Fighting, distress, conflict…it’s known to happen in even the best of relationships. But when hashing out a problem with your partner, can anything help to de-escalate the problem? Sometimes a joke or humorous comment can take the edge off the tension, but at other times it can feel deflective, as if the comical partner is dismissing the problem or not taking it seriously.

According to a recent study, by Lorne Campbell and his colleagues, the differences in outcome might rest in part with the type of humor that is used. In their study, researchers distinguished between two types of humor: affiliative humor and aggressive humor. Affiliative humor describes jokes and funny stories intended to make others laugh and to ease interpersonal interactions. Aggressive humor, on the other hand, is more demeaning and can be used to put others down; it includes forms of humor like sarcasm, ridicule, or teasing.

In their study, 98 dating couples at an undergraduate university engaged in a 7-minute discussion about a current, unresolved problem in their relationship. They also completed measures of relationship quality, closeness to their partner, how distressed they felt during the conflict discussion, and how much they felt the problem was resolved during the conversation. Afterwards, independent raters coded the discussion for uses of both affiliative and aggressive humor.

As might be expected, researchers found that people were more satisfied with their relationships when their partners used affiliative humor in their conflict discussion, and less satisfied when partners used aggressive humor. Similarly, more affiliative partner humor and less aggressive partner humor helped people feel more resolved in their problem discussions.

The study shows that affiliative humor during conflicts may help enhance relationships while aggressive humor may deteriorate them. Interestingly, however, people who used one type of humor were also found to use the other type within the same interaction. This may suggest that people use several different types of humor at a means to de-escalate conflict, although, some types are may be more effective than others.

Further Reading:

LORNE CAMPBELL, ROD A. MARTIN, JENNIE R. WARD (2008). An observational study of humor use while resolving conflict in dating couples Personal Relationships, 15 (1), 41-55 DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2007.00183.x