The Importance Of Humor In Communication And Its Effects
When we talk to a person or an audience, the communication process in which we engage is very far from being a simple exchange of data and textual information, which can be reduced to words and numbers.
It is, furthermore, an encounter between two or more beings with the capacity to feel emotions, and that conditions how we express ourselves and how we interpret what others say. And precisely for this reason, humor is a key element in our way of communicating. Let’s see how humor influences us when interacting with others and socializing in general
Humor is a set of psychological and social processes that leads us to interpret information by emphasizing the comic side of what surrounds us (or even ourselves).
From an evolutionary perspective, humor is considered is strongly linked to a series of innate predispositions to laughter This last phenomenon, the act of laughing, is a universal characteristic of the human being; Members of all societies, tribes and ethnic groups laugh, although the sense of humor that gives rise to it has many variants and depends greatly on each culture.
Why is it that practically everyone has the ability to laugh spontaneously and not deliberately? It is hypothesized that laughter is part of a psychobiological mechanism that allows us to communicate when we do things with an apparent and literal purpose, and when we are just “playing”; This would help give rise to social learning situations. In fact, phenomena homologous to human laughter exist in animal species as diverse as orcas, certain species of parrot and at least part of the canids, among others. However, not all of these animals “laugh” through vocalizations.
Thus, humor is a derivation of that mechanism that has evolved to improve our ability to survive, until giving rise to a predisposition that allows us to create very diverse cultural products and enjoy life in new ways among other things.
However, as we will see, humor does not only serve to experience immediate pleasure or to transcend through forms of artistic expression. It is also essential to communicate with others in a spoken or written way; Let’s see why.
Why humor is essential in communication
Let’s see what role humor plays in any communication process, whether face to face or in writing.
1. It can be used to demonstrate a spirit of harmony
Genuine laughter produced by humor is a pleasant experience, and that is why, when someone makes a joke or joke that does not serve to ridicule the interlocutor, It is implied that he tries to maintain a good relationship with this This is a subtle and indirect way of bringing positions closer together through this type of gift.
2. Helps relativize the importance of emotionally painful situations
It has been shown that, in many cases, humor serves to reinterpret the experiences and memories that caused us emotional pain causing us to begin to accept these events as a reality that does not always have to be judged or valued morally.
That is to say, humor can serve not only to deny that it has happened that hurt us, but to accept that it happened, but that it does not always have to be seen as a drama. This is a process similar to emotional labeling, in which putting words to what makes us feel bad helps us overcome it.
Besides, These processes can lead to improvements both individually and collectively as these pranks can involve a wider audience.
In short, humor helps prevent us from turning taboo topics that we must address if we want to overcome them, and by doing so, we enrich the diversity of ways in which we can interpret these topics, instead of only having a purely “tragic” vision of them. facts.
3. Allows you to create communication contexts
The humor allows us to make clear in seconds the more or less informal nature of a communicative context This helps let others know how to behave and what to expect from an encounter.
For example, the fact of making a joke in a work meeting, although it does not completely deny the seriousness of the context, provides nuances, pointing out that in that organization or company other human facets are taken into account that go beyond the professional; Therefore, the company’s values and its work and organizational philosophy can be intuited if that is part of the normality in this type of events. In cases like this, humor provides information about the “rules of the game” of a group or team.
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