Laughing is as familiar to the human experience as breathing, yet its implications for why it happens and the ways it affects our minds and bodies is far more elusive to nail down than the biological mechanisms for keeping us alive. Imagine doing something that everyone else does, with every person doing it a slightly different way for varying reasons, yet not one of those means is seen as strange, and there isn´t a clear explanation for why it happens or how it affects us! Laughter is very similar to that description, yet it is basically common sense that humor positively affects the mood and releases stress. One professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder has only set out to achieve a broader academic grasp behind humor, and its amorphous hold on the human capacity for emotion and engaging in thought.

The logical premise behind approaching humor academically is all but fascinating. Peter McGraw, a professor of marketing and psychology at the university, found that there is no perfect explanation for why certain ideas can be almost universally humorous, yet certain jokes within a similar framework of ideas can go awry and offend, or just plain flop. In explaining his work, he uses a term that he calls ¨constructive reappraisal¨, which describes the use of irony to bring forth a new sense of reality or an idea that challenges a presently existing moment that the audience holds in their perception. This idea is heavily prevalent throughout all comedy, he argues, as a form of easily producible humor that is just as able to delight as to offend others. In his excellent TED Talk , he explains a lot about the principles of humor, and what makes people have a good feeling from this reaction of laughter. Quite frankly, there isn´t a comparatively overwhelming amount of academia nor scientific data behind clear theories on laughter nor why it happens so consistently with certain results from different ¨senses¨ of humor, but McGraw has undertaken the onus of breaking modern ground within spreading the importance of humor and its scientific applications for the brain.

A particularly interesting idea to examine behind a scientific lense, however its not exactly a no-brainer to approach academically!

Another humor-nerd, Tom Veatch, former professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, describes humor as Affective Absurdity, which is a multi-faceted principle that extrapolates upon the idea of an assumed  “certain psychological state which tends to produce laughter, which is the natural phenomenon or process of `humor’, or ‘humor perception'”(“Humor”).  In order to achieve this state, the principles of “N” and “V” must exist in the same plane of an individual’s perception with simultaneity. That’s all a fancy way of saying that the individual will both be within perception of an existing state of reality that challenges a preconceived notion of the way things “ought” to be according to their pre-established perception, and the current situation violates some facet of that normalcy. If all three conditions are met in some capacity, humor is produced! However, the outside factors of what produces humor are far less simple to structure,  e.g. what makes certain humor acceptable for an individual, when it’s acceptable to laugh, what one may find funny surrounded with certain friends but won’t display amusement around others due to embarrassment etc. and their applications are at the crux of McGraw’s main ideas about humor’s application to social interaction and the power behind humor in gathering support for a cause.

Both Veatch and McGraw agree, interestingly enough, that the key to furthering the human grasp on humor is to understand what is almost universally not funny. Unfortunately, the amount of research done on laughter is neigh but scarce and anecdotal, but frequent studies on the effects of laughter and stress have demonstrated considerable effects in blood vessel activity and vasodilation (relaxation) in contrast to sad or non-humerous ideas, with a 22% increase in blood flow after 15 minutes average time of laughter a day. Hopefully, with McGraw’s efforts to bring humor research into a modern light, the finer points of stress-relief research could take even more practical methods of therapy as simple as daily laughter and develop more effective programs to, say, raise workplace morale, or even university classes with heavy and complex material! Sounds like an exciting idea to get the “last laugh” on stress!

Bliwise, Robert J. ¨The Science of Laughter¨. The Chronicle. 14 July 2014. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Science-of-Laughter/147571/

Miller, Michael, and William F. Fry. “The Effect of Mirthful Laughter on the Human Cardiovascular System.” Medical Hypotheses. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Nov. 2010. Web.

Seiler, Bill. “School of Medicine Study Shows Laughter Helps Blood Vessels Function Better.” University of Maryland Medical Center. N.p., 7 Mar. 005. Web.

Veatch, Tom. “Humor Is Affective Absurdity.” Humor Is Affective Absurdity. N.p., n.d. http://www.tomveatch.com/else/humor/paper/node2.html