Fear of being laughed at in Italian healthcare workers: Testing associations with humor styles and coping humor

Humor is a strategy that healthcare workers can use to help patients cope with stress and manage complex situations. However, people differ in how they deal with laughter. Our aim was to investigate gelotophobia (fear of being laughed at) among healthcare professionals and its relationships with humor styles and inclinations to use humor for coping. A sample of 550 Italian healthcare-workers was assigned to three groups: Professional Hospital Clown Group (PHCG, people who trained as professional clown in health-care setting), Humor Training Group (HTG, people who attended health-care relevant training courses related to humor), or Control Group (CG, people who attended healthcare or professional training courses not related to humor), and provided self-reports in the GELOPH < 15 > , the Coping Humor Scale, and the Humor Style Questionnaire. Participants from humor-related interventions, in particular PHCG, were lower in gelotophobia and used humor as a coping strategy. Gelotophobia correlated negatively with coping humor, and affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles. We discuss the findings with regard to the use of humor and laughter in healthcare settings.