Laughter is something we do in our everyday life, but what exactly is "laughter"?. In general, laughter is a complicit emotional response to ones environment or stimuli. It happens through different vocal sounds, various facial expressions, and contraction of some muscles. There are various psychological benefits to laughter, such as improving depression, anxiety, and stress, but more recent research indicates there are physiological benefits as well. A 2010 review indicated on how laughter could be a potential therapeutic option, and how incorporating this into ones lifestyle could be an adequate medicinal approach with various benefits. Laughter can be categorized into two different types; stimulated and spontaneous. Stimulated laughter is mainly physical and is not fully associated with positive emotions or feelings. Spontaneous refers to real or unforced laughter, and is associated with a positive mood. Many have observed that these different laughters have the same physiological benefits. However, some studies suggest that when viewing neuroimaging, different neural pathways are used.
With the physiological effects, spontaneous laughter has been studied more frequently. There were 3 different studies that were very interesting. In the first study, subjects watched an hour long comedy video, and their stress hormones were examined before and after the movie. What they found was a decrease in cortisol levels in the experimental group and the control group, but the experimental group had a significantly larger reduction! The second study was a bit more recent and found that 52 subjects after watching a 1 hour video that induced laughter had increases in natural killer cell activity when compared to the control. The last study was interesting and a bit different than the others. The last study showed an amusing film and found similar increases in epinephrine and norepinephrine levels as an aggression-provoking response. The author brought up that this could have been from sympathetic-adrenomedullary activity. Lastly, various studies have identified certain cardiovascular benefits as well, showing that the body responds similarly to laughter as it does to exercise! Laughter caused a significant increase in stroke volume and cardiac output, while decreasing O2 consumption and total peripheral resistance. Overall, the literature that we have on laughter is promising, and should be evaluated further for therapeutic purposes. An important question to bring about is if physicians should start using and gaining more insight on using therapeutic laughter as a new approach to lifestyle change. From a beneficence standpoint, given that laughter is very important in happiness and a tool used to help with depression, it should be further studied and potentially implemented as a new approach by physicians to help fight depression, and help aid new approaches to lifestyle change.
McGettigan, C., Walsh, E., Jessop, R., Agnew, Z. K., Sauter, D. A., Warren, J. E., & Scott, S. K. (2013). Individual differences in laughter perception reveal roles for mentalizing and sensorimotor systems in the evaluation of emotional authenticity. Cerebral Cortex, 25(1), 246–257. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bht227
Louie, D., Brook, K., & Frates, E. (2016). The laughter prescription. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 10(4), 262–267. https://doi.org/10.1177/1559827614550279
Haley, I find your post to be encouraging. I find that I laugh quite a bit and have noticed the positive effect that laughing has on me. I was unaware of the effects that laughing had on O2 consumption, stroke volume, and cardiac output. These effects, in many ways mirror the effects of exercise. Your post sparked my interest in the reason that we laugh in the first place. What drove us to evolve this behavior? In this article, I found that laughter evolved as a environmental stress response that was found in people who were reproductively successful. Laughter gives us a boost of energy and reduces the feeling of stress and anxiety which, in many ways, was evolutionarily favorable. It helped us to calm our nerves to get away from a threat, to ease the tension of a situation, or make a move on a potential mate. With this, laughter is 'human nature' and has evolved to be almost a reflex to awkward or funny situations. This, I believe is also why people use laughter as a coping mechanism to deal with awkward or difficult situations. Thanks again for your post!
ReplyDeleteGrumet G. W. (1989). Laughter: nature's epileptoid catharsis. Psychological reports, 65(3 Pt 2), 1059–1078. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1989.65.3f.1059
Your post on laughter is great! It made me think a lot about the psychology of laughter, especially forced laughter, while I was reading it. I remember in my psychology courses in undergrad it was mentioned multiple times during lecture that smiling and laughing increases likability. This article that I found (only the abstract) not only verifies that laughter increases likability, but also that people can tell the difference between forced laughter and genuine laughter. The sample size was 350 psychology students. They rated photos and videos of laughter based on the Reysen Likeability Scale, but the most interesting variable was the inclusion of forced laughter. They concluded that the students were able to identify forced laughter at a better rate than mere chance. Regarding this as well as your article, I'd say increasing laughter quality and quantity most definitely improves your overall well-being.
ReplyDeleteReysen, S. (2006). A New Predictor of Likeability: Laughter. North American Journal of Psychology, 8(2).