A Good Laugh

Humor is the best anesthetic, says Fabian Unteregger. He should know – the successful comedian and UZH alumnus is also a qualified physician. And studies have shown that perception of pain is actually lessened in people watching comedy shows. Humor and laughter don’t just reduce pain, they also bring many other benefits to our lives. They make us confident, healthy and attractive, and invigorate our relationships. And that’s not all: Satire, jokes and parodies are also part of the political culture. They hold the mirror up to politicians and undermine established power relationships – in democracies and autocratic systems alike. 

Humor is underestimated, says UZH psychologist Willibald Ruch, who has been investigating the positive effect of humor for many years. In the new UZH Magazin we’ve come up with eight hypotheses for what humor can do and why it is so important. 

As research into positive psychology shows, humor can help us to overcome adversity. It helps us step back from our problems and put negative experiences into perspective. Humor provides a kind of inner mini-break from which we can return refreshed and with renewed strength, says Malte Völk. The cultural studies scholar researches how people with dementia and their families deal with their illness. He found that humor can help sufferers to better handle the negative effects of dementia. 

Humor doesn’t just help us to put difficulties into perspective, it’s also a social tool. It lightens the atmosphere and engenders positive emotions, which comes in useful in working environments and social situations. At the same time, humor is a welcome disruptor in the daily grind of politics. By poking fun at them, comedians highlight politicians’ inadequacies and deficiencies. That’s why humor is often feared, particularly by politicians with authoritarian tendencies such as Trump, Erdoğan and Putin. 

For all its positive reputation, humor also has a shadow side. It’s a powerful weapon that can be used to put down and bully other people, or to take down political opponents and make them a laughing stock. In Stalin’s show trials, for example, members of the public were enlisted to mock and humiliate the defendants. 

But to return to the positive – oftentimes humor is simply playful. We play with ideas, thoughts and inconsistencies, with words and with things. One of the most highly regarded forms of humor is nonsense humor – meaningless and pointless, it has a logic all of its own. For the photographs accompanying the feature, photographer Dan Cermak visited people in their homes and got them to mess around and have fun. The resulting snaps are witty and nonsensical in the best sense.