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This article synthesizes a broad body of research in order to propose a concise overview of how laughter functions as a heuristic for social situations and cultural artifacts. It argues that all laughter is indelibly associated with positivity. Phenomena traditionally interpreted as contradicting this claim – such as malicious laughter and pathological laughter – only serve to reinforce an understanding we are born with which connects laughter to positivity. I argue that laughter is perceived as positive or otherwise because context either reinforces an innate understanding that links laughter to positivity, or else forces that understanding into some degree of contradiction. Either way, the link is never dissolved. Basing its claims on evolutionary theory and emotion research, and informed by the two-thousand-plus-year history of the philosophy of humor, this study is the first to systematically discuss those aspects of laughter that transcend context and subject.

Using the White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD) and the State of the Union (SOTU) as stimuli, our experiment ( N =403) examines the differential effect of exposure to humorous vs. serious presidential speech on the likelihood of engaging in post-exposure message elaboration. The results suggest that viewers are more likely to engage in message elaboration when viewing serious presidential speech like the SOTU rather than the more humorous WHCD. Additionally, disposition toward the president fails to moderate the impact of varied speech exposure on message elaboration. Our results ultimately show that, while WHCD humor may be quickly discounted, it can also provide a strategic distraction from political content. We discuss the implications of these results and confirm our main findings across the two most recent U.S. presidential administrations.

Depending on how it is used, humor can have both positive (Lang and Lee 2010. Workplace humor and organizational creativity. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 21(1). 46–60) and negative (Moran and Hughes 2006. Coping with stress: Social work students and humour. Social Work Education 25(5). 501–517) effects on well-being in the workplace. Even when attempts at humor are well intended, they may end up being misinterpreted and doing more harm than good. In the current paper, we suggest that humor can be used in the workplace to cultivate better relationships, create a more positive work environment, and prevent unintended detrimental effects of misplaced or misused humor. We present findings from our study that examines the relationship between humor and well-being, with social support serving as the mediator. The positive relationship between humor and well-being is explained through increased social support in the workplace. These findings suggest that conflicting results in the relationship between humor and well-being could be explained through the theory that only certain types of humor (such as positive humor) increase social support, and therefore well-being. These findings can be used to help employees and managers understand how to better use humor to have positive effects in the workplace.

This paper provides a semiotic analysis of political cartoons published in Jordan prior to and during the 2013 elections. It seeks to depict the sociopolitical context after the 2011 Arab Spring and focuses on the changes to people’s practices and stances toward politics and politicians. The data consist of political cartoons by the Jordanian cartoonist Imad Hajjaj drawn during the parliamentary election campaigns in 2007, 2010, and 2013. This paper argues that the humor generated in cartoons conveys strong messages that require an analysis of the interaction between the different signs in cartoons and their social and ideological implications. A model of analysis derived from Barthes’ perception of denotation and connotation theories is adopted. This model is comprised of three types of messages: linguistic, literal, and symbolic. The analysis identifies different messages in the cartoons before and after 2011. Unlike the cartoons from 2007 to 2010, the linguistic and denoted messages in the cartoons of 2013 connoted a sense of salvation, achievement, victory, freedom, dignity, and democracy, merits that had rarely been highlighted in previous cartoons. This attitude is reflected by themes such as the positive image of the young, public awareness of political and national issues, and resistance towards corruption. The study sheds light on this neglected area of visual communication in the Arab world and hopes to provide new insights into the fields of semiotics, pragmatics, multimodal analysis, and critical discourse analysis.

This paper examined the reliability and validity of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory (STCI) in Mainland China. The Chinese translation of the STCI-T<106i>, STCI-S<45i> and the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale (TSWLS) were administered to 476 university students (313 females, 157 males, 6 missing; 20.40 ± 1.35 years of age). Results showed that the STCI-T<106> and the STCI-S<45> had high Cronbach alphas ranging from 0.60 to 0.92 in Mainland China, and the factorial structures of the instruments were supported. The STCI-T<60> and STCI-S<30> were developed utilizing three criteria for the selection of items. Cronbach alphas were satisfactory ranging from 0.67 to 0.94. The factor structure of the items appeared to be highly generalizable in Mainland China. Joint factor analyses of the state and trait items yielded three factors (cheerfulness, seriousness and bad mood) both as traits and states with the homologous concepts positively correlated. As expected, cheerfulness correlated negatively with bad mood, and cheerfulness correlated negatively with state seriousness. Meanwhile, seriousness correlated positively with bad mood. Moreover, life satisfaction was related positively with cheerfulness and negatively with bad mood, and could be predicted by high cheerfulness and low bad mood. Applications of the STCI-T<60> and STCI-S<30> in the Chinese context and future research are discussed.

Since Ancient Greece satirists are feared figures in any group articulation. Often protected by anonymity, authors have defied political and social order with a harsh and unpleasant sense of humour, which pushes the limits of political correction. This form based in breaking news and everyday life has a particularly suitable space in new media. Twitter, by means of its promptness and need for concision, could be considered a perfect ground for this kind of humour. Provocation and censorship of political attitudes are the objectives of many twitter accounts whose followers echo by commenting and retweeting. Interactivity allows the production of a text without closure which interweaves a myriad of positions, different from the voice of the satirist. My case study is the Twitter account Masa Enfurecida, which targeted for five years the Spanish political and social everyday life by quoting and reversing public messages. With close to 124.000 followers, @masaenfurecida, an anonymous account, impacts political debate and influences popular communication as some repeated expressions become part of the talk of the day. The tweets of Masa Enfurecida are brief pieces that can be considered a pure form of satire, which is transformed in the chains of answers and retweets of the followers.