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Watching memes helps relieve stress, scientists have now confirmed this by studying how funny pictures reduce pandemic anxiety. What kind of jokes affect us most positively and at the expense of what?
The essence of the experiment
In 2021, the American Psychological Association studied how viewing memes helps to cope with stress: scientists traced the connection between watching jokes about COVID-19 and the ability to overcome fear about the coronavirus. Scientists explained the positive impact of memes by obtaining positive emotions in conjunction with the ease of processing information. Simply put, funny pictures with cats act like a kind of “joy pill” that is quickly absorbed by the brain.
The experiment involved 799 volunteers aged 18 to 88, among whom were 54,7% women, 44,4% men. 0,9% of participants did not indicate gender or identified themselves as non-binary persons.
What is considered a meme and where did this concept come from
The concept of “meme” was introduced by the British biologist and popularizer of science Richard Dawkins in 1976. In The Selfish Gene, he suggested that human culture develops according to the laws of biological evolution. And if in biology genes copy themselves and are passed from person to person, then there must be a similar term for a unit of cultural heritage. Thus the word “meme” was born. By it, Dawkins meant popular ideas in society, trends, obsessive melodies, fashionable expressions and catch phrases.
With the advent of the Internet, the concept has acquired a slightly different meaning, familiar to us and different from what exists in the research environment. The second interpretation is described in the Cambridge Dictionary: “Meme is an idea, image, video, and so on, which spread very quickly on the Internet.”
Why is the news dangerous?
The negative impact of an overabundance of information on the psyche is a well-known fact. And while reading news, especially related to the coronavirus, can be useful (you need to be aware of what is happening), due to how alarming such content can be, the WHO recommended consuming such information in a dosed manner.
Even at the beginning of the pandemic, a study was published in which the authors argued that widespread coverage of the topic of COVID-19 can increase the negative consequences of the epidemic in society. The scientists’ conclusions were partly based on the history of coverage of past disasters. For example, in the three years after September 11, 2001, there was a spike in cardiovascular disease in people who actively followed the information about the attack and began to worry about their safety. Those who monitored information about the Ebola outbreak for several hours a day faced similar consequences.
Why memes are a salvation for the psyche
The global collective experience of co-experiencing the pandemic has become unique in today’s society. Perhaps, for the history of mankind as a whole, neither the famous medieval plague nor the Spanish flu epidemic were so large-scale. In addition, they did not have such a massive information support as the coronavirus.
In this situation, memes have become the easiest way to reflect on what is happening: a flurry of jokes about the coronavirus was probably a form of collective emotional protection from the stress caused by the emergence of a new deadly disease. Such a reaction is quite logical, because overcoming stress is associated not only with the elimination of the stressor itself, but also with the perceived degree of readiness to face it. Humor also helps to devalue the problem somewhat and reduce the fear of it.
What memes are the most effective
The effect depends on the type of memes. The lowest level of stress from the coronavirus was found in those participants in the experiment who watched jokes directly about COVID-19. Such a result was not obvious in advance – scientists assumed that memes on abstract topics could act more strongly by switching attention. It is also worth noting that although memes with animals and children were recognized by the participants as more cute and evoked more positive emotions, their anti-stress effect was less.
The authors of the study did not measure the duration of the therapeutic effect of memes, so you should not take them as a universal tool in the fight against anxiety. Also, do not forget that memes can be no less dangerous than bad news – for example, if they are spread by conspiracy theorists, basing jokes on pseudoscientific information.