The importance of humor in communication and its effects.

A summary of the effects and uses of humor in communication processes.

When we talk to a person or an audience, the communication process in which we engage is far from being a simple exchange of data and textual information, which can be reduced to words and numbers.

It is also an encounter between two or more beings with the capacity to feel emotions, and that conditions how we express ourselves and how we interpret what others say. And precisely for this reason, humor is a key element in the way we communicate. Let's see how humor influences us when interacting with others and socializing in general..

What does humor consist of?

Humor is a set of psychological and social processes that leads us to interpret information by emphasizing the humorous side of what surrounds us (or even ourselves).

From an evolutionary perspective, humor is considered to be strongly linked to a series of predispositions is strongly linked to a series of innate predispositions to laughter.. This last phenomenon, the act of laughing, is a universal characteristic of human beings; members of all societies, tribes and ethnicities laugh, although the sense of humor that gives rise to it has many variations and depends very much on each culture.

Why is it that practically everyone has the ability to laugh spontaneously and not deliberately? It is hypothesized that laughter is part of a psychobiological mechanism that allows us to communicate when we are doing things with an apparent, literal purpose and when we are just "playing"; this would help give rise to social learning situations. In fact, homologous phenomena to human laughter exist in animal species as diverse as killer whales, certain species of parrots and at least part of the canids, among others. However, not all of these animals "laugh" through vocalizations.

Thus, humor is a derivation of this mechanism that has evolved to improve our ability to survive, until it has given rise to a predisposition that that allows us to create very diverse cultural products and to enjoy life in new ways, among other things.among other things.

However, as we shall see, humor is not only used to experience immediate pleasure or to transcend through forms of artistic expression. It is also essential for communicating with others in spoken or written form; let's see why.

Why humor is fundamental in communication

Let's see what role humor plays in any communicative process, whether face-to-face or in writing.

1. It can be used to demonstrate a spirit of concord.

Genuine laughter produced by humor is a pleasurable experience, and that is why, when someone makes a joke that does not serve to ridicule the interlocutor, it is implicit that he or she is trying to maintain a good relationship with the interlocutor, it is implied that he/she is trying to maintain a good relationship with the interlocutor.. It is a subtle and indirect way of bringing positions closer through this kind of gifts.

2. It helps to relativize the importance of emotionally painful situations.

It has been demonstrated that, in many cases, humor serves to reinterpret the experiences and memories that have caused us emotional painIt has been shown that, in many cases, humor serves to reinterpret the experiences and memories that generated emotional pain, making us begin to accept those events as a reality that does not always have to be judged or morally valued.

In other words, humor can serve not only to deny that something has happened that hurt us, but also to accept that it happened, but that it does not always have to be seen as a drama. It is a process similar to emotional labeling, in which putting words to what makes us feel bad helps us to overcome it.

In addition, these processes can lead to improvements in both these processes can lead to both individual and collective improvements.The jokes can involve a wider audience.

In short, humor helps to prevent us from making taboo topics that we must address if we want to overcome them, and in doing so, we enrich the diversity of ways in which we can interpret those topics, instead of having only a purely "tragic" view of those facts.

3. It allows us to create communication contexts

Humor allows us to make clear in seconds the more or less informal character of a communicative context.. This helps to let others know how to behave and what to expect in a meeting.

For example, the fact of making a joke in a work meeting, although it does not completely deny the seriousness of the context, adds nuances, indicating that in that organization or company other human facets that go beyond the professional are taken into account; therefore, the values of the company and its philosophy of work and organization can be intuited if this is part of the normality in this kind of events. In cases like this, humor provides information about the "rules of the game" of a group or team.

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