What's So Funny? The Origins and Benefits of Laughter
It may have begun as a signal of safety. Now it's just fun
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Let's start at the end. No one really knows how human laughter originated or why we do it. The psychologist Gordon Allport wrote, "Laughing does not serve any known biological purpose." We all do it. We like it. But where did it come from? It's a question that has stumped Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Freud, Darwin and a lot of other very smart people. The fun part is in the wondering.
We do know some things about laughter.
- People in all cultures laugh, although what's funny in one may not be considered funny in another, even allowing for individual differences.
- Babies who are born deaf and blind laugh. That suggests that laughter is innate or instinctive, not something we learn from hearing or watching others doing it.
- We are far more likely to laugh aloud in a group than alone. Even children, who are practically laugh machines, will laugh more often at a cartoon if they are with other kids than if they are by themselves.
- The person speaking is more likely to laugh than the listener.
- Human beings laugh differently -- how we laugh and even the tonal pitch of our laughter -- depending on whether we are with close friends or with people we don't know well. In a study of nearly thousand people from 24 societies, the participants could usually distinguish between the laughter of friends and that between people who didn't know each other before then.
- While people can fake laughter, other people have the ability to detect so-called volitional laughter, which is sometimes intended to deceive. It doesn't usually fool anyone.
- There are many different kinds of laughter and I don't mean the differences between a chuckle, a guffaw, a giggle and a belly laugh. A laugh can be mirthful, or nervous or even intended to insult another person.
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In The Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin wrote: "Laughter seems to be the expression of mere joy or happiness."
But you don't have to be, well, Charles Darwin to figure that out. We all know that people laugh when they are amused or happy or joyful. But why do we express these feelings through laughter? Why not quietly enjoy one's amusement or joy rather than bark out these strange, spasmodic sounds (take a step back and listen to laughter. It's a pretty bizarre sound).
One of the most popular theories about how and why laughter evolved in the first place traces it back millions of years to our progenitors long before they were capable of anything resembling speech. This interpretation argues that among the grunts and growls that must have then passed for interpersonal communication (and among some New York Jets fans, still does*), these early people began to laugh as a way to signal to fellow group members that a perceived danger or threat had passed or turned out not to exist. It said: "Stand down! No need to be on guard. I'm okay. You're okay." It was both a form of tension release and a way to pass along the breaking news of their safety, according to this theory.
Physiologically, that makes sense. When we tense up, we take a deep breath and hold it (from which the expression "bated breath" comes), and our bodies tighten as we prepare to fight or flee. When the threat passes, laughter is vocalized by expelling that air we drew into our lungs.
In 1928, in The Social Origin and Function of Laughter, Donald Hayworth offered this theory: "Laughter was originally a vocal signal to members of the group that they might relax in safety. It's as deeply implanted in the social fabric of human society as singing is among birds." Hayworth went on to helpfully point out that laughter is "most pronounced in children, slightly intoxicated persons and some idiots" because they are less inhibited.
There's a great scene in the movie, The Wild Bunch, the 1969 Western (one of my personal favorites). The band of cowboy thieves has escaped a bloody shootout with the proceeds they stole from a railroad office. Several of their comrades were killed in the getaway. It had not gone well. In this scene, they have fled to Mexico and, safe from their pursuers, are discussing splitting up the loot. They quarrel. Guns are drawn. They open the bags of what they thought was the money they stole. The bags are filled with silver washers. It had all been a setup. Naturally, things become even more tense with this discovery. But then one of the cowboys ventures a wisecrack. Another retorts with a crack. In a matter of seconds, they are all roaring with laughter. Crisis over. Tension. Release. Laughter.
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Supporters of the theory that laughter began as a signal of safety believe the smiles evolved from laughter as a shorthand, non-verbal way of communicating.
I have often wondered why we adults automatically smile at babies. Hayworth says human smiling evolved to signify not just relief and safety, but to visually communicate benevolence toward the person being smiled at (the smilee, so to speak).
He wrote, "Through the smile as a derived signal we flash the meaning or information: Have no fear of me. I like you and will not hurt you. The situation is safe."
