caused by the hurricanes including hundreds of deaths, the high number of homes destroyed and billions of damage destroyed, humor suddenly came to a halt. In addition, the study explored the variations of humor after the occurrence of the tragedy and it was observed that a few days after the occurrence of the tragedy, it was almost impossible to find any humor in tweeter but as time went on, humor increased in the same tweets upto a certain peak. The humorous responses further went through changes from being funny to comic, upsetting, offensive, annoying, irrelevant and confusing as time went from time before the occurrence of the tragedy to time when the tragedy happened. During the latter stages, the responses of the funny and humorous items also came declining across the three created stimuli. The reactions were the significant dependent measures in the study. ‘

By using the respondents’ judgments of offensiveness, the mixed-model ANCOVA approach was used to investigate the effects of such tweets as the main triggers of the stimulus that controlled humor experiences among the respondents. The rates of offensiveness were also measured and it was discovered that they varied significantly based on the timing of the tweets. As the reality about the existence of the tragedy hit people, any humorous posts that were made after the tragedy were described to be highly offensive. However, as time went by, people began seeing it be okay to make jokes concerning the same tragedy. The rates of the offensiveness further declined in the posts. According to the benign violation theory, there is a close relationship between time and the offensiveness that is created by specific time frames, and humor increases as the offensiveness decline. The patterns of humor also rise, peak and start falling as time goes on, and the benign theory was used to explain that the increase in humor was as a result of a reduction in the amount of threat that faced the respondents. It was also discovered that confusion rates were not dependent on time.

After a successful study, McGraw, Williams, & Warren, (2014) concluded that humor is important in improving social interactions. Psychologists should understand that the most effective way of avoiding the type of ‘too soon’ comedy fails or the other ‘too late’ comedy dud is to match the degrees of violation with the right distances amount. As a result, a tragedy can be transformed into a comedy easily by moderating the amount of time. A comedy developed soon after a tragedy would be considered offensive and the audience also would consider the same comedy released too long after the occurrence of the tragedy to be irrelevant. Minimized rates of humor characterize both offensive and irrelevant eventshumor.

There are a variety of factors that could have affected the outcomes and effectiveness of this study. One of them includes the fact that the study was hosted via an online platform and therefore, it was not open to all the members of the public but rather to a specified group of individuals mainly the youths. In addition, the Bonferroni correction method used is also a subject to various limitations which in turn affect its effectiveness as an experimenting method. Among the limitations of the method include that fact that it is less accurate in realistic situations, and Sidak is a better method in where better and more accurate results are desired. The study was also characterized by various strengths that in turn promoted its effectiveness in developing practical conclusions. The main strength of the experiment was in the recruitment of the participants whereby the high number of the participants recruited helped in ensuring that a moderately accurate response was developed. In addition, the fact that the participants were located in different geographical locations made it an even more realistic approach since they were not affected by the same events simultaneously.

In conclusion, experiment by McGraw, Williams, & Warren, (2014) was an effective study that helped to develop a realistic hypothesis based on the responses that different people portrayed over similar events. The study confirmed and strengthened the benign violation theory which states that humor is greatest only when the risks of threat are lowest.

References

McGraw, A. P., Williams, L. E., & Warren, C. (2014). The rise and fall of humor: Psychological distance modulates humorous responses to tragedy. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(5), 566-572.

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