Humor as a psycholinguistic mechanism of emotional regulation under stress

Abstract

The article examines humor as a psycholinguistic mechanism of emotional regulation under conditions of psychological stress. The study is grounded in the view of emotional regulation as a language-mediated process, in which humor is conceptualized as a form of cognitive reappraisal realized through semantic reinterpretation and pragmatic reframing of experience. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between humor use as a coping strategy, affective states, and stress indicators, as well as to experimentally test the short-term regulatory effects of humorous linguistic stimuli. The research combined correlational and experimental approaches. The survey sample included 384 adult participants. The experimental component employed a pre–post design with a complete-case subsample of 40 participants assigned to experimental and control groups. Measures included the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14), a Visual Analogue Scale of situational stress (VAS), the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), and an author-developed questionnaire assessing humor as a coping strategy. Experimental manipulation involved brief exposure to humorous linguistic stimuli following a stress-inducing cognitive task. The results indicated that greater use of humor as a coping strategy was associated with lower perceived and situational stress and with a more adaptive affective profile characterized by higher positive affect and lower negative affect. Adaptive humor styles, particularly self-enhancing and affiliative humor, showed stronger associations with favorable emotional outcomes than potentially maladaptive styles. Experimental findings demonstrated that humorous linguistic stimuli led to short-term reductions in situational stress and negative affect and to increases in positive affect, whereas neutral content produced no comparable changes. These findings support a conceptual model in which humor influences stress indirectly through affective regulation and highlight humor as a functional language-mediated mechanism of emotional adaptation under stress.

Disclosure Statement

The author reported no potential conflicts of interest.

Generative AI Statement

During the preparation of this work the author used ChatGPT (GPT-4.о) in order to draft and edit parts of the manuscript text and to search for and summarise relevant literature. After using this service, the author reviewed and edited the content as needed and takes full responsibility for the content of the publication.