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We laugh for various reasons. We laugh when the next friend makes a joke. We laugh when something surprises us, like when someone slips a banana skin while walking and falls down while the street is crowded with people.
The answer might seem obvious: humans laugh when watching something funny. But contrary to what we believe, laughter is not merely a joke.
Why do humans laugh?
Robert R. Provine, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland, was reported WebMD, argues that laughter functions as a social signal. Long before ancestors could speak fluently with each other, laughter was a simple method of communication. The first human laughter might begin to show relief from both parties over the passing of danger. And because the relaxation that results from laughter attacks hinders the biological fight-or-flight response, laughter can show comfort and security near the person.
"Laughter occurs when people feel comfortable with each other, when they feel open and free. And the more there is a lot of laughter in the situation, the stronger the bond within the group, "said Mahadev Apte cultural anthropologist, reported by How Stuff Works.
Therefore, laughter is also believed to evolve as an effort to build and strengthen relationships between humans and change the behavior of others. For example, in an embarrassing or threatening situation, laughter can serve as a peaceful gesture or as a way of deflecting anger. If people who threaten the balance of the group laugh, the risk of confrontation may decrease. The study also found that dominant individuals - bosses, chieftains, or family heads - used humor more often than their subordinates. Controlling group laughter is a way of demonstrating power by controlling the group's emotional climate. That's why you will often find everyone in the office laughing when your boss laughs.
The endless "stronger bonding" reactions of laughter, combined with a shared desire to not be alienated from the group, may be another reason why laughter is often contagious in social situations. Even nitrous oxide, or laughter gas, loses a lot of its effectiveness when used in only one person, according to German psychologist Willibald Ruch.
But, laughter is also a natural instinct. Most laughter does not occur due to humor. Babies laugh almost from birth. Even people who are born blind and deaf can still laugh. Someone can laugh when nervous or scared, or even respond to simple questions like, "Hi, how are you?", "How do you quiz before?", Or even "Excuse me, have a screwdriver?" this time. Our brain makes this decision for us. So we know laughter is not a learned behavior. Humans are designed to laugh.
What happens in the body when we laugh?
Physiological studies of laughter have their own term - gelotology. Researchers have learned that laughter production is involved with various regions of the brain. While the relationship between laughter and the brain is not fully understood, the researchers devised several guesses.
The amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure deep in the brain, and the hippocampus, a circular small structure like a seahorse, are the two main areas involved with emotional formation. The amygdala is connected to the hippocampus and the back of the medial core of the thalamus. This connection allows the brain to play an important role in controlling large activities such as friendship, love and affection, and expression of mood. The hypothalamus, especially the middle part, has been identified as a major contributor to the production of uncontrollable laughter.
Humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't usually go together. Jokes are a laughingstock when we expect a certain outcome, but even the other thing that is beyond our expectations actually happens. When a joke starts, our mind and body anticipate what will happen and how it will end. This anticipation is made up of logical thinking related to emotions and the influence of past experiences, as well as the thinking processes of each individual - this is why not all jokes are considered funny by different people. When the climax of a joke leads to something we don't expect, thoughts and emotions suddenly have to change gears. You now have new emotions, supporting a new way of thinking. In other words, we now have two sets of thoughts that are incompatible with each other; happens at one time. We consider the peculiarity of each part of this joke to be funny.
We also often laugh at jokes that focus on the mistakes, ignorance or misfortunes of others. We feel superior to this person, experiencing a certain separation from the situation so that they are able to laugh at it.
Other people can immediately know you are faking laughter for niceties. What is the reason?
In most cases, it is difficult to distinguish between fake and genuine laughter, which makes us all probably think of ourselves as funnier than it really is. To test whether fake laughter can be distinguished from the real thing, UCLA researchers examined spontaneous laughter between friends, as well as fake laughter, reported from Today.
When people make fake laughter, there are differences that arise in the speed and pattern of breathing that makes your interlocutor quickly know when you are laughing for a bit. This is thanks to our ability to detect breath sighs that follow the sound of "haha" from the laughter of our original laughter.
There are two different vocal systems that are responsible for producing laughing sounds "haha" - emotional systems (authentic) and speech systems (fake). Genuine laughter is produced by an emotional vocal system that also exists in all primate creatures, while fake laughter produced by a unique speech system exists only in humans. Emotional laughter has a greater proportion of breath, showing gasping sounds (such as laughter shown by apes and gorillas). The emotional vocal system has more efficient control during the opening and closing of the throat, thus allowing people to emit air rapidly while laughing out loud. In fact, during the original laugh, the throat can open and close at a level almost reaching its maximum potential.
Conversely, when it is fake laughter, the speech system is controlled by our conscious mind to control the dynamics of the vocal tract so that the throat cannot open and close quickly. When the research team accelerated the recording of fake laughter, they found that the faster the laughter sounded, the more likely people were to think that laughter was sincere.
People train us not to hurt other people's feelings, we rarely hear the truth about ourselves - even when it's worth getting. That is why people falsify their laughter: convey the willingness to cooperate and openness to bonding, or to defuse the situation and not be lured into an argument with strangers.
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