Laughter
Laughter is a
Laughter is a part of
The study of humor and laughter, and its psychological and physiological effects on the human body, is called gelotology.
Nature
Laughter might be thought of as an audible expression or appearance of excitement, an inward feeling of joy and happiness. It may ensue from jokes, tickling, and other stimuli completely unrelated to psychological state, such as nitrous oxide. One group of researchers speculated that noises from infants as early as 16 days old may be vocal laughing sounds or laughter.[8] However, the weight of the evidence supports the appearance of such sounds at 15 weeks to four months of age.
Provine argues that "Laughter is primitive, an unconscious vocalization." Provine argues that it probably is genetic. In a study of the "Giggle Twins", two happy twins who were separated at birth and only reunited 43 years later, Provine reports that "until they met each other, neither of these exceptionally happy ladies had known anyone who laughed as much as they did." They reported this even though they had been brought together by their adoptive parents, who they indicated were "undemonstrative and dour". He indicates that the twins "inherited some aspects of their laugh sound and pattern, readiness to laugh, and maybe even taste in humor".[10]
Scientists have noted the similarity in forms of laughter induced by tickling among various primates, which suggests that laughter derives from a common origin among primate species.[11][12]
The spotted hyena, another species of animal, was also known as the laughing hyena because of the way it sounds when it communicates.
A very rare neurological condition has been observed whereby the sufferer is unable to laugh out loud, a condition known as aphonogelia.[13]
Brain
The December 7, 1984,
- "Although there is no known 'laugh center' in the brain, its neural mechanism has been the subject of much, albeit inconclusive, speculation. It is evident that its expression depends on neural paths arising in close association with the periaqueductal grey contains the integrating mechanism for emotional expression. Thus, supranuclear pathways, including those from the limbic system that Papez hypothesised to mediate emotional expressions such as laughter, probably come into synaptic relation in the reticular core of the brain stem. So while purely emotional responses such as laughter are mediated by subcortical structures, especially the hypothalamus, and are stereotyped, the cerebral cortexcan modulate or suppress them."
Some drugs are well known for their laughter-facilitating properties (e. g. ethanol and cannabis), while the others, like salvinorin A (the active ingredient of Salvia divinorum), can even induce bursts of uncontrollable laughter.[16]
A research article was published December 1, 2000, on the psycho-evolution of laughter (Panksepp 2000).[17]
Health
A link between laughter and healthy function of blood vessels was first reported in 2005 by researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center with the fact that laughter causes the dilatation of the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, and increases blood flow.[18] Drs. Michael Miller (University of Maryland) and William Fry (Stanford) theorize that beta-endorphin-like compounds released by the hypothalamus activate receptors on the endothelial surface to release nitric oxide, thereby resulting in dilation of vessels. Other cardioprotective properties of nitric oxide include reduction of inflammation and decreased platelet aggregation.[19]
Laughter has various proven beneficial biochemical effects. It has been shown to lead to reductions in stress hormones such as
Anecdotally, journalist and author Norman Cousins developed in 1964 a treatment program for his ankylosing spondylitis and collagen disease consisting of large doses of Vitamin C alongside laughter induced by comic films, including those of the Marx Brothers. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval."[23][24]
Communication
A number of studies using methods of conversation analysis and discourse analysis have documented the systematic workings of laughter in a variety of interactions, from casual conversations to interviews, meetings, and therapy sessions.[25] Working with recorded interactions, researchers have created detailed transcripts that indicate not only the presence of laughter but also features of its production and placement.
These studies challenge several widely held assumptions about the nature of laughter. Contrary to notions that it is spontaneous and involuntary, research documents that laughter is sequentially organized and precisely placed relative to surrounding talk. Far more than merely a response to humor, laughter often works to manage delicate and serious moments. More than simply an external behavior "caused" by an inner state, laughter is highly communicative and helps accomplish actions and regulate relationships.[26]
Causes
Common causes for laughter are sensations of
A general theory that explains laughter is called the relief theory.
