Why Humor Matters for Happiness (The Science of…

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Humor can help us with stress, anxiety and feeling more connected to others. But is humor connected to mindfulness? And how can we find more of it?

Episode summary:

For Emmy- nominated comedian Josh Johnson, humor has always come naturally. But over time, Josh has found it difficult to reignite his passion for comedy outside of his career. For our show, Josh wrote down three funny things he experienced every day for a week. He noticed that funny moments often arise from a series of interconnected events, and that they aren’t always something we can prepare for. Instead, it’s the unexpected moments that often lead to a comedic sense of joy. Later, we hear from psychologist Sonja Heintz about the connection between various types of humor and mindfulness, and how engaging in mindful practices can spur more positive and benevolent types of humor.

Practice:
Learn more about this practice at Greater Good In Action:

1. Take 10 minutes a day for at least a week to write down 3 of the funniest moments you experienced throughout the day.

2. Write down why you think these funny moments happened.

3. Remember to write down as much detail about the moment as possible. These funny moments do not have to be of major importance.

https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/three_funny_things
Today’s guests:

Josh Johnson is an Emmy-nominated comedian and writer for The Daily Show. This interview was recorded before the Writer’s Guild and Screen Actors’ Guild strikes began.

Learn more about Josh Johnson: https://www.joshjohnsoncomedy.com/

Follow Josh on Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/33f4nkv2

Follow Josh on Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/3txe78kf
Sonja Heintz is a psychologist at the University of Plymouth who specializes in positive psychology.

Learn more about Sonja and her work: https://tinyurl.com/mt4vs6cx
Resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

Why Laughing Is Good for You (The Science of Happiness Podcast): https://tinyurl.com/4z3snujy

How Laughter Brings Us Together: https://tinyurl.com/2cnapztk

Four Funny Ways Laughter Is Good for You: https://tinyurl.com/5x6d9jp3

How a Little Humor Can Improve Your Work Life: https://tinyurl.com/bdzz6thx
More Resources on Humor:

BBC – How comedy makes us better people: https://tinyurl.com/ytywxb94

Harvard – Humor, Laughter, and Those Aha Moments: https://tinyurl.com/ujjmzc75

Ted – The Superpower of Humour: https://tinyurl.com/53chw3nz

When Everything Is Heavy, a Touch of Humor Can Help: https://tinyurl.com/s6ydmyu4

What are three funny things that happened in your life recently? Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Help us share The Science of Happiness!

Rate us on Spotify and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/4uyr2w35

Transcript:

Shuka Kalantari: Hi this is Shuka Kalantari, the executive producer of The Science of Happiness. This week we’re talking about the science of humor with the amazing comedian Josh Johnson and I want to note that this interview was recorded before the Screen Actors and Writers Guild strikes. Thanks and enjoy the episode.

Josh Johnson: Growing up, people would tell me that I was funny. And I started trying to do standup. I moved to Chicago and, and just sort of dove in. When I started comedy, everything was funny.

Josh Johnson performing: Do you remember when you believed in grownups? Do you remember when you were little and you were like, “The big people! They know!” And then you got older and you were like, “(Bleep) nobody knows!”

Josh Johnson: I do liken doing comedy to doing magic because when you start out doing magic, especially one of the reasons kids are so attracted to magic is that there’s a secret. It’s a secret that only you can have unless you decide to share it. And so as you’re learning it, it loses the secret to you. It loses some of the magic. You understand the moves, you understand the slight of hand, you can even guess at how something’s being done. I want to reconnect with how excited and how much fun it was when I first started trying to do standup. Like to, get back to, if possible, how I felt when I started comedy.

Dacher Keltner: Welcome to the Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner.

Laughter and humor are some of the most beautiful aspects of human evolution.

When we laugh, we get a dose of endorphins. Our parasympathetic nervous system kick in action, helping with things like stress and anxiety. And probably most importantly, shared laughter brings us together.

Josh Johnson knew from a young age that laughter truly is medicine – and so he made a career out of comedy.