Another theory, not entirely unrelated to the first one, is that laughter is a method of social bonding, amicable overture to others, an offer of cooperation.
Jordan Raine of the University of Sussex in the U.K. said, "Its principal function appears to be in creating and deepening social bonds."
That may explain another peculiar aspect of human laughter. It's highly contagious. If others around us are laughing, we tend to join in the fun. It's fun to laugh together with others (which is one reason TV comedies use laugh tracks, essentially to try to persuade us to be as amused as those unseen people we hear chuckling). And it's uniquely human. Certain primates make a laughter-like sound when tickled. I saw this for myself playing with baby chimps at a zoo in Uganda where I was a volunteer assistant to the animal caretakers. But our simian friends do not laugh just because others are laughing. They have to be personally stimulated to laugh.
There is also an interesting social anthropological theory that laughter is sometimes deployed as a social-leveler within groups to bring down or discipline someone who starts to get, as my mother used to say, too big for your britches.
None of this entirely satisfies me about how or why we laugh at a joke.
Hayworth wrote a lot about laughter that I found persuasive, but on this aspect of the subject I found him unconvincing. He said a funny story creates an artificial excitement of the feeling of social safety that follows a "thrill" and that that's why we laugh at comedy. I'm not buying it.
A more convincing explanation that I came across had to do with the nature of comedy itself.
"When we find something funny, it's often because of some incongruity between mind and body, the ideal and the real," says Chris Knight, a British anthropologist. "Comedy is about exposing the gap between our supposedly noble intentions and the grimier truths about our condition. For this reason, the amusing features of life are never far away; if something seems funny it's uncomfortably close to home."
Sometimes that is the case, especially with political or social satire. But it still doesn't account for less serious humor, including one of my favorite jokes (which I will mercifully not re-tell here) that begins with "A man and dog walk into a bar."
Darwin, who was a pretty keen observer, noticed that people sometimes laugh in altogether different contexts, not always kindly.
"Laughter is frequently employed in a forced manner to conceal or mask some other state of mind, even anger," he wrote. "We often see persons laughing in order to conceal their shame or shyness."
Robert Provine wrote the book Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, in which he said, "Laughter is a harlequin that shows two faces -- one smiling and friendly, the other dark and ominous. Laughter can serve as a bond to bring people together or as a weapon to humiliate and ostracize its victims." No one enjoys being the butt of a joke. Laughter directed at a person is a piercing form of ridicule. Many an argument was provoked by one person laughing at another.
Laughter is also believed by some to confer numerous health benefits. On its website, the Mayo Clinic says laughter causes actual physical changes in the body, including stimulating the heart, lung and muscles, increasing endorphins in the brain which reduces stress, lowering heart rate and blood pressure, and even relieving pain.
In the1960s, a magazine editor named Norman Cousins was diagnosed with a rare illness that doctors said would almost certainly kill him.
Cousins repaired to his home and binge-watched Marx Brothers movies and episodes of Candid Camera and laughed his head off. When his illness went away, he credited his regimen of uproarious laughter and high doses of Vitamin C.
Provine was skeptical. He thought there were other possible explanations for Cousin's miracle "cure." He also challenged the methodologies of numerous studies that claimed to find health benefits to laughter. He did give some credence to those that found that laughter to be an effective analgesic.
But in the end, he conceded: why not give it a shot?
"There is no need to await FDA approval before giving laugh programs a try," he wrote in 2001. "The potential downside of laughter is small indeed. The promise of improved mood and quality of life without negative side effects is reason enough to implement experimental laughter or humor programs in health care settings, even if welcome relief is provided only through placebo or distraction. There are worse outcomes than providing entertainment to patients. Faster and better physical healing through laughter remains an unrealized, tantalizing, but still reasonable prospect."
Even Allport, who said laughter serves no biological purpose, also said: "So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter." KInd of a variation on the old line about having to laugh to keep from crying. I'm just glad we can laugh. Let's take advantage of that gift as often as we can.
*For the record, that was a joke. LMAO!
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