Feb 13, 2020 07:00:00

Depressed people tend to prefer dark humor with a different sense of humor

Internet

memes , a type of joke shared on the Internet , mainly exchange interesting images and images with captions on SNS, and share emotions and opinions with people who can understand the memes . From research on such Internet memes and depression, it turns out that there is a possibility that `` depressed people have a different sense of humor than healthy people, and favorite memes are different between depressed people and healthy people '' Did.

Exploratory study on the role of emotion regulation in perceived valence, humour, and beneficial use of depressive internet memes in depression | Scientific Reports
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-57953-4

Depression memes may be a coping mechanism for people with mental illness
https://theconversation.com/depression-memes-may-be-a-coping-mechanism-for-people-with-mental-illness-129847

Most Internet memes are light and bright jokes, but some are called 'depressive memes,' which deal with the negative elements of death, suicide, isolation, and despair. A research team from

Umair Akram , a lecturer in psychology at the University of Sheffield Hallam in the UK, said that depressed memes are now common on the Internet, and that `` depressed people see depressed memes. How do you perceive it? '

First, the research team conducted a questionnaire survey of 200 subjects between the ages of 18 and 56, grouping them based on their tendency to depression. In the experiment, 43 out of 200 people showed particularly depressive symptoms.

Subjects showed a total of 52 memes, from 26 neutral memes related to general topics to 26 depressive memes about negative affairs. The research team asked the subjects to rate the memes based on factors such as humor, relevance to themselves, share with others, and mood improvement, and finally, how to control their emotions. Responded to a questionnaire survey.

For example, this is one of the 'neutral memes' actually shown to the subjects. The joke says, 'A dog who sees the owner feeding a duck is also trying to pretend to be a duck and get food.'

The following are examples of depression memes. This is a joke saying, 'I found a guy who messed up my life, but it was myself.'

According to Akram, the depressed group was found to be more relevant and more interesting to depressed memes than the normal group. Also, the depressed group thought that `` depressive memes are effective to improve the mood of others suffering from depression '', but the normal group thought that the depressed meme He pointed out that he knew he did not think it would improve.

In addition, it turned out that people with depression who could not control their own emotions enjoy the most depressive memes, and the depressed group `` had shared depressive memes with others ''. It seems that the rate of reporting was high.

According to the findings, Akram states that 'depressive memes may help people with depressed state change the meaning of negative emotions and thoughts and find good aspects of bad experiences.' Healthy people can reduce negative moods by concentrating on positive thoughts and events, but depressed people may review their bad experiences with dark humor and reevaluate their perceptions There is a nature.

Depressed people also have difficulty forming social relationships with others, but by exchanging depressive memes with other depressed people, depressed people can maintain social relationships. Akram points out that it can also help reduce loneliness.

Depressive memes are sometimes blamed for 'deteriorating depression' because their content is dark. However, Akram says, 'Our research shows that depressive memes actually have the opposite effect for people experiencing depression. Depressive memes can relieve people's depression and reduce To help maintain the sense of '