Stress

Stress is a concept originally described by Richard Lazarus in 1984 as a process of an individual perceiving and responding to environmental stimuli requiring adaptation. As such, stress seems to come from the realm of “negative psychology.” Humor, which is described as a psychological phenomenon that increases positive arousal and decreases negative arousal, is considered part of “positive psychology” as introduced by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 2000. However, as discussed in this entry, there are more relationships between the two than one may think at first sight.