Is laughing at yourself good for you? Is this something we should feel encouraged to do? Is it good for our mental health? The findings are somewhat ambiguous, but they also highlight the importance of not taking ourselves too seriously.

Some of us laugh at ourselves. Some others would never do such a thing. Which one is the better coping mechanism? Oddly, in terms of the history of thinking about our own mind, the option of laughing at ourselves was not always taken to be a real option. In fact, the Greek philosopher Plato argued that not only is it unwise to laugh at ourselves, it is actually impossible to do so, as laughter is something that is only appropriate towards people who are in some sense below us (and we can't be, by definition, below ourselves).

Plato aside, some people clearly do routinely laugh at themselves, a phenomenon that........

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