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Fun and pleasant surprises – and the laughter they can trigger – add texture to the fabric of everyday life.
Those giggles and giggles may seem like just disposable nonsense. But laughter, in response to funny events, actually takes a lot of work, because it activates many areas of the brain: areas that control motor, emotional, cognitive and social processing.
As I discovered in writing “An Introduction to the Psychology of Humor,” researchers now appreciate the power of laughter to improve physical and mental wellbeing.
4. The physical power of laughter
People start laughing in childhood when it helps develop upper body muscles and strength. Laughter is not just about breathing. It is based on complex combinations of facial muscles, often involving the movement of the eyes, head and shoulders.
Laughter – doing it or observing it – activates multiple regions of the brain: the motor cortex, which controls the muscles; the frontal lobe, which helps you understand the context; and the limbic system, which modulates positive emotions. Activating all of these circuits strengthens neural connections and helps a healthy brain coordinate its activity.
By activating the neural pathways of emotions such as joy and cheer, laughter can improve your mood and make your physical and emotional response to stress less intense. For example, laughing can help control brain levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, similar to what antidepressants do. By minimizing your brain’s responses to threats, it limits the release of neurotransmitters and hormones like cortisol that can wear down your cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems over time. Laughter is a bit like an antidote to stress, which weakens these systems and increases vulnerability to disease.
3. The cognitive power of laughter
A good sense of humor and the laughs that follow depend on a large measure of social intelligence and working memory resources.
Laughter, like humor, typically triggers from recognizing the inconsistencies or absurdities of a situation. You must mentally resolve the surprising behavior or event, otherwise you will not laugh; you might be confused instead. Inferring other people’s intentions and assuming their point of view can increase the intensity of the laughter and fun you feel.
To “get” a playful or funny situation, you need to be able to see the lighter side of things. You have to believe that there are other possibilities besides the literal ones: think of being amused by comics with talking animals, such as those found in “The Far Side”.
2. The social power of laughter
Many cognitive and social skills work together to help you track when and why you laugh during conversations. You don’t even need to hear a laugh to be able to laugh. Deaf signatories punctuate their signed sentences with laughter, just like emoticons in written text.
Laughter creates bonds and increases intimacy with others. Linguist Don Nilsen points out that laughter and belly laughter rarely occurs when they are alone, supporting their strong social role. From an early age, children’s laughter is an external sign of pleasure that helps strengthen bonds with caregivers.
Subsequently, it is an external sign of sharing an appreciation of the situation. For example, public speakers and comedians try to have a laugh to make the audience feel psychologically closer to them, to create intimacy.
By practicing a little laugh every day, you can improve social skills that may not come naturally to you. When you laugh in response to humor, you share your feelings with others and you take risks that your response will be accepted / shared / appreciated by others and will not be rejected / ignored / obnoxious.
In studies, psychologists have found that men with type A personality characteristics, including competitiveness and time urgency, tend to laugh more, while women with those traits laugh less. Both sexes laugh more with each other than when they are alone.
1. The mental power of laughter
Positive psychology researchers study how people can live meaningful lives and thrive. Laughter produces positive emotions that lead to this kind of prosperity. These feelings – such as fun, happiness, cheer and joy – create resilience and increase creative thinking. They increase subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Researchers find that these positive emotions experienced with humor and laughter are related to appreciating the meaning of life and help seniors have a benign view of the difficulties they have faced throughout their lives.
Laughter in response to fun is a healthy coping mechanism. When you laugh, take yourself or the situation less seriously and you may feel empowered to solve problems. For example, the psychologists measured the frequency and intensity of 41 people’s laughter over two weeks, along with their physical and mental stress ratings. They found that the more laughter you feel, the less stress you report. It didn’t matter if the moments of laughter were strong, medium or weak.
Maybe you want to reap some of these benefits for yourself: Can you force laughter to work for you?
A growing number of therapists advocate the use of humor and laughter to help clients build trust and improve work environments; a review of five different studies found that well-being measures increased after laughter interventions. Sometimes called house games instead of homework, these interventions take the form of everyday humorous activities: surrounding yourself with funny people, watching a comedy that makes you laugh, or writing down three funny things that happened today.
You can also practice laughing alone. Intentionally take a perspective that appreciates the fun side of events. Laughter yoga is a technique that uses your breathing muscles to achieve the positive physical responses of natural laughter with a forced laugh (ha ha hee hee ho ho). Some tips on how to get started with laughter yoga.
Researchers today are certainly not laughing at its value, but much research into the influence of laughter on mental and physical health relies on self-assessment measures. More psychological experimentation with laughter or the contexts in which it occurs will likely support the importance of laughing throughout the day and perhaps suggest even more ways to intentionally reap its benefits.
This article was originally published in Janet M. Gibson’s The Conversation at Grinnell College. Read the original article here.
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