Deprecation (making a joke of yourself), good or bad?
One of the best things about the human species is that it has developed the ability to laugh; homo sapiens actually have a sense of humour! If the aliens reading this don’t believe it just watch some classic TV and movies like The Big Bang Theory, 3rd Rock From The Sun, and the Men In Black series. Humans make fun of each other and others all while working (the actors were paid). Yet the question, should you laugh at yourself?
A study entitled Does My Humor Touch You? Effect of Leader Self-Deprecating Humour on Employee Silence: The Mediating Role of Leader-Member Exchange published in Psychology Research and Behaviour Management (2023) showed that “In a survey of 329 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, 97% of CEOs agreed that humour is important in business”. It was found leadership self-deprecating humour had a positive income, the leader making fun of herself/himself to employees (note: all sexual pronouns here are alphabetically arranged based on leadership and fear).
A short study, Positive Humour Styles Give Positive Meaning In Life: A Correlational Study, published in Divyayatan – A Journal of Lakulish Yoga University (2025) looked at subjects aged 18-45, 4 types of humour (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-depreciating) and an individual’s Intimacy, Achievement, Relationship, Religion, Self-transcendence, Self-acceptance, and Fair treatment. Affiliative humour is defined as jokes and wit that brings people together (Knock, Knock; who’s there; affiliative humour; affiliative humour who; this is an example of affiliative humour). Self-enhancing humour is finding something positive in yourself (you’re first in line at a red light and you might be late but you say “At least I’m first in line unless a cop runs the red”). Aggressive humour is often described as the “mean jokes on others”; it can be something like “You’re fatter than Jupiter”. Self-depreciating humour is making jokes about yourself that are negative; it can be something like “I’m fatter than Jupiter, I need to become more like Mercury” when talking to yourself about getting in shape.
The research suggests Aggressive Humour had a negative effect on Intimacy, Achievement, Relationship, Religion, Self-transcendence, Self-acceptance, and Fair treatment. Self-depreciating only had a negative effect on Relationship, Religion, Self-acceptance, and Fair treatment, but it scored the lowest in effects on Intimacy, Achievement, and Self-transcendence. Self-enhancing humour had a positive effect and the highest positive score of all the different types of humour. If a professor compliments you on a great paper, saying “See, I was paying attention to your lectures not sleeping” might help you get a higher grade (achievement) and make the professor like you more (relationship). If your boyfriend (or girlfriend) is there and s/he laughs you might get an earlier next date (intimacy).
On the other hand, saying “That’s because I’m smarter than you” can be seen as Aggressive Humour – making a joke by making yourself look good while making someone else look bad. Saying “I only got a B? I thought I was worth an A!” might be seen as self-deprecating, making yourself seem worth less. Second to Aggressive Humour, Self-depreciative Humour has a negative score on relationship, religion, self-acceptance and fair treatment; it can hurt relationships and make you believe that you might not even be worthy of the B.
According to the research of Marta Dynel in “Beyond a Joke: Types of Conversational Humour” (2009), the presentation and the audience in self-deprecating humour plays a strong role. Self-deprecation might seem as a self-putdown but it might be knowing something about yourself before others – “admitting to a mistake ⁄ failure (which transpires ⁄may transpire), will have a cushioning effect”, a way of others seeing you as laughing at your fall while you fall or before you fall. It can carry an underlying meaning that even though you’re willing to fall, you will rise and try walking the tightrope again as long as you didn’t break your ankle. Dynel also writes that when in an awkward situation, self deprecation can manifest “the speaker’s intelligence and composure, as he ⁄ she seems not to have lost his ⁄ her bearings. Therefore, applying the technique of self-deprecation, the speaker displays his ⁄ her positive self-image and, in particular, one of the
virtues in contemporary societies. This statement suggests that if a single man accidentally enters a room full of ladies, knowing the shades, types of lipstick, and events it is worn can help the man get a date (not a suggestion, just a joke).
Dynel categorises anecdotes as a form of conversational humour, a story from your own or another’s life but repeating as a first-person experience; it’s written that anecdotes are “events which were hardly humorous and even dramatic, but are, however, recounted jovially to elicit a humorous response in the addressee”. Whether it was someone telling you an anecdote or something you actually experienced, an anecdote in the first-person can play a strong role in furthering or developing relations of different kinds.
Decades ago, in the late 1990s, Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City explored benefits of laughter and humor in a nursing care for geriatric patients admitted to the Medical Institute of Recovery Through Humor (MIRTH) used laughter and humour in recovery. “A laugh a day” authored by Nikki Arnett (1998) summarises the results, the process, theory, and participants. Early it was clearly stated that humour was not meant to replace clinical medicine but complement; it was used as an adjacent. It was found that laughter and humour increased the morale of both patients and caregivers.
