The Effectiveness of Humor Training on Social Phobia Symptoms

In the present study, the effectiveness of humor training on reducing social phobia symptoms in students was examined. The research method was quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design with control group and follow-up in 2 months. From a population of male students attending an education counseling center, after preliminary interviews, 30 students who had higher score (according to standard clinical cut-off point) in Social Phobia Inventory (Connor et al, 2001) were selected. The participants were randomly assigned to the experimental (n =15) and control (n =15) group. The experimental group received humor Training (McGhee, 2004) for 8 consecutive weeks in 80 minutes and the control group received no training in this period. The analysis of variance with repeated measures was done for analyzing the pretest, posttest and follow-up data. The results showed that humor training can lead to a reduction in the total score of social phobia and also its subscales such as fear, avoidance, and physiological discomfort. Additionally, the stability in the post-test scores at the follow-up stage was found