How Does Humor Affect Health?

In a study conducted by Boyle & Joss-Reid (2004), the effect of humor on health was investigated. Data was collected from a sample of 504 individuals who were divided into three groups (community group, university students, and respondents with a medical condition). RAND 36-Item Health Survey (Hays, Sherbourne & Mazel, 1993) and Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (Thorson & Powell, 1993) was completed by the participants. RAND Health Survey yields eight dimensions of Health-Related Quality of Life: Physical functioning, role limitations due to physical health, role limitations due to emotional problems, energy/fatigue, emotional well-being, social functioning, pain, general health and health change. It was hypothesized that humor would be significantly associated with health and that individuals having a greater sense of humor would report better health as compared with those with less humor.
Multiple Regression analyses revealed that humor contributed a unique variance to three subscales of health for the community group: role limitations, energy/fatigue and emotional wellness. For medical students, humor contributed only 4% variance to one of the subscales of health, namely, pain. It was found that as the scores on pain subscale decreased which indicated that pain became worse, an increase in humor scores was found. The results were interpreted in the way that humor may have been used as a coping mechanism to relieve pain. For the student group, humor contributed only 4% variance to one of the subscales of health, namely, emotional wellness. However, the findings of the research, to an extent, serve as evidence suggesting the contribution of humor to