For example: a
Laughter can also be brought on by tickling. Although most people find it unpleasant, being tickled often causes heavy laughter, thought to be an (often uncontrollable) reflex of the body.[28][29]
Structure and anatomy
A normal laugh has the structure of "ha-ha-ha" or "ho-ho-ho". It is unnatural, and one is physically unable, to have a laugh structure of "ha-ho-ha-ho". The usual variations of a laugh most often occur in the first or final note in a sequence- therefore, "ho-ha-ha" or "ha-ha-ho" laughs are possible. Normal note durations with unusually long or short "inter-note intervals" do not happen due to the result of the limitations of our vocal cords. This basic structure allows one to recognize a laugh despite individual variants.[30]
It has also been determined that eyes moisten during laughter as a reflex from the tear glands.[21]
Negative aspects
Laughter is not always a pleasant experience and is associated with several negative phenomena. Excessive laughter can lead to cataplexy, and unpleasant laughter spells, excessive elation, and fits of laughter can all be considered negative aspects of laughter. Unpleasant laughter spells, or "sham mirth", usually occur in people who have a neurological condition, including patients with pseudobulbar palsy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. These patients appear to be laughing out of amusement but report that they are feeling undesirable sensations "at the time of the punch line".
Excessive elation is a common symptom associated with bipolar disorder psychoses and mania/hypomania. Those with schizophrenic psychoses seem to experience the opposite—they do not understand humor or get any joy out of it. A fit describes an abnormal time when one cannot control the laughter or one's body, sometimes leading to seizures or a brief period of unconsciousness. Some believe that fits of laughter represent a form of epilepsy.[31]
Therapy
Laughter has been used as a
Laughter therapy also has some social benefits, such as strengthening relationships, improving teamwork and reducing conflicts, and making oneself more attractive to others. Therefore, whether a person is trying to cope with a terminal illness or just trying to manage their stress or anxiety levels, laughter therapy can be a significant enhancement to their life.[36][37]
Ramon Mora-Ripoll in his study on The Therapeutic Value Of Laughter In Medicine, stated that laughter therapy is an inexpensive and simple tool that can be used in patient care.[38] It is a tool that is only beneficial when experienced and shared. Care givers need to recognize the importance of laughter and possess the right attitude to pass it on. He went on to say that since this type of therapy is not widely practiced, health care providers will have to learn how to effectively use it. In another survey, researchers looked at how Occupational Therapists and other care givers viewed and used humor with patients as a means of therapy.[39] Many agreed that while they believed it was beneficial to the patients, the proper training was lacking in order to effectively use It.[39] Even though laughter and humor has been used therapeutically in medical conditions, according to Mora-Ripoll, there was not enough data to clearly establish that laughter could be used as an overall means of healing. It did suggest that additional research was still needed since "well-designed randomized controlled trials have not been conducted to date validating the therapeutic efficacy of laughter."[38]
In 2017, an institution in Japan conducted an open-label randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effects of laughter therapy on quality of life in patients with cancer.[40] The study used laughter yoga, comedy, clown and jokes. The result showed that laughter therapy was helpful in improving quality of life and cancer symptoms in some areas for cancer survivors. Improvements were seen in the area of depression, anxiety and stress levels. There were limited harmful side effects. Laughter therapy should be used in conjunction with other cancer treatment.[40]
Research and philosophy
Laughter in literature, although considered understudied by some,
Ancient
Herodotus
For Herodotus, laughers can be distinguished into three types:[42]
- Those who are innocent of wrongdoing, but ignorant of their own vulnerability
- Those who are mad
- Those who are overconfident
According to Donald Lateiner, Herodotus reports about laughter for valid literary and historiological reasons. "Herodotus believes either that both nature (better, the gods' direction of it) and human nature coincide sufficiently, or that the latter is but an aspect or analogue of the former, so that to the recipient the outcome is suggested."[42] When reporting laughter, Herodotus does so in the conviction that it tells the reader something about the future and/or the character of the person laughing. It is also in this sense that it is not coincidental that in about 80% of the times when Herodotus speaks about laughter it is followed by a retribution. "Men whose laughter deserves report are marked, because laughter connotes scornful disdain, disdain feeling of superiority, and this feeling and the actions which stem from it attract the wrath of the gods."[42]
Modern
There is a wide range of experiences with laughter. A 1999 study by two humor researchers asked 80 people to keep a daily laughter record, and found they laughed an average of 18 times per day. However, their study also found a wide range, with some people laughing as many as 89 times per day, and others laughing as few as 0 times per day.[43]
Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes wrote, "The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly."[citation needed]
Schopenhauer
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer devotes the 13th chapter of the first part of his major work, The World as Will and Representation, to laughter.
