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Analysis: Consolatory Effects Of Humor Through Cognitive Distraction

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Cognitive demands involved with humor processing can decrease negative emotions. In other words (specifically, WedbMD journalist Kathleen Doheny’s words), good jokes cure bad moods. These statements are obviously composed in different syntax and were created to pertain to separate audiences. However, both are able to develop the same overarching reader interpretations. In 2009, Madelijn Strick and her team (Rob W. Holland, Rick B. van Baaren and Ad van Kippenburg) released a research report in Emotion Journal titled Finding Comfort in a Joke: Consolatory Effects of Humor Through Cognitive Distraction. Strick and her associates hypothesized that humor would provide enough cognitive distraction to reduce negative emotions in experiment …show more content…

She accurately represented the research findings, and did so that was much more appealing and comprehensible to those who are simply browsing the internet. Doheny’s abbreviated version, though lacking in descriptions, is legitimate and reliable. *
Of course, one may argue that because Doheny’s article was so brief, the reader would develop a much different interpretation from the popular press article than if they had read the primary source article. This is partially true. Someone who only reads the WebMD article would not know the full experimental procedure or be provided with definitive statistics. The reader may question Doheny’s reliability, in which case they would need to then read the primary article and find that the generalizations made in the WebMD article were certainly based on scientific findings.
However, Doheny’s article is still able to provide the reader with the same information as the primary source article’s abstract. The important and relevant particulars of the

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