Sense of Humour and Religion: Deepening our Understanding of Religious Personality Seminar

Historically, the relations between religion and laughter or humor, at least within monotheistic contexts, have been rather ambiguous. There is of course (a) humor in religion, but there often exists (b) humor at religion as well as (c) dispositions of religion against humor or forms of it. This talk will focus on the last, third perspective, and this from a personality and social psychological perspective.

In a series of studies that will be presented, it was investigated whether religion, or specific religious forms, reflects or impacts (is detrimental for) humor in general and different humor performances and styles in particular. The opposite causal direction was also investigated, i.e. whether amusement as emotion impacts religion and spirituality. The discussion will focus on the implications of the above for a deeper understanding of the religious personality and religion's functions and on key open issues such as the cross-cultural/religious generalizability of the findings.