But as with many things, the magic can die down after a while.

So for our show Josh tried a practice shown to bring people more happiness through focusing on what’s funny in everyday life.

We’re gonna hear from Josh, and also look at research about the powerful connection between humor and mindfulness.

More laughter, after this short break.

Josh Johnson performing: I’m such a theater nerd that one time I was talking about football, and forgot the word quarterback. And I saw him and I panicked. I saw him and I was like “Oh he? He – he plays the lead. He’s not one of the understudies on the bench, he’s the star, he’s the best one.”

Dacher Keltner: That was comedian Josh Johnson. You can check out more of his work at joshjohnsoncomedy.com. Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner. Josh has been nominated for an Emmy, he’s performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and he writes for The Daily Show. He’s doing pretty well in his career.

But over the years Josh has lost some of that passion for humor outside of work—so for our show, he did a week-long practice where he wrote about three funny things that happened each day and then answered the question: “Why did this funny event happen?”

When psychologists tested this practice in their lab, they found just one week of writing about funny things made people happier even six months after the experiment.

Josh, thanks for being here.

Josh Johnson:Hey, thanks for having me.

Dacher Keltner: Of all the things you could have done, you chose something in your sweet spot, you know, humor.

Josh Johnson: Yeah, I did.

Dacher Keltner: Why did you choose the practice?

Josh Johnson: I think that for me the three funny things It didn’t feel like things that were gonna have to eventually be stand up and I wanted to get back to, if possible, how I felt when I started comedy. And I think that for me, doing this practice was a way to reconnect with how excited and how much fun and how I thought when I first started doing comedy, like now — once you’ve been doing comedy long enough, you’re pretty ruthless with jokes. You’re like, all right, that’s a funny idea, but it’s not gonna go anywhere. Everything’s going through a filter all the time and it becomes pretty categorical and, and pretty broken down to the point of math almost in, in your jokes.

Dacher Keltner: Yep I hear ya.

Josh Johnson: And so doing this practice was a way to allow some of that passion back in without the pressure of it having to become something.

Dacher Keltner: What did you write about? Tell us some of the, sort of the funny things that you wrote about over the course of the week.

Josh Johnson: I got to see a friend, I was doing a show and I got to see a friend and he is also so funny that he’s the type of person that is so exciting to be around because his perspective opens up all the things that are funny and all of his perspective around life is, is such a gift because it’s so funny — the way that he thinks. And we were chatting and he said, he was talking about, you know, his sort of financial situation and he was like, “Man, I’m in a bad way right now. Like I had to hit up my mom, and I asked my mom if I could borrow a hundred dollars for four hours. I needed to run some errands. I needed to put some gas in the car. If I wasn’t able to put gas in the car, I was gonna have to cancel or, and lie to you and say I had COVID.”

So then as we were talking, you know, I was about to order an Uber, go home, and I thought to myself, Hey, I really want to spend more time with my friend, is the main goal. And I was like, “Hey, could you give me a ride? And that way I’m not spending any of this money on Uber, I’ll just give you the gas money for the ride, you know?” And he was like, “Yeah, I could give you a ride, but you will have to sit in the backseat like a Uber.”

Josh Johnson: I was like, “Wait, why?” And he’s like, “Look, my car got some smells to it. Okay? And the backseat, I promise you, you’ll be more comfortable. Usually I lie to people and say that the front seat is wet, so that way they don’t even try to sit in the front seat. That way they can’t fully smell the smells.” And I was like, “What smells are you talking about?” And he was like, “It depends all the day, brother.” And then we’re in the car for like 20 minutes on the drive and finally, I was like, “You know, I don’t smell anything. Like I probably could have sat in the front.” And he is like, “If you don’t smell anything, that means it’s a good day.”

Dacher Keltner: Part of the practice is not only do you notice and observe and write about three funny things each day, but then you reflect on why it happened to you or why it was in your life. So, where did that element of the practice take you?

