Explanation of Sense of Humor & Demarcation of Its Ethical Boundaries

Humor is an important quality, which is highly effective in human communications. Despite its advantages, if humor is not used correctly, it may have unethical outcomes, springing to the mind a vague picture of humor’s intrinsic morality. Therefore, the current study sought to explain the nature of humor and compare it with similar concepts in order to establish its limits as a behavioral quality. To this end, the paper conducted a narrative review of existing definitions and theories in the relevant papers and books as well as English and Persian dictionaries. 

The results showed that humor (a quality) and sense of humor (a combination of personal attributes) are positive ethical concepts that may produce negative outcomes in case of the following: (1) imbalance and (funny) content violation (exceeding the humor limits), (2) excessive use of humor (in terms of frequency and periodicity). As a result, humor is likely to have unethical outcomes, but sense of humor is always a positive behavioral quality. To demarcate humor morally, it is necessary to compare it with similar and related concepts; such a comparison requires the following: (1) intention and purposefulness (positive and well-meant), (2) minor violation. In line with this, this paper compared humor with several similar concepts including witticism, jokes, sarcasm, irony, mockery, derision, teasing, etc.