Laughter

No laughing matter…

One of the things I noticed on completing my latest Coursera psychology course is that I’m not laughing much these days…

Having checked out the late Chris Peterson’s Strength Based Perspective on Mental Illness – I found I’m suffering a bout of ‘dourness’.

Here’s Peterson’s table:

Peterson’s work bears more than a passing resemblance to Aristotle’s virtues, strengths and character deficits:

Notably Aristotle doesn’t have ‘humour’ in his list per se; instead he has ‘wittiness’ in the virtue of ‘conversation’ and ‘friendliness’ in the virtue of ‘social conduct’.

Now, following Aristotle’s logic, I can see why I’m not laughing much – laughter is a social thing more than a personal humour, joking or consuming ‘funniness’ thing. You need people for laughter. It’s infectious and contagious. And given the other infectious contagious thing out there right now, we’re just not rubbing along with people as much. Too little witty conversation and not enough scope for seeing friends. No wonder I’m laughing less.

And this chimes with Professor Sophie Scott’s work on laughter – in a nutshell you’re 30 times more likely to laugh if you’re with somebody else than if you’re alone…

We typically link laughter and humour very profoundly, but the link may not be as close as we imagine. When I started working with laughter, as part of my work into vocal emotional expressions, I always used to refer to it as “amusement”. However, our lay understanding of laughter is not quite on the ball – while we do laugh at jokes and comedy, we laugh most in social situations.

Watching comedies on my own on Netflix (as I’ve tried) doesn’t really do the job. Watching comedies with the family does… Not so surprising, as Scott’s research shows:

Laughter, like yawning, is behaviourally contagious, and we can catch it easily from other people, especially if we know them.

And it matters too – Peterson is right ‘dourness’ is bad for you and as Sophie Scott concludes:

In short, we do laugh because of humour and jokes, but we laugh mostly because of love and affection. We laugh to share meaning and understanding, to make ourselves feel better, to reaffirm relationships and to make new ones. It’s probably time to be taking our laughter more seriously.

So laughter is far less about ‘funnies’ and far more about conversations and friendship. On reflection, I have actually been laughing a bit lately – on Zooms with people at work.

Laughter is a highly infectious social phenomenon, and Scott’s work explains why the other one – Covid-19 – is getting in the way; I need to phone a few more friends!

Life, Psychology, Work

Goals + Agency + Pathways = Hope

A timely blog from the always readable Eric Barker brings us the science of hope.

Before his passing, Charles Snyder was a professor at the University of Kansas and editor of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. His books are Handbook of Hope: Theory, Measures, and Applications and Psychology of Hope.

Barker tells us that Snyder defined the route to hope thus:

Hope is the sum of perceived capabilities to produce routes to desired goals, along with the perceived motivation to use those routes… According to the theory, people who are hopeful believe they are good at generating goal thoughts, creating effective pathways leading to goal attainment, maintaining agency thoughts to provide enough motivation for the goal pursuit, and handling barriers that arise.

After all, as Barker reminds us, right now:

You’re dealing with life and death, financial concerns, issues of justice, and the safety and sanity of those you love. We have to get all that back on track in a world where clear answers are less than forthcoming. Human nature is on our side but we have plenty of work to do. Planet ain’t gonna fix itself; grab a shovel.

And so:

We don’t need wishes. We need active hope. The kind of hope that comes from a good plan, one that you are confident you can execute.

But in the endless weekly grind of ‘lockdown’ and Covid anxieties, it’s hard to come up with a plan that feels up to task. It’s all either too wishful or too timid. So what to do?

It starts with the goals:

Goals + Agency + Pathways = Hope
When you have goals (knowing what you want) and agency (the drive to get what you want) and pathways (the ability to generate methods to achieve what you want), you get hope.
With this type of hope, you don’t wish things will work out; you know deep down in your bones they will. You never doubt it.

I’ve always rather hated setting goals… what if I fail, is this the right thing to be shooting for, will it be worth it?

After all as Barker says:

Asking yourself “What are my goals?” is an excellent way to make your mind go blank.

He advises getting specific:

List out the major areas of your life (“career”, “family”, etc.) and beside each one simply write “I want…” Then finish the sentence. Be specific…
No, even more specific…
Sorry, still not specific enough…
Don’t say, “I need to find a new job,” say “I’m going to spend one hour every morning job-hunting on LinkedIn and reaching out to contacts.”
Snyder says you want “Specific, growth-seeking, performance-based, moderately-difficult goals.”
We’ve covered the ‘specific’ part. What’s a “growth-seeking” goal?

