on laughter

Laughter is a fundamental part of everyday life and a universal language shared not only by humans but by other primates as well. Tell me of a culture where members didn’t spoke or knew of laughter and humor you know. “More than our simple response to comedy and wise-cracks from the television and around us, laughter is primarily a social vocalization that binds people together. It is a hidden language that we all speak. It is not a learned group reaction but an instinctive behavior programmed by our genes.” ---psychology today.com

Basically, laughter is important because it sort of bonds us and the others who are participating in the humor and laughter. Even when watching television, it’s still the same. There’s still a form of binding between the comic-speaker or the character in a program we watch and us at work no matter how small. That way, we’ll make sense of what they are doing; and, finally, we’ll understand the humor behind it which, eventually, makes us laugh. It cannot be denied that laughter is a social thing. It involves being in a group, playfulness, and a positive emotional tone; which explains why it’s easier to laugh when you have company than being alone.

The critical stimulus for laughter is another person, not a joke. While we usually think of laughter as coming from an audience after a wisecrack from a single speaker, contrary to expectation, the speakers laughed most of the time more than their audiences. Banal comments like, "Where have you been?" or "It was nice meeting you, too" are far more likely to precede laughter than jokes. Hardly a few of the laughter episodes we witnessed followed anything joke-like. Even the most humorous of the 1,200 comments that preceded laughter weren't necessarily howlers: "You don't have to drink, just buy us drinks!" and "Was that before or after I took my clothes off?" are examples.

The social nature of laughter, with media and its effects excluded, is striking. Laughter was 30 times more frequent in social than solitary situations. People were much more likely to talk to themselves or even smile when alone than to laugh. However happy we may feel, laughter is a signal we send to others and it virtually disappears when we lack an audience. Additionally, laughter is also extremely difficult to control consciously. When you ask a friend to laugh, for example, their efforts to laugh on command will be forced or futile. It will take them many seconds to produce a laugh, if they can do it at all. This suggests that we cannot deliberately activate the brain's mechanisms to execute a genuine laugh.

Also, even though it doesn’t look like it, females tend to laugh more than males. In cross-gender conversations, females make more laughs and giggles than their male counterparts, meaning that women tend to do the most laughing while males tend to do the most laugh-getting. Men seem to be the main instigators of humor across cultures. This explains why there are more male than female comedians. Also, in terms of relationships, women seek men who make them laugh, and men are eager to comply with this request. When Karl Grammar and Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt studied spontaneous conversations between mixed-sex pairs of young German adults meeting for the first time, they noted that the more a woman laughed aloud during these encounters, the greater her self-reported interest in the man she was talking to. In the same vein, men were more interested in women who laughed heartily in their presence. It is possible that the laughter of the female, not the male, is the critical index of a healthy relationship.

When it comes to its social context, laughter is a self-effacing behavior. It evolved into a tool that changes the behavior of others, such as a conciliatory gesture or a way to deflect anger. In the same line of thought, people used it either as conscious or unconscious vocal display of compliance or solidarity with a more socially dominant group member. Studies have also found that dominant individuals use humor more than their subordinates to exercise power by controlling the emotional climate of the group. At the same time, dominant individuals laugh less. Hence, it is highly presumable that social rank determines laughter patterns. For example, the workplace giggles of a young female executive will probably diminish as she ascends the corporate ladder, but she will remain a barrel of laughs when cavorting with old chums. Someone who laughs a lot, and unconditionally, may be a good team player, but they'll seldom be a president.

Laughter also has viral qualities. It is contagious, spontaneous, and relatively uncensored. Did you ever notice the “laugh tracks” or the recorded laughs used in comedy shows which somehow serve as a cue that the scene is funny? Canned laughter may sound artificial, but it makes TV viewers laugh as if they were part of a live theater audience. The same applies also when another person is laughing their hearts out. Generally, those who see and hear it will find it funny thus, soliciting more laughter. This suggests that humans have a "detector" that responds to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain, which, in turn, generates more laughter.

