Laughter, the Best Mediation: Humor as Emotion Management in Interaction

Recent work in emotions and emotion management suggests that humor is a social phenomenon and serves an important purpose in interaction. That is, humor can be viewed as interpersonal emotion management, whose purpose is to manage the emotions of others as well as of the self. This article offers the following definition as an analytical tool: humor as emotion management is an expert cultural performance; which strengthens or restores the feeling norms of the situation and creates amusement in the self and others; generating positive sentiments among members of an interacting group by bonding them and/or reducing an external threat; often at the expense of some excluded person(s), event(s), or object(s).