Josh Johnson: I think that there’s so many things at play. It’s like, one, I was coming to town, two, is this the pure serendipity of the fact that the venue already knew Mandal and wanted Mandal to host and I wanted Mandal to host. Then the fact that everything came together for him to be there that night led to this really incredible, really funny thing happening that he then relayed to me, you know?

Dacher Keltner: Yeah

Josh Johnson: And so all these moments, Like we get so stuck on personal inspiration, but that there’s a thing that’s in the, you know, whether you wanna call it like God, the universe, any of it. There’s so many moments that spark up that work, like connections to the next moment. Stringing all of those together, weaves an incredibly beautiful story and a very funny chain of events, you know?

Dacher Keltner: Yeah, absolutely. I’m curious on the day to day how does your personal life, interact with your comedy and humor? How do they fuel one another? How do you look at that dynamic?

Josh Johnson: I mean, it’s so deeply intertwined. They’re woven together now.

I think that there’s a need and a seeking for people to laugh even when they don’t know that they’re actively seeking it. And so if you can fulfill a need before someone even really knows it’s a need that they have, I think it ingratiates you to them much more so than maybe trying to be warm to someone who really just wants to be left alone.

Let’s say you’re on the train and you’ve got your earbuds in and you’re listening to something or you’re reading a book and then someone just tries to come up and be friendly to you. It is not a bad thing. In, and of itself, that is not a bad thing at all. It’s actually a really beautiful thing. It’s a thing that we have a deep longing for. We’re in an age of loneliness right now, but you still probably won’t be fully accepting or present for that sort of gift, whereas with something that’s funny, something that’s funny can happen at any moment. And the laughter is involuntary. It’s not like someone is like, brace yourself, bend your knees a little bit, this is gonna be real funny. It’s just something funny happens and you enjoy it or you enjoy it with people or you’re part of a crowd that all saw it or something.

Dacher Keltner: Yeah.

Josh Johnson: I would suggest this practice not just for the happiness aspect, but to any writer of anything so that they can combat any sort of mental blocks. I think it’s very easy when you are a creative, that you can feel like you have all of these blocks and all these things that you need to overcome to do your work. And the truth of the matter is you only get those blocks and get backed up if you think that your work comes solely from you. If you understand that your work comes from connection. If it comes from interaction and if there’s intersections to all of your ideas, then I think it’s easier to open yourself back up.

If someone walked up to you and said, say something funny right now, and it was all on you. Yes you might draw a blank. But if you say, if you had someone say to you out of nowhere, out of the blue, tell me about something funny that happened to a friend of yours. Well, now I’m thinking friends. Now I’m thinking about all of time. Now I’m thinking about all of my experiences and then picking one of those. And I think that that’s actually where creativity comes from. We like to think of creativity as pure inspiration from an individual. Which is why we herald these artists and movie stars, actors, writers, all these people, because we think that all of it comes from them. It’s like Michelangelo had apprentices, you know? An actor has a script that they play off of and a director that leads them. Directors have a writer, directors have actors. So we are all at the intersection of each other’s greatness and each other’s creativity. And so a practice like this really helps as a reminder to anyone willing to do it, that all the things that you need to be creative are all around you, all the time. When you feel these blocks coming up, they’re blocks that might be coming from self-doubt or potentially even a little bit of self sabotage, but it comes from being too focused on the internal, you know?

Dacher Keltner: Yeah I just want to say here here man, we so often think of imagination and creativity is as this process inside of our minds. And that’s true, you know, but it is about being in the world and observing what’s going on outside of you. including that friend of yours who’s got the smells rotating in his car, that guy –

Josh Johnson: My man, he is so funny.

Dacher Keltner: Well, Josh Johnson, congratulations on all the great work you’re doing in the world and the Emmy nomination and thank you for being on the Science of Happiness.

Josh Johnson: Yeah thank you for having me. I’m glad you had a good time. I had a great time.

Dacher Keltner: Me too.

Do you know someone who could use a good laugh, or just a little more humor in their lives? Share this episode with them.

You know, there is a surprising number of similarities between the benefits of humor – and mindfulness. We’ll explore the science after this short break.