The right goals for ‘right now’ forget hope for the applause of others, and focus on personal growth.

Snyder’s research shows:

There is evidence that people who set validation-seeking goals are more prone to depressive episodes and self-esteem loss than those who set growth-seeking goals (Dykman, 1998). Validation-seeking goals are strivings to prove one’s self-worth, competence, and likeability through attainment of a goal. In contrast, growth-seeking goals are strivings to learn, grow, and improve.

I’m pretty good at action (agency) and finding routes forward (pathways) but Barker helped me realise I could do with a clearer more positive goal right now. Not least given my first thought was the one Barker advised against – get a new job!

So instead I’ve worked on some ‘growth’ goals:

Practice forgiving myself and others for what’s happening at work,
Be curious; practice and learn new psychological techniques through conflict at work,
Take breaks several times a day to breathe, reset and be ‘mindful’,
Keep learning Italian and French, and
Keep learning more about psychology and neuroscience.

I still think I should get a new job though!

However, as chance would have it an email from Chris Croft dropped into my inbox today; reminding me to find some things to enjoy at work too… So I’ll be looking for laughter where I can find it, and for the opportunity to write and create at work this week, among all the other difficult things.

Both Barker and Chris Croft reckon you can’t be happy or hopeful without some written goals. I’ve concluded, especially when everything is going wrong, they’re probably right.

Children, Life, Philosophy, Psychology, Work

Laughter; the best medicine

I’m more a man for observational humour than for jokes; but perhaps the joke has been on me…

British humour tends to the downbeat. Ironic, sarcastic and even cynical – there’s always the risk of us talking everything down. With my new optimistic élan, I’m doing my best to avoid all that.

But if you can’t ‘bitch and moan’, where are the laughs at work? Our place is dead clever, but also dead earnest. I realised the other day I hadn’t laughed all week…

Thank goodness Philosophy Now spurred me into action with their humour edition!

Two strong explanations of humour are the ‘Superiority’ and the ‘Incongruity’ theories.

Anya Steinbeck explains the first:

“The so-called superiority theory is prominent among explanations of humour. In fact, so prominent that it has been championed by philosophical heavyweights such as Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes and Bergson.

Thomas Hobbes’ formulation of the superiority theory is this: “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own, formerly.”

If Hobbes is right, humour becomes a tool for making ourselves feel better by thinking of others or our own past selves as inferior. So if Ted is a terrible golfer he can overcome the pain of this truth by making fun of Fred who is an even worse golfer.

Plato believes this kind of humour to be damaging: “Taken generally the ridiculous is a certain kind of evil, specifically a vice.” It counts as a vice because it is symptomatic of a lack of critical self-awareness as we ridicule others.

I would suggest that the two most serious problems with hierarchical jokes are these:

1) Firstly, as Plato says, the aesthetic form of a joke form is just so attractive and appealing that we may not pay enough critical attention to the moral content.

2) Secondly, far from having a dialogue function, jokes can be conversation stoppers. As Theodor Adorno says: “He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof.”

In other words, humour is, next to its wonderful properties, also a great potential tool for manipulation. Dress them up as a joke and you can get away with outrageous statements.

So what of the ‘Incongruity’ theory? The Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy gives us this:

“The first philosopher to use the word incongruous to analyze humor was James Beattie (1779). Our laughter “seems to arise from the view of things incongruous united in the same assemblage.” The cause of humorous laughter is “two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage, as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the peculiar manner in which the mind takes notice of them.”

Beattie may be right but he’s not exactly got us rolling in the aisles with that description.

And it gets worse… Given his well deserved reputation for seriousness, perhaps not surprising that Kant is stronger on theory than gags…

“In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something absurd (in which the understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction).”

“Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. This transformation, which is certainly not enjoyable to the understanding, yet indirectly gives it very active enjoyment for a moment. Therefore its cause must consist in the influence of the representation upon the body, and the reflex effect of this upon the mind.”

Kant illustrates with this story:

“An Indian at the table of an Englishman in Surat, when he saw a bottle of ale opened and all the beer turned into froth and overflowing, testified his great astonishment with many exclamations. When the Englishman asked him, “What is there in this to astonish you so much?” he answered, “I am not at all astonished that it should flow out, but I do wonder how you ever got it in.”

Following that cracker he serves up another:

“The heir of a rich relative wished to arrange for an imposing funeral, but he lamented that he could not properly succeed; ‘for’ (said he) ‘the more money I give my mourners to look sad, the more cheerful they look!’”

