The Regulating Function Of The Sense Of Humor On Pressure: Effect And Mechanism

Pressure is the response of individual anxiety caused by the interaction of environmental requirement and individual characteristics. The process of emerging pressure is like this: objective pressure (the origin of pressure)----- affecting factors---- response of pressure (subjective pressure), among which affecting factors mainly refers to individuality or the way of responding, and the functions of affecting factors can be classified into two categories: regulating function and mediate function. Regulating function refers to objective pressure's being affected by the individuality and the way of responding during the process of objective pressure's tuning into subjective one; while mediate function refers to objective pressure's affecting subjective pressure through individuality and the way of responding.Sense of humor is a kind of stable individual psychological character or a individual discrepancy variant and also integrity of cognition, mood and behavior during the process of individual's experiencing, understanding, appreciating, creating, transmitting and using the humor. Sense of humor is both a element of individuality and a way of responding. Therefore, it is one of the affecting factors between objective pressure and subjective pressure. If sense of humor is indeed an affecting factor of objective pressure and subjective pressure, objective pressure is affected by sense of humor when it is converted into subjective pressure, while objective pressure is not affected by subjective pressure through humor. Therefore, the quality of function of humor on pressure is regulating, not mediating.Regulating function of sense of humor is not only full of praise in the field of theory, but also of importance in the field of empirical research. The research method of combining experiment in laboratory with self report on regulating function of sense of humor on pressure is adopted in the field of empirical research. In addition to, a recent specific research mode is called nonreaction measures by Lefcourt and Martin. However, up to now there is no certain and consistent conclusion of regulating function of sense of humor on pressure.Nonreaction measures ( Research 1, Research 2 and Research 6) and experiment method (experiment 3,experiment 4 and Research 5) are mainly adopted in this research. The author discusses whether sense of humor function as regulation and the concrete situation of its regulating function through measure of figure and experiment in laboratory. In Research 1, regulating function of various levels of sense of humor is examined on condition that undergraduates are subjects, examination is regarded as objective pressure, the level of anxiety is target of subjective pressure, the quality of sense of humor is not distinguished. In Research 2, the types of sense of humor are classified according to the four kinds of styles (according to Martin's questionnaire of style of humor) of subjects'sense of humor., and disparity of regulating function of sense of humor on medium pressure on the same condition as Research 1. In Research 3, mathematic examination that represents pressure of psychological operation, regulating function of sense of humor on various types of objective pressure is examined on condition that Task Stroop stands for cognition pressure, interview of interpersonal structure stands for interpersonal pressure, stimulation of cold water stands for biological pressure, friendly contents of humor are materials of regulating pressure, electric resistance of skin is target of subjective pressure. Medium pressure is adopted as objective pressure in the previous three researches in this dissertation because it is well known that medium pressure stands for objective pressure and task of medium pressure is adopted to stand for objective pressure. While in Research 4, high-level pressure is adopted and the other targets are the same as Research 3. The purpose of it is to study regulating function of sense of humor on various degree of pressure compared with the results of Research 3. Research 5 is based on the previous study results. Returning equation of regulating function of sense of humor on pressure is constructed in order to probe the predictable model of sense of humor on subjective pressure. Because at present the unanimous views of regulating mechanism of sense of humor are that sense of humor regulates pressure through three types of mechanism (cognition center mechanism, problem center mechanism and mood center mechanism), respective contribution of three types of mechanism in regulating pressure of sense of humor is studied.Conclusion:(1) High-level sense of humor regulates on pressure better than low-level sense of humor, which proves sense of humor has regulating function on pressure.(2) More friendly sense of humor regulates on pressure better than less friendly sense of humor.(3) Sense of humor has regulating function on various types of pressure in the task of medium pressure, but regulating function varies with the passing of time. The disparity of regulating function is prominent within one minute of interference of sense of humor, while this disparity disappears during two minutes.(4) Sense of humor has no regulating function in the task of high-level pressure.(5) Returning equation of regulating function of sense of humor on pressure is constructed and the predictable model of sense of humor on subjective pressure is probed. Objective pressure and humor determine 49.8% of subjective pressure, and humor determine 12.4% of subjective pressure.(6) Regulating mechanism of sense of humor is that sense of humor regulates pressure through three types of mechanism, among which problem center mechanism contributes the most.In summary, according to the result of researches, it is suggested that people use more friendly humor. Although less friendly, aggressive, self-derogatory humor may achieve one's goal or feel better, it can not relieve one's pressure. Therefore, less friendly, aggressive, self-derogatory humor should use infrequently. Individual can regulate various types of pressure with humor, but sense of humor has no regulating function when one is over-pressured. It is recommended that one should not use humor when others feel over-pressured in order not to have the negative effect. It is also advised that one consider the mood of humor, cognition wisdom and use it skillfully to affiliate with others when he uses humor in order to make various kinds of mechanism work.