Sterling Brown’s Laughter Out of Hell

Brown’s sense of humor provides guiding principles for real-world action while making the Black tradition of private anti-racist laughter public. Brown examines the violence of traditional superiority humor in poems like “Sam Smiley,” in which Black laughter is silenced by lynching. Rather than simply rejecting such humor, Brown gives readers alternatives: his anti-hierarchical approach in the “Slim Greer” poems inverts Bergson’s logic, making humor a precondition for empathy. The partial resemblance we see between ourselves and the object of laughter can teach us to recognize our commonality even with our enemies. For Brown, the ethical underpinnings of art lie in artists’ awareness of contingency, complexity, and the subjectivities of unlike others. Empathic humor turns laughter from a zero-sum game to a game everyone can win by rejecting not just racism but hierarchical thinking as a whole. Brown shows how empathic laughter can reframe our knowledge of other people and upend the way we systematize that knowledge.

Autobiographical Memory, Gratitude, Forgiveness and Sense of Humor: An Intervention in Older Adults

Research has shown that happiness and well-being play a fundamental role in the health of older adults. For this reason, programs based on Positive Psychology seek to improve quality of life, preventing and reducing the appearance of emotional disorders. The objective of this study was to verify whether an intervention based on Autobiographical Memory, Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Sense of humor would increase quality of life in institutionalized older adults. We used a quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-intervention measures and follow-on measures at 3, 6, and 12 months. A total of 111 institutionalized older adults participated in the study and were randomly assigned to one of three groups: experimental (n = 36), placebo (n = 39), and control (n = 36). Measurements were taken of depression, subjective happiness, satisfaction with life, psychological well-being, and specific memories. Program duration was 11 weeks, followed by refresher sessions of the activities that had been conducted. The results showed that the intervention was effective, producing lasting increase in the participating adults’ well-being, maintained for the following 12 months, in contrast to the other two groups. In conclusion, the proposed intervention proved to be a novel tool that was effective, easily applied, and able to improve quality of life and emotional disorders in older adults.

Religions with or without Sense of Humor: A Psychological Perspective

The contrast between Homo Ridens and Homo Religiosus is launched and followed by the tug of war between the laugh of God and the sin of laughter. Funniness in jokes with religious content is explored through the incongruity-resolution model developed by Suls, a psychologist expert in artificial intelligence: among the faithful abound believers whom it deems inappropriate the hilarious endings invented, with ulterior motives, by humorists. The transgression model in graphic design, elaborated by Alvarez Junco, provides the frame of reference to discern the camouflage of four frescos and a sculpture by Michelangelo, who knew more than he appeared, and was a dissident, but not a heretic. Humor cannot be reduced to jokes, and the taxonomy created by Long and Grasser (cognitive and experimental psychologists) has been used to accentuate the nexus between witticism in daily life interactions with religious connotations: their eleven categories have been portrayed using literary narratives authored by well-known European and Asian writers. Efforts have been made to draft them with the sense of humor that corresponds to the heading. Psychologists pay attention mainly to individual or group experiences, that is, religiosity. Artists have relied on camouflage to ensure that inquisitive persons do not react by penalizing.

IRONIC ΗRYHIR TIUTIUNNYK (SOME OBSERVATIONS)

One of the most dramatic writers of the 2nd half of the 20th century Hryhir Tiutiunnyk was remembered by all his contemporaries who worked in the cultural sphere as a person endowed with a keen sense of humor, rare wit, and unique artistry (in various genres, both dramatic and comedic). This paper is a reflection on how in the works by Hryhir Tiutiunnyk, killed by the totalitarian system in 1980, the well-known dominants of “love and pain” are deepened by irony, in all the immensity of its shades and meanings. The writer did not use any words from the political lexicon but instead unmasked the totalitarian system by depicting (mostly through apt expressions and details) the behavior and destinies of people oppressed or destroyed by it. His irony is mild, lenient, or even somewhat sympathetic. In the stories reviewed in the paper, namely “Screw”, “Niura”, “The Feast in Memory of Markiian”, “The Son Has Arrived”, the mentioned nuances of the means of irony are used in rather complex, sometimes weird combinations (“The Literate”, “Laughter”), revealing the ardent indifference of the author who tried (sometimes successfully) to pretend to be an outsider – an unworried or even superior narrator. In such works as “The Feast in Memory of Markiian” and “Medal”, the death itself or its obvious approach causes the appearance of tragicomic elements. However, in the latter, the tragic irony is not related to the character, but to the props of the stage action, in which the people resembling mannequins represent the village and district authorities and pretend to award a starving man as “the best animal breeder”. Some of Hryhir Tiutiunnyk’s characters, as in the short story “Oddity” and the story “My Saturday”, rise to a sarcastic mockery of oppressors: the specificity of the Soviet-communist officials lies in the fact that they don’t even realize the absurdity of their activities, which lack any humanistic principles. The literary world of the writer, despite its seeming simplicity, is extremely complex in terms of inner subtleties of thoughts, emotions, and conflicts.

Negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on nurses can be buffered by a sense of humor and appreciation

Background The first analyses of the various consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic show that the risk to nurses’ psychological well-being is particularly high. As the pandemic and the demands imposed on nurses are not yet fully understood, there is a need to seek buffering factors to protect nurses’ psychological health. In line with the earliest evidence, we hypothesize pandemic-related increases in perceived stress and decreases in the frequency of flow experiences, likewise in satisfaction with work, life, work performance, and well-being. As protective factors while dealing with pandemic-related stress, we suggest an individual’s sense of humor and perceived appreciation. Methods In June/July 2020 – during the first lockdown in Germany – participants completed an online-survey in which they were asked to rate their situation before the pandemic (retrospectively) and during the pandemic. Our sample consisted of 174 registered nurses (161 females, 13 males, Mage = 40.52), of whom 85 worked as public health nurses and 89 as geriatric nurses. Results During the pandemic, nurses felt more stressed, had fewer flow experiences, and were less satisfied with their work, life, work-performance, and well-being than before the pandemic. In addition, nurses felt more appreciation from society but less from their patients. Sense of humor and the perceived appreciation of society and patients were confirmed as buffers of negative pandemic-related effects. Conclusion Our study contributes to the so far scarce knowledge on nurses’ pandemic-related stress and well-being in combination with their resources. Moreover, we were able to identify sense of humor and appreciation as protective factors.

Reliability and validity of the sense of humor scale

This study examined the reliability, validity, and factor structure of the sense of humor scale (SHS; McGhee, Paul E. 1999. Health, healing and the amuse system: Humor as survival training, 3rd edn. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt), a 24-item questionnaire developed to measure overall sense of humor. Participants included 99 adults, 105 undergraduates, and 111 comedians. One-week test-retest reliability was good (r = 0.75). Internal consistency of the overall scale was excellent, and acceptable-to-excellent for the six subscales. Item-total correlations were generally strong. Comedians scored higher than undergraduates and adults, supporting the construct validity of the SHS. Convergent validity was strong as the SHS was positively correlated with the Humor Styles Questionnaire total and its subscales. Our analyses of SHS’s associations with the Big Five personality dimensions led to findings that are consistent with prior research, as the SHS was positively correlated with extraversion and openness to experience, but uncorrelated with neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Factor analyses found a bifactor model to be the best fitting model for the SHS. Ancillary bifactor fit indices provided additional support for the notion that the SHS may not be best described as unidimensional. Thus, it can be argued that the subscales are relevant for both research and applied work as they offer unique contributions.

“Where Children Play Among the Ruins of the Language”: A Nest of Ninnies and the Literary Legacies of New York Dada

Narration and dialogues in A Nest of Ninnies rely largely on linguistic equivalents of what are known as “found objects,” or “ready mades,” in the visual arts. This endows Ashbery’s and Schuyler’s novel with a sense of humor much like the one developed by the New York Dadaists in the years 1916-1920. Because of the high incidence of camp humor in the novel, affinities between it, as well as the camp aesthetic more generally, and the New York version of Dada, may be seen. Yet the principal claim of the article is that this novel is part of the literary legacy of New York Dada, a movement significantly different from the original Dada of Zurich.

Self-fulfilling Versus Self-destructive Adolescents: Exploration of Relations among Resilience, Well-Being, and Life Satisfaction

This study examined the differences between adolescents with a self-fulfilling profile and those with a self-destructive profile in resilience, well-being, and satisfaction with life. The Resiliency Attitudes and Skills Profile (De Caroli & Sagone, 2014a) was used to measure sense of humor, competence, adaptability, control, and engagement; the Life Satisfaction Scale (Di Fabio & Gori, 2016), the Psychological Well-Being Scale (Ryff & Keyes, 1995) was used to explore general psychological well-being; the Positive (PA) and Negative (NA) Affect Scale (Di Fabio & Bucci, 2015) was applied to measure the two opposite affective profiles, self-fulfilling (high PA and low NA) and self-destructive profile (low PA and high NA). Results showed that adolescents with a self-fulfilling profile reported higher resilience, life satisfaction, psychological well-being than those with a self-destructive profile. Future research could deep protective factors of self-fulfilling profile and risk factors of self-destructive profile in adolescence.

Professor Igor V. Prianikov (08.04.1959-12.03.2021)

On March 12, 2021 at the sixty-second year of life, a member of the editorial colleague of the journal "Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism", Professor, Doctor of Medical Sciences Igor Valentinovich Pryanikov suddenly passed away. Talented, intelligent, with an amazing sense of humor, Igor Valentinovich has always inspired his colleagues with his positive attitude, boiling energy and ability to work.

Nurses’ strategies for dealing with stress during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: In view of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic, it is important to study the activities undertaken by nurses to cope with stress. Aim of the study: The study’s main objective was to analyze strategies of coping with stress among nurses working in public and non-public medical institutions in Opolskie and Lubelskie provinces, Poland, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and methods: The study group included a total of 155 nurses. The Mini-COPE questionnaire and the author’s original questionnaire were used in the study. Results: With increasing age, nurses coped with stress by using their sense of humor less often, seeking instrumental support, discharge of emotions, using psychoactive substances, and blaming themselves. Respondents with a master’s degree were more likely to cope with stress by positive reevaluation, turning to religion, and seeking emotional and instrumental support. Examining the effect of job tenure on the level of coping strategies revealed significant variation for active coping (p=0.0355), sense of humor (p=0.0024), seeking emotional support (p=0.0209), seeking instrumental support (p=0.0062), preoccupation with something else (p=0.0383), discharge (p=0.0075), psychoactive substance use (p=0.0097), and blaming oneself (p=0.0155). There was no significant variation in the effect of place of employment on stress coping strategies. Conclusions: During the pandemic, respondents managed stress mainly through active coping, planning, acceptance, positive reevaluation, and seeking instrumental support. As nurses age, they are more likely to use the strategy of turning to religion. Due to the growing problem of stress, it is necessary to identify and share information about ways to effectively cope with stress.