“Laugh Yourself into a Healthier Person” (2009) published by the International Journal of Medical Sciences was a comparative analytical study of laughter, “gelatology”, published in the International Journal of Medical Sciences. It compared laughter between cultures, Aurangabad, India and Mississauga, Canada.
Mental Stress has been found to decrease and degrade nitric oxide, a vital ingredient in vasodilatation – getting the blood vessels to widen and then go back to normal, vital for the delivery of oxygen and other supplies the blood delivers to the brain and body. At the University of Maryland they studied it, showing participants something boring and something they could laugh at. The laughing segment was found to increase dilation in 95% of participants. The school of Laughter Yoga has described laughter a powerful exercise that can be better than cardiovascular workout or a regular aerobic exercises.
Laughter was also found to help the immune system, central nervous system, respiratory system and cardiovascular system. It helped increase the T cells, B cells, and increased Ig levels – those who laughed had a bigger army fighting germs than the ones who frowned. There are two types of stress – distress (negative stress when you realise you’re handing in your homework two weeks late) and eustress (aka mirthful laughter – when someone calls you a bookworm when you’re taking a break from reading a book about worms in a library). Eustress brings about laughter. People often think of laughter as emotional but it has a strong physical component.
What many homo sapiens don’t realise, human beings are a social species. Not only have they evolved and lived in groups (from the caveman with an extended family sharing the same cave to the modern child(ren) living with parents. Laughter is a social activity.
A 2019 paper by Susan Speer entitled “Reconsidering self-deprecation as a communication practice” in the British Journal of Social Psychology states that “self-criticism [self-deprecation] and self-enhancement can coexist … that individuals can enhance their present selves by disparaging their past selves”. This can be done in different ways today like saying “Don’t call me crazy but I think they’re going to outsource me to AI because it has ‘intelligence’.“ The speaker may not have completed a graduate degree or a dropout (using “crazy” and “intelligence” to look at the past and present). If the job is being a bus driver, it won’t happen until they have automated buses. Anyone who utters a phrase like that is crazy and has intelligence.
Research suggests it can be used to convey modesty, used by high-class individuals to gain favourability and by politicians for favourability. One way this can be done is by using something like an apology before or after the statement – “Sorry, I’m not as smart as you” – making yourself ‘dumber’ but using the apology to convey the humour.
Varying on the context, self-deprecation has different results. It might be used because of what’s going to come next in the conversation (a napkin under the soup bowl because you know the soup might be too spicy). Speer adds that research on self-deprecation faces theoretical and methodologic problems.
Some research has found there is a light in self-deprecation; research suggests it can be used to convey modesty. Alone, self-deprecation statements can psychologically be seen as being self-critical or lacking self-confidence. At the same time taking into account the other in the conversation, context, body language, and emotions it can be seen as comfort (a close friend has just lost a job, and this statement is used to help comfort the friend using humour – creative, attentive, and fast-thinking).
“My life is a mess: self-deprecating relatability and collectiveidentities in the memification of student issues” is a study conducted by Kristine Ask and Crystal Abidin exploring self-deprecation in students through public memes on Facebook over a four-week period in 2007.
Memes are considered methods of communication and communion; without using words exchanging commonalities to interact. They are often used on social media or circulated through individual messaging. Analysis has described memes as “the propagation of content items such as jokes, rumours, videos, or websites from one person to others via the Internet”, “a pop cultural common tongue that facilitate[s] the diverse engagement of many voices”, and “a form of ‘shared social phenomenon’ propagated through ‘imitation’, ‘competition’, and ‘selection’”. Depending on what it is and how it is used a meme can play different roles; it can help bring people together and increase or start communication.
Many jokes, comedic sayings, and memes have ambivalence – they play on a negative and positive stereotype. While a meme may appear to have a blonde girl with many admirers, the bubble of her words suggest she plays to the classic “dumb blonde” stereotype.
Research conducted in Australia shows that self-depreciation or self-oriented humour can bring politeness. Playing on yourself with humour can help you answer questions from friends and become acquainted with others. Humour at yourself can help turn a conversation. So the answer: you can laugh at yourself and others if you put mustard instead of ketchup on your fries, just be careful about where and who you’re laughing at.
A ‘trouble-teller’ is a term used for someone who speaks about their troubles. “Laughter in Medical Interaction: From Quantification and Back” by Markku Haakana (2002) published in Journal of Sociolinguistics in Finland, Haakana analyses laughter in medical interactions. Laughter is a conversational method, people meet people.
Now you know, if you don’t have the perfect opener for that first date, you can always make a joke about yourself (just don’t say you are secretly a raper wanted by the FBI or you’re part of the MIB).