Whilst I wouldn’t recommend he gives up his day job, I’m with Kant. When it comes to making people laugh, I like incongruity.

Superiority all too easily leads to the worst type of humour – arrogance, trashing others and talking people down. Now I know what I’m looking for, I realise I’ve seen plenty of ‘superiority’ humour about. It’s not pretty.

Keep it incongruous I say. As my boy did with his little joke in the car this morning; it made me laugh out loud:

“What did one rebel sausage say to the other?”

“May the fork be in you!”

Aristotle, Children, Life, Psychology, Work

Adults and Children

All adults are big kids sometimes, but often the wrong kind. We keep the petty, squabbling, thin-skinnedness of children but often lose the curiosity, spontaneity and sense of fun.

It’s a bit hackneyed but I still have a lot of time for Transactional Analysis. The simple insight that a lot of our interactions are marred by deliberately or carelessly behaving like a domineering ‘parent’, lecturing or judging an errant ‘child’, describes a lot of what happens at work.

I was congratulated this week for doing an hour-long ‘all staff’ talk without once descending into parent-child. Apparently I was ‘adult to adult’ throughout. But the funny thing is, I wasn’t conscious of it. It was simply a case of being open, honest, respectful and genuinely answering the questions people asked. I used to be quick, slick and evasive. Now I’m slower and straighter – a good thing I think.

But I’ve also learnt that there’s still a space for the ‘free child’ at work. That’s when someone comes over all reproving or domineering and you prick their ‘parental bubble’ with a nifty joke at their expense. It’s risky, but done right it doesn’t half work. A bit of ‘free child’ brings some fun too, some laughter, a feeling things are ok and makes for a happier day. As Aristotle would advise it’s all about finding the golden mean between ‘boor’ and ‘buffoon’. He generally gets these things about right.

To finish, a happy chapter on our local community. I write on return from a public meeting, where we overcame some spirited and sustained resistance to more play equipment, in our once bleak – but now thriving – community park. People overlooking feared noise and teenagers and graffiti. Not unreasonable, but there’s a wider community to serve.

I said a few words in favour, but the Chair – a volunteer of course as all the best people are – managed the meeting with great dignity and some skill. I wrote to him just now to say:

You managed that really really well. Inviting everyone to speak – individually – but not allowing ding dongs was the genius of your chairmanship. It kept it civil, kept us from polarising and allowed people to be heard without hijacking. In the end defeat was calm and dignified not angry and litigious.

His skill was helping us to stay adult, as we discussed children. Being the best of both is what I’m working on.

Aristotle, Life, Work

As I wrote the other week, I now know the cognitive cost of self-control is ‘ego depletion’. In Wired’s less technical terms, acts of self-control ‘piss the ego off’ and attract us to angry thoughts, words and deeds.

‘Ego depletion’ has sometimes caused me to undo my good works with an ‘unnecessary’ withering remark or ‘unduly’ bleak assessment. But whilst these may seem ‘unnecessary’ or ‘undue’ in the eyes of others – and damaging certainly – experience, and now evidence, show a ‘depleted ego’ demands its redress. Is there a better way? This week, I discovered, that laughter works just as well as scything remarks in topping up the cognitive cost of self-control.

I was in an absolutely packed three day management meeting in Madrid. Travel, time differences, lots of people, lots of subjects, lots of personalities and inevitably a certain amount of self-control required to navigate with aplomb. Surely the perfect tee up for one of my incongruous blasts. But this week I didn’t do it.

Of course I was tempted. Tired, hot, periodically irritated and regularly in receipt of the ‘gift’ of feedback, a good put down or an acerbic ‘reality check’ was sorely tempting for a sore ego. But I didn’t do it. Instead, I applied what I have learned in recent months and years: watch my energy, leave other people’s stuff alone if it doesn’t really concern me, avoid tangling unnecessarily. Best of all though, I stumbled upon some humour.

Humour in big meetings is a delicate balance. People are often more ready to laugh ‘at’ you than ‘with’ you. As Aristotle rightly points out there is a fine line between ‘boor’ and ‘buffoon’. But a winning smile and an amusing turn of phrase was sometimes all it took to lift the mood when the whole room was just as ‘ego depleted’ as I was.

The net result? I left with the job done – feeling tired, but cheerful – and with smiling goodbyes all round. Much better than angry with myself, diffident and apologetic for unnecessary barbs.

In sum, a moment of laughter tops up a depleted ego far more effectively than a verbal headbut – however tempting…