An interview with Dr. John Morreall
by Alexandra Ilie
Our interviewee John Morreall, PhD, Professor of religion at the College of William and Mary, has been studying humor for more than 25 years. He is the current president of the International Society for Humor Studies. Morreall teaches several courses at William and Mary, “Comedy, Tragedy and Religion”, “Modern Religious Thought”, “Theory and Method in the Study of Religion”, and “Roman Catholicism Since 1800″. He has given more than 400 talks and seminars on humor in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan.
EJOP: Although you are philosophy professor, you have been studying humor for 25 years and you have also conducted over 400 talks and seminars on the values of humor. How did you become interested in this field?
John Morreall: I was a young philosophy professor at a competitive university in the late 1970s. I knew that I had to publish a book, but did not want to write about the same old topics philosophers had written about since Plato. So I chose humor, as something important but neglected by scholars. At that time, psychologists were starting to do interesting research on humor and laughter, and people were organizing international conferences. So I made friends fast. Once I had published books on humor, I started receiving invitations from business and medical groups to talk about the benefits of humor. That led me to create the company Humorworks (www.humorworks.com) in 1989, through which I give seminars.
EJOP: Many corporations have hired humor consultants in order to work out certain problems. What sort of background should anyone have in order to become a humor consultant?
John Morreall: To be a humor consultant, you should know about the psychology of humor– how it reduces stress, promotes creative problem-solving, and helps people get along with each other. You should also have work experience in different fields, so that you can relate to your different audiences. Most importantly, you need a sense of humor yourself, especially the ability to tell funny stories. Doing a humor seminar for a corporation or hospital is not an academic lecture—it is just as much entertainment as it is providing information.
EJOP: What theory do you consider would provide a comprehensive explanation of humor, laughter and playfulness?
John Morreall: I think that the most reasonable overall approach is to think of humor as a kind of play in which we enjoy incongruities, that is enjoy experiences that violate our ordinary mental sets and expectations. As Paul McGhee, one of the pioneers of the psychology of humor, says, humor is cognitive play. As for laughter, I like the theory Jan van Hoof proposed in the 1970s and Robert Provine recently used in his book Laughter. They say that laughter evolved from the open-mouth display of primates, which was as a play signal. In early humans, laughter was a way for one person to indicate to another that what they were doing—chasing, tickling, hiding, wrestling—was not intended seriously, but was just “in fun.” Without such a play signal, chasing or tickling would be interpreted as real aggression.
EJOP: Humor was overlooked at work for a long time, but in the last years managers have started to appreciate the values of humor. What are the benefits of humor in the workplace?
John Morreall: The benefits of humor that I talk about in my seminars fall under three headings. First, humor is physically and psychologically healthy, especially in reducing stress. It also reduces pain, and, according to some research, boosts the immune system. Secondly, humor promotes mental flexibility—creative thinking, coping with change, recovering from failure and mistakes. People who have seen a funny video, for example, and then take a test of creative thinking, do better than people who have watched an informational video. And thirdly, humor serves as social lubricant, reducing friction between people.
EJOP: Looking at the maladaptive styles of humor, to what extent can these forms be considered humor per se and to what extent humiliation, aggressiveness or anger?
John Morreall: Rod Martin, who just succeeded me as President of the International Society for Humor Research, is a psychology professor in London, Canada. He has written a lot about beneficial styles of humor and maladaptive styles, such as sarcastic humor. You might contact him for an interview! As your question suggests, there is nothing essentially humorous about humiliation, aggression or anger. We could have any of them without anything being funny. But sometimes these negative interactions do take the form of humor. The simple fact is that humor can hurt as well as help.
EJOP: As we have moved into a postindustrial society, stress has become a life-style. Might humor work effectively against stress?
John Morreall: Yes, humor does work against stress. Stress chemicals in the blood such as epinephrine are reduced after laughter. And while stress gives us a feeling of helplessness, humor gives us a feeling of control. Freud talked about that in his 1928 essay “Humor.” Joking about a problem is doing something about it, if only seeing it in a new way.
EJOP: Are there differences between men’s sense of humor and women’s sense of humor?
John Morreall: Some studies show that men tend to use humor aggressively, and that women tend to use humor cooperatively, to support other people. That shows in practical jokes, which are almost exclusively male. When I lived in Florida, there was a case of two men digging a trench for an electric line. One man found a vine that looked like a snake. For a joke, he threw it above the other man’s head, shouting, “SNAKE”! The other man died of a heart attack. Women don’t do things like that.
EJOP: Could we possibly consider sense of humor a personality trait?
John Morreall: The phrase “sense of humor” has several meanings. Sometimes it means the ability to appreciate humor. Sometimes it means the ability to create humor. Rod Martin and Willibald Ruch (Zurich, Switzerland) are two psychologists who have studied humor as a personality trait. That includes a long-term disposition to see the funny side of everyday situations.
EJOP: Nowadays we come across both healthy forms of humor and maladaptive ones (teasing, putting other people down, sarcasm, boorish humor). Could positive forms of humor challenge the negative ones?
John Morreall: Sometimes you can challenge maladaptive humor with healthy forms of humor. But it’s difficult, unless you are very creative. When someone is putting you down, it’s hard to think up a funny response that doesn’t simply put them down.
EJOP: There is a common misperception (coming from both employees and managers) that humor is the opposite of work and seriousness. How could this negative perception about humor turn into a constructive one?
John Morreall: Yes, many people in business still see humor as the opposite of work and seriousness. I distinguish between seriousness and solemnity. You can be engaged in a task without shutting out all playfulness. Creativity studies have shown that many of the most profitable ideas have come when people were thinking playfully. Humor is valuable, too, as a social lubricant when you are working with other people. We have different ways of working, and so we tend to annoy each other. Laughing about our differences helps us get along better and so be more productive.
EJOP: Religion has often condemned laughter and playfulness. Even in the Bible there are warnings against laughter. We all know you are a professor of religion and also a humor scholar. What connection do you consider might be between religion and humor?
John Morreall: There are several connections between religion and humor, which I discuss in my book Comedy, Tragedy and Religion. The big one is that both religion and humor involve seeing familiar things in new ways. All religions, East and West, teach that the way things usually look is not how they really are, and that we should look at things “in the big picture,” with cosmic perspective. In Hinduism, the world of ordinary perception is maya, it is illusory. The goal of life is moksha, enlightenment, which Hindus compare to waking from a dream or getting a joke. Buddhists emphasize the constant change in the world. Our sense of stability, especially our belief in a stable “myself,” they say, is illusory. The enlightened person (which is what buddha means) is like the person who gets a joke and laughs. Zen Buddhism is especially rich in humor. Here is a poem by Masahide:
My barn burned down
Now I have a better view
Of the rising moon
EJOP: What qualities do you believe a prolific researcher and professor should have?
John Morreall: A prolific researcher and professor needs many qualities. For me, the most important is the ability to choose topics that really interest you, and that you can be enthusiastic about for a long time.
John Morreall, February 2006