Laughter is the best medicine! Having a good laugh with great friends is always a fun way to brighten your day. If we didn’t love to laugh so much, we wouldn’t have sit coms, or knock knock jokes, and comedians. On average, humans laugh about 17 times a day. But how does laughter even work? Why do we laugh?
Laughter and humor are two different things. Laughter is the psychological response to humor that people have. We one are one of the only species that actually responds out loud when something is funny. But laughter consists of two parts; a combination of gestures and the production of sound. When we laugh, our brain tells our bodies to do both activities at the same time. The epiglottis and the larynx come into play when something is so funny we start gasping for air. In some extreme cases, the tear ducts start to work and the face becomes moist. This is what happens when someone is “hysterically laughing”, which is always fun to witness.
Robert Provine proves that laughter is contagious in his study when he learned that humans have a “detector” that responds to laughter by triggering other brain functions which produced more laughter.
While laughter is contagious, many researchers strongly believe that laughter helps strengthen and create stronger human connections. When people are comfortable around each other, it’s a normal response to laugh when something is funny. Provine believes that laughter is a social signal, like a bird’s song or a dog’s bark.
Laughter is thought to be a natural response to human interaction. It brings people together and helps form relationships. What more can we ask for in something our body voluntarily does for us!?
Work Cited
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/laughter3.htm
Laughter definitely is contagious. I feel the same about crying as well. A few years ago, a friend of mine actually started crying after being accepted to Penn State, which was her dream school. As soon as she started crying, so did my friends and me, although it was completely relevant. Empathy is normal, that is being able to understand one’s emotions and feel for them. But I think it’s crazy how we can actually feel another one’s emotions as if they are our own, just as we laugh because someone else thought something was funny.
Laughing is my absolute favorite thing in the world!! My friends and I are ALWAYS laughing. Something that you may not know about laughing is that laughing makes you live longer, it is actually a very healthy activity. Here is a website that offers more on this topic: http://www.teenhealthfx.com/answers/general/48524
I have also heard that laughter is actually really good for our health and can actually make us live longer. I considered myself a pretty happy person who likes to laugh a lot, I mean who doesn’t?