How we laugh is basically because of our brain mechanisms. One experiment suggests that on a simple level the complex process of laughing involves three main brain components. One part, a cognitive thinking part, helps you get the joke. A second movement part helps move the muscles of the face to smile and laugh. And a third emotional part helps produce the happy feelings that accompany a mirthful experience. The humor-processing pathway includes parts of the frontal lobe brain area, important for cognitive processing; the supplementary motor area, important for movement; and the nucleus accumbens, associated with pleasure. The supplementary motor area triggers smile and laughter movements.

Another experiment shows a somewhat different brain activity during laughter. According to the research; the left side of the cortex (the layer of cells that covers the entire surface of the forebrain) analyzed the words and structure of the joke. The brain's large frontal lobe, which is involved in social emotional responses, became very active. The right hemisphere of the cortex carried out the intellectual analysis required to "get" the joke. Brainwave activity then spread to the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe (the area on the back of the head that contains the cells that process visual signals). Stimulation of the motor sections evoked physical responses to the joke.

Usually our laughter is triggered when we find something humorous. There are three traditional theories about what we find humorous: ----from Howstuffworks.com

The incongruity theory suggests that humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together. Researcher Thomas Veatch says a joke becomes funny when we expect one outcome and another happens. When a joke begins, our minds and bodies are already anticipating what's going to happen and how it's going to end. That anticipation takes the form of logical thought intertwined with emotion and is influenced by our past experiences and our thought processes. When the joke goes in an unexpected direction, our thoughts and emotions suddenly have to switch gears. We now have new emotions, backing up a different line of thought. In other words, we experience two sets of incompatible thoughts and emotions simultaneously. We experience this incongruity between the different parts of the joke as humorous.

The superiority theory comes into play when we laugh at jokes that focus on someone else's mistakes, stupidity or misfortune. We feel superior to this person, experience a certain detachment from the situation and so are able to laugh at it.

The relief theory is the basis for a device movie-makers have used effectively for a long time. In action films or thrillers where tension is high, the director uses comic relief at just the right times. He builds up the tension or suspense as much as possible and then breaks it down slightly with a side comment, enabling the viewer to relieve himself of pent-up emotion, just so the movie can build it up again! Similarly, an actual story or situation creates tension within us. As we try to cope with two sets of emotions and thoughts, we need a release and laughter is the way of cleansing our system of the built-up tension and incongruity.

One important characteristic of laughter, experts say, is that there are several obvious differences in what people find humorous. Aside from cultural background, context, and gender, the most significant seems to be age. Ridiculous and surprising things consisting of short and simple concepts are what strike children as funny. In contrary, lots of adolescents and teens laugh at jokes that focus on sex, food, authority figures and -- in typical rebellious style -- any subject that adults consider off-limits. As we mature, our adult sense of humor is usually characterized as more subtle, more tolerant, and less judgmental about the differences in people, consisting mainly of experiences such as shared common predicaments and embarrassments.

Laughter, no matter how much we deny it, has always been a social preoccupation. Its role is subliminal yet pivotal in shaping our daily interactions and relationships, and what our own laughs may be really telling our friends and colleagues about us. More than our common guesses that laughing is just basically about seeing something funny and then laughing, it involves a lot of complex processes inside our brain and in our motor responses. Something funny, also, involves more than just the shallow “slap-stick” and its pain coefficient. Incongruence, superiority, and relief are also part of the laughing game. Additionally, how we perceive a joke is not always constant as age plays a vital role in what we view as funny. Being a member of a particular community, culture, gender group, or having emotional and moral attachment to the victim or subject of a joke, aside from your age, also contributes to how you perceive, understand and laugh at what is and what is not funny.

I hope you liked what I’ve managed to compile about laughter and its inner workings. There’ll be more nice articles coming so stay tuned.

Resources:
Psychology Today: The Science of Laughter
Howstuffworks “How Laughter Works”
Society for Neuroscience | Humor, Laughter and the Brain
Medscape | Laughter: A Scientific Investigation


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