Humor Articles / White Papers
ON the Other Hand
What Do We Mean By “Empirical Research”?
By Bob Nozik, M.D., and Shirley Trout, Ph.D.
One of the things we, as an organization, try to stand for is that we represent “empirically based” knowledge about applied humor and laughter. So what does this mean?
The answer is complex and has to do with knowledge that is based on more than just “it happened to me, so I know it’s true for everyone.” We’ll be generating a paper on this for the website in the near future, but in the meantime, I encourage every member to approach everything we hear or read about the value of humor and laughter with three groups of questions:
- On what is the author or speaker basing his claim? Was it a scientific experiment? A single interview or several interviews? Personal experience or witnessing something firsthand? Read it in Readers’ Digest or People Magazine? Saw it on the Internet?
- How/Where can I find the “most first-hand” source for this information? Who conducted the research? If it’s not actually from research, on what did the originator—the person who started making the claims in the first place—base his or her statement?
- Are the details about HOW the study was done—or what the setup was for drawing the conclusions— accessible? If you wanted to test the findings, would you know enough about what they did to replicate the same study or experience?
These are three initial questions that help determine whether findings about humor and laughter are credible. It’s not so much about whether or not a study originated in a laboratory or whether it was conducted by a university researcher. But it is imperative that we, as authorities of informed knowledge, know what information is credible, where the information came from, and understand the limitations of the information.
Regardless of how popular or clever some “sound bites” are, we can’t afford to be misinformed, or to misinform others. We do not know how many more times a day a child laughs than an adult. We do not have evidence that laughter triggers the endorphin production. (By the way, a conference attendee at the Baltimore conference a few years ago gave an excellent explanation of why we may never fully understand the role of endorphins in this phenomenon.)
We can’t serve as the worldwide leader in this field if we merely jump on a bandwagon of clever sayings and unsubstantiated claims. Please join your fellow AATH colleagues in representing the field of applied humor and laughter accurately and with a discerning interest for accuracy.
Originally published in The Humor Conncetion Spring 2005
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