Hi everyone, welcome back. This is Dacher and we’re talking about laughter and humor today on The Science of Happiness.

Our podcast’s executive producer Shuka Kalantari reports on another reason why we should embrace humor—and it has to do with mindfulness.

Shuka Kalantari: Thanks, Dacher. We know from countless studies that practicing mindfulness is good for us. It helps manage anxiety, stress, depression, and physical pain. It keeps us from ruminating on the past, by grounding us in the present, and so much more.

And then, of course, there’s humor.

Sonja Heintz: So the idea that humor, or the sense of humor, is something positive has been around for many centuries now.

Shuka Kalantari:Sonja Heintz is a psychologist and humor expert. And she had a little epiphany.

Sonja Heintz: There are certain similarities between humor or certain styles of humor and mindfulness. And we thought, well, let’s empirically investigate those.

Shuka Kalantari: She wanted to find out exactly which types of humor were the mindful ones — and if training people to practice mindfulness would enhance those kinds of humor.

She and her team at the University of Plymouth in the UK surveyed 252 adults to see how mindful they were, and what comic styles they had such as fun or benevolent humor, or wit or mockery and sarcasm and cynicism.

Shuka Kalantari: Satire and irony weren’t connected with mindfulness at all.

Sonja Heintz: And then we also found that some aspects relate negatively to mindfulness. We especially found negative relationships between sarcasm and cynicism and the aspect of non-judging, because obviously sarcasm and cynicism involved criticizing others by means of humor so that’s incompatible with the mindfulness idea of not judging, and also wit, was related to mindfulness. Wit is really someone who is really making up funny stories and creative stories on the fly.

You’re good at observing your environments and you’re also good at describing at what’s happening without judgment.

Shuka Kalantari: The most mindful comic style was benevolent humor.

Sonja Heintz: Benevolent humor is actually an old concept.

It’s really more this serene attitude towards life that you just acknowledge that, well, humans are not perfect. Things will go wrong. And you treat all these things in a humorous and relaxed fashion.

Shuka Kalantari: So like, chuckling at that one friend of yours who’s always late, instead of cracking a sarcastic joke about it.

Sonja Heintz: You would not be depressed about it or angry about it, but you would just smile it away and, maybe get some amusement out of it.

Shuka Kalantari: We already know from studies that taking a mindfulness course will likely make you more mindful. But Heinz wanted to know if it could also affect your sense of humor.

So she recruited 63 people with no previous meditation experience. And put them in mindfulness training classes.

Sonja Heintz: And then we had a waitlist group against which we compared our results.

Shuka Kalantari: The mindfulness groups met for two hours a week, for eight weeks straight. At the end of it, they reported feeling more positive types of humor, like benevolence and wit.

And it wasn’t short term. The effects lasted six months.

Sonja Heintz: Maybe longer, but we didn’t assess the, uh, participants longer. So we don’t know.

I think the big takeaway is that we always need to take into account the complexity of humor and of different styles of humor, and at the same time. that mindfulness could maybe benefit from being infused with some humor, especially benevolent humor.

Shuka Kalantari: We know how crucial self-compassion is when we’re in pain, next week on The Science of Happiness, we’ll learn about how compassion for others can also support our own suffering.

Rexx Raj: I could see like he really wanted to cry, right? But he was trying to hold it in and I remember telling him, I’m like, bro, you don’t have to be strong in this moment, bro. And he started crying and then I cried a little bit. And that’s what made me realize like, man this is a space that needs to be touched upon.

Shuka Kalantari: How compassion can support us in grief, next time, on The Science of Happiness.

Dacher Keltner: Thanks, Shuka. I’m Dacher Keltner. Thanks for joining us.

Our Executive Producer of Audio is Shuka Kalantari. Our producer is Haley Gray. Sound designer Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. And our Associate Producer is Maarya Zafar. Our executive director is Jason Marsh. The Science of Happiness is a co-production of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and PRX.

I’m Dacher Keltner. Thank you all for laughing with us on The Science of Happiness.