Talk:Humor study

After reading the article, here are my suggestions for improvement: 1-Can more detail be added regarding the Szameitat (2009) study... why were the recognition rates so low? I don't know what this sentence means: "The four emotional states displayed a full range of high and low sender arousal and valence."

2-Humor and Health section, first sentence: What does "undoing negative affect" mean? The last sentence is also confusing: "In parallel with the distancing role plays in coping with distress, it supports the broaden and build theory that positive emotions lead to increased multilateral cognitive pathway and social resource building."

3-The humor and aging section is not well organized. The third paragraph is particularly non-cohesive. The fourth paragraph claims that humor provides a sense of achievement and that humor can substitute for sex and aggression. The basis for (and connection between) these claims is unclear.

4-In the conclusions section, I'm unsure what is meant by "either the aesthetic or umbrella conceptualization of humor." Jesserjames (talk) 19:49, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

This page is nothing other than a statement of one perspective on humor. It is non-representative and ignores many important details. It summarizes the view of Martin Seligman and his followers on what aspects of humor are interesting to them. It ignores the difference between humor and laughter, as if they were all the same. It does the same with fun and playfulness, as if these were all just alternative words for the same thing. The English language does not have dozens of words that mean exactly the same thing so that poets can have flexibility. Each word has a slightly different meaning, and simply conflating them all together is anti-intellectual at best. I see no hope of refining this page successfully because one cannot begin an intelligent discussion of anything with the assumption that everything "not positive" should be simply set aside. The advocacy of positivity and optimism should not be allowed to pass for scholarship. This page should be removed, and left to a humor scholar to write. I would suggest Rod A. Martin at the University of Western Ontario or Viktor Raskin at Purdue.

Jimlyttle (talk) 17:34, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I've done a bit of work on this article, and while it still isn't perfect, it has clearly improved. I am hoping that more people will contribute as well. --Sue Rangell &#91; citation needed &#93; 03:28, 30 October 2012 (UTC)