Coping with Stress: Social Work Students and Humour

Abstract

In social work, humour is being increasingly accepted as a strategy for coping with stress. The literature does not indicate whether humour is acquired on the job or is a characteristic of people entering the social work profession. This study examined sense of humour in 32 undergraduate social work students and its relationship with self‐ratings of stress and stress‐related physical symptoms. In contrast with other research findings, the measure ‘liking humour’ correlated positively with stress and symptoms, indicating that liking humour was associated with poorer well‐being. On the other hand, the tendency to use humour socially correlated with low levels of stress. Using humour socially may help people obtain social support, which is responsible for reducing the effects of stress. That is, the support engendered by humour may be more important in reducing stress than humour itself. Seeing supervisors use humour gives students permission to laugh and focus away from the serious side for a while. While accepting the complexity of humour and caution necessary in some circumstances, we recommend that the topic of humour is formally included in the social work curriculum. Teaching about humour may bring humour itself into the classroom, which in turn enhances other aspects of learning.

Keywords:

• Social Work Students
• Humour
• Stress
• Coping
• Health

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of the late Margaret Massam to this study.

Notes

1. A power analysis indicated that a sample size of 32 gave the study an 88% chance of detecting a true correlation of 0.5 or larger (with alpha 0.05). The chances of detecting smaller and larger correlations varies accordingly.