Nietzsche
"Possibly Nietzsche's works would have had a totally different effect, if the playful, ironical and joking in his writings would have been factored in better."[46]
Bergson
In
Ludovici
Anthony Ludovici developed the thoughts of Hobbes even further in The Secret of Laughter. His conviction is that there's something sinister in laughter, and that the modern omnipresence of humour and the idolatry of it are signs of societal weakness, as instinctive resort to humour became a sort of escapism from responsibility and action. Ludovici considered laughter to be an evolutionary trait and he offered many examples of different triggers for laughter with their own distinct explanations.[50]
Bellieni
Carlo Bellieni examined laughter in an essay published in New Ideas in Psychology.[51] He wrote we can strip back laughter to a three-step process. First, it needs a situation that seems odd and induces a sense of incongruity (bewilderment or panic). Second, the worry or stress the incongruous situation has provoked must be worked out and overcome (resolution). Third, the actual release of laughter acts as an all-clear siren to alert bystanders (relief) that they are safe.[52]
See also
- Death from laughter
- Evil laughter
- Laughter yoga
- Paradoxical laughter
- Pathological laughing and crying
- Smile
References
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group action is the collective action of such individuals ['who fit their respective lines of action to one another through the process of interpretation']...the individuals composing...the group become 'carriers,' or media for the expression of such forces; and the interpretative behavior by means of which people form their actions is merely a coerced link in the play of such forces.
- ISBN 978-0-684-83632-4.
Thus we yawn, laugh, weep, because we see someone yawn, laugh or weep...The name of imitation must then be reserved solely for such facts if it is to have clear meaning, and we shall say: Imitation exists when the immediate antecedent of an act is the representation of a like act, previously performed by someone else; with no explicit or implicit mental operation which bears upon the intrinsic nature of the act reproduced intervening between representation and execution.
- ^ Bergson, Henri (26 July 2009) [1900]. "The Comic in General—The Comic Element in Forms and Movements—Expansive Force of the Comic". Laughter: an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Translated by Brereton L. ES L., M.A., Cloudesley; Rothwell B.A., Fred. Project Gutenberg.
Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. Still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the less, a closed one.
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- ^ "Tickled apes yield laughter clue", News.BBC.co.uk, June 4, 2009.
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- ^ "Physiology of laughter and tickling". www.tomveatch.com. Retrieved 2010-08-03.
- ^ Robert R. Provine (1950-09-09). "Provine, Laughter". Cogweb.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2011-12-26.
- ^ Provine, R (1996). "Laughter". American Scientist. 841: 38–47.
- ^ Fry, W. F. (1963). Sweet Madness: A Study of Humor. Palo Alto, Ca: Pacific Books Publishers
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Further reading
- Bachorowski, J.-A., Smoski, M.J., & Owren, M.J. The acoustic features of human laughter. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110 (1581) 2001
- ISBN 978-0-253-34830-2.
- Chapman, Antony J.; Foot, Hugh C.; Derks, Peter (editors), Humor and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Applications, Transaction Publishers, 1996. ISBN 1-56000-837-7. Books.google.com
- Cousins, Norman, Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived by the Patient, 1979.
