Are We Laughing Yet?

Jim Lyttle

I’m often asked by friends and family, Why do you love working in the youth field? The answer is redemption. By the singular act of believing that all young people – no matter what has been done to them or what they have done – can turn their lives around, we transform lives. This core value creates a virtuous cycle that sustains the people working in the field and creating the next generation of youth workers.

This quality makes us also very earnest. After reading the article Funny Business in the Economist about the use of humor (or as the Brits spell it, humour) in public service announcements, I started to wonder, Is our strength also our weakness?

The article references the work of Jim Lyttle, who has found that “jokes affect how people process information – if they laugh at something, they are less likely to disagree with it.” The article also suggests that “jokes can make serious messages more effective,” based on the research by Mukherjee and Dubé from McGill University. This team found that “humor can reduce these defensive responses and hence increase the persuasiveness of fear advertising.”

With a number of powerful initiatives under way, including My Brother’s Keeper, Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund, Opportunity Youth Network, Opportunity Nation and its Index, Clinton Global Initiative Reconnecting Youth, and the distributed leadership closing down the school-to-prison pipeline, should we be looking beyond the traditional ways we communicate our messages?

Can humor help us be heard? Perhaps just adding a bit of joy to our images might do the trick. Imagine seeing images of young people and mentors laughing together?

Wouldn’t you want to go to that party?