Psychology of laughter

If you try to ask www.google.com what is laughter, it might say that it is an audible expression or the appearance of happiness, or an inward feeling of joy (laughing on the inside) and that in most cases it is a very pleasant sensation. It is related with joy and jokes, but that is just a small part of what you can find about that, so I will try to introduce you with further facts about psychology of laughter.

What is the nature of laughter? Analyses have shown that babies as early as 17 days old have vocal laughing sounds or laughter. Robert R. Provine has spent decades studying laughter. He indicated that laughter is a mechanism everyone has. “Laughter is part of universal human vocabulary. There are thousands of languages, hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter in pretty much the same way.” Everyone can laugh. Babies have the ability to laugh before they ever speak. Children who are born blind and deaf still retain the ability to laugh”. Strong laughter can bring an onset of tears or even moderate muscular pain.

Everybody knows that laughter prolongs life, endorphins make us happier and that’s the best way to spend our days, but not everybody can enjoy it. A very rare neurological condition has been observed recently. It is known as aphonogelia. Person with this disorder is unable to laugh out loud. But just very few people think about different types of laughter. Though there are many ways to laugh, “From giggles to guffaws and from chuckles to cackles”, it turns out that we laugh at the strangest things (2). A person can laugh in the end of a nervous day, or sarcastically, or because of happiness etc. One more type of laughter is abnormal laughter. People with certain types of brain damage produce abnormal laughter. it is considered symptomatic of psychological disorders including such disorders like dementia and hysteria, but can also be the result of cerebellar lesions curable by antidepressants. Some negative medical effects of laughter have been reported as well, including laughter syncope, where laughter causes a person to lose consciousness.

Most psychologists concentrate on what does laughter mean. It is absolutely true that in most cases it means amusement, but sometimes it can show person's negative intentions. Freud said that laughter is an "economical phenomenon" whose function is to release "physic energy" that had been wrongly mobilized by incorrect expectations. Other psychologists claim that it is a release of tension or even self-defense. For example if a person is in uncomfortable situation he or she might start laughing or making jokes. And of course, there are many other various theories. In accordance to these theories, laughter is used in therapies. You can find different kind of them: humor therapy, clown therapy, laughter therapy, laughter meditation, Laughter Yoga & Laughter Clubs, etc. Humor and laughter is used to help patients cope or treat a variety of physical, mental, and spiritual issues. The various therapies are not specific to health care professionals or clinicians. Some of the therapies can be practiced individually or in a group setting to aid in a person's well-being. (1).

Finally, I can say that there is not much information about psychological benefit of laughter, but every day we can find more and more information about that in the internet, magazines and books, so we can guess that in the future laughter will be used to cure more and more illnesses. Like someone said: laughter is the best cure for long and happy life.

used literature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/the-science-laughter

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Laughter