- Davila-Ross, M.; Allcock, B.; Thomas, C.; Bard, K.A. (2011). "Aping expressions? Chimpanzees produce distinct laugh types when responding to laughter of others". Emotion. 11 (5): 1013–1020. PMID 21355640.
- Fried, I., Wilson, C.L., MacDonald, K.A., and Behnke EJ. Electric current stimulates laughter. Nature, 391:650, 1998 (see patient AK)
- Goel, V. & Dolan, R. J. The functional anatomy of humor: segregating cognitive and affective components. Nature Neuroscience 3, 237–238 (2001).
- Greig, John Young Thomson, The Psychology of Comedy and Laughter, New York, Dodd, Mead and company, 1923.
- Hennefeld, Maggie (December 2016). "Death from Laughter, Female Hysteria, and Early Cinema". .
- Knight, Chris, Does laughter hold the key to human consciousness? – Chris Knight | Aeon Essays "Does laughter hold the key to human consciousness?" Aeon Magazine February 2019.
- Marteinson, Peter, On the Problem of the Comic: A Philosophical Study on the Origins of Laughter Archived 2020-07-16 at the Wayback Machine, Legas Press, Ottawa, 2006. utoronto.ca
- Miller, M; Mangano, C; Park, Y; Goel, R; Plotnick, GD; Vogel, RA (2006). "Impact of cinematic viewing on endothelial function". Heart. 92 (2): 261–2. PMID 16415199.
- Provine, R. R., "Laughter". American Scientist, V84, 38:45, 1996. ucla.edu
- Provine, Robert R. (2001). Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. Penguin Publishing. ISBN 978-0141002255.
- ISBN 978-0-19-926461-2.
- Raskin, Victor, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (1985).
- MacDonald, C., "A Chuckle a Day Keeps the Doctor Away: Therapeutic Humor & Laughter" Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services (2004) V42, 3:18–25. psychnurse.org
- Kawakami, K., et al., "Origins of smile and laughter: A preliminary study" Early Human Development (2006) 82, 61–66. kyoto-u.ac.jp
- Johnson, S., Emotions and the Brain Discover (2003) V24, N4. discover.com
- Panksepp, J., Burgdorf, J.,"'Laughing' rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy?" Physiology & Behavior (2003) 79:533–547. psych.umn.edu
- Milius, S., "Don't look now, but is that dog laughing?" Science News (2001) V160 4:55. sciencenews.org
- Simonet, P., et al., Dog Laughter: Recorded playback reduces stress related behavior in shelter dogs 7th International Conference on Environmental Enrichment (2005). petalk.org
- Discover Health (2004) Humor & Laughter: Health Benefits and Online Sources, helpguide.org
- Klein, A. The Courage to Laugh: Humor, Hope and Healing in the Face of Death and Dying. Los Angeles, CA: Tarcher/Putman, 1998.
- Ron Jenkins Subversive laughter (New York, Free Press, 1994), 13ff
- Bogard, M. Laughter and its Effects on Groups. New York, New York: Bullish Press, 2008.
- Humor Theory. The formulae of laughter by Igor Krichtafovitch, Outskitspress, 2006, ISBN 978-1-59800-222-5
- Hans-Georg Moeller und Günter Wohlfart (Hrsg.): Laughter in Eastern and Western Philosophies. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / München 2010. ISBN 978-3-495-48385-5
External links
- Did laughter make the mind?, Aeon magazine
- The Origins of Laughter Archived 2020-07-16 at the Wayback Machine, chass.utoronto.ca
- Human laughter up to 16 million years old, cosmosmagazine.com
- More information about Gelotology from the University of Washington, faculty.Washington.edu
- WNYC's Radio Lab radio show: Is Laughter just a Human Thing?, wnyc.org
- Transcriptions of laughter, writtensound.com
- Recordings of people laughing, 99 audio examples of human laughter
- Comprehensive summary of research on the benefits of laughter