The Science of Laughter: Why we
laugh and why we are attracted to people who tickle our funny bone
Everyone likes a good laugh,
especially when someone else is in on the joke.
And when it comes to a romantic
connection, laughing can seal the deal, according to three recent
studies done by the same researcher.
In "Sexual Selection and Humor in
Courtship: A Case for Warmth and Extroversion," Jeffrey Hall, Ph.D. associate
professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, studied that topic.
Hall concluded that when
strangers meet, the more times a man tries to be funny, and the more times a
woman laughs at those attempts, the more likely it is for the woman to be
interested in dating.
An even better indicator of
attraction is if the two are seen laughing together.
"The studies I set out to do were
intended to look at a theory that's out there that says when men make jokes
they are trying to advertise something about themselves, so by being funny
they're trying to advertise their intelligence. In other words, humor is a good
sign of a good brain or intelligence,"
To disprove the
connection between humor and intelligence, Hall conducted three studies.
"I had a sense that that theory
didn't make any sense because I think the attempt at being funny may be a sign
of social facility or ability, but not a sign of intelligence," Hall said.
A Laughing Matter
Hall first had 35 participants
study the Facebook profiles of 100 strangers.
Their evaluations were then
compared with a survey completed by Facebook users.
Hall then studied the surveys to
determine whether people who use humor on Facebook were more likely to be
intelligent or if they were perceived as being more intelligent.
"We found neither were true," he
said. "It wasn't the case that more intelligent people were putting more funny
things on Facebook or that people who were funny on Facebook were perceived as
being more intelligent."
In the second study, nearly 300
college students completed a survey on humor in courtship. Looking at GPA and
ACT scores, Hall found no link between how intelligent a person was
and how funny they claimed to be.
"The argument would be that
someone good with words would be more humorous, but that wasn't the
case. People with higher GPAs or who had done better on standardized testing
weren't funnier or didn't like jokes more," said Hall.
His third study led to an
unintended discovery. Hall brought together 51 pairs of single, heterosexual
college students who were strangers. The pairs sat alone in a room and talked
for about 10 minutes while they were being videotaped and tape-recorded.
Afterward, they rated how
attracted they were to the other person. While the results didn't report that
one sex tried to be funnier than the other, they did suggest that the more
times a man tried to be funny, and the more times a woman laughed at his jokes,
the more likely the woman was romantically interested.
However, this wasn't the case for
women who attempted to be funny.
Hall says the most
indicative of how much the pair liked each other was that they laughed
together.
"When you're getting to know
someone laughter is co-constructed. It's not as if people are giving canned
jokes and the other person is an audience member. This is wordplay. Going back
and forth and teasing and having fun with somebody," Hall said. "When people
are laughing together they are doing very much what humor is about, which is
co-constructing amusing and light hearted with each other."
Let's Get Physical
When you laugh, your body has a
physical reaction.
The muscles in your face and body
stretch, and your pulse and blood pressure rise initially but then drop below
normal, allowing blood vessels to expand and flow more easily.
Because your blood vessels are
dilated from laughing, oxygen flow to the organs is more efficient
during laughter.
Think about how you gasp for air
sometimes when laughing hard. This causes you to inhale more oxygen while
laughing. Your breathing becomes faster, and this sends more oxygen to your
tissues.
The brain is also affected.
Laughing produces beta-endorphins, a neurotransmitter produced in the pituitary
gland that suppresses pain.
In terms of processing humor, the
left side of the brain is responsible for understanding the words and structure
of a joke. In contrast, the right side, particularly the frontal lobe, processes
emotions and triggers when encountering something funny.
When something funny is
recognized, the brain's motor region produces the physical reaction of
laughing and the sound that accompanies it.
According to the late Dr. William
Fry, a leading researcher into the psychology of laughing, laughter is
the equivalent of "internal jogging."
Fry stated that one minute of
laughter equals 10 minutes on a rowing machine. He also indicated that
laughter eases tension, stress, and anger.
Read More: How Men and Women
Process Emotions Differently
The Underlying Reasons
Could people like to be around
others who make them laugh simply because the physical reaction of laughing is
pleasant?
While this isn't Hall's area of
expertise, he believes that the physical reaction is a sign of the underlying
reason the laughter is happening.
"The positive benefits of laughter
and what comes along with it are our body's response to what it's doing for us
either personally or socially. If stress-releasing hormones are present when I
express affection to my loved ones, that expression of affection is still very
important. It's just that the biological process is our body's way of telling
us to keep doing that," said Hall. "I don't know that we consciously seek out
the physical reaction. It's a pleasant aftereffect of something we would do
anyway."
Still, Hall points out a known
theory that evolution plays a part in laughter.
"If we look at our closest
primate cousins the chimpanzees and gorillas, when they play they do something very similar to a laugh response. The idea is that what's play in terms
of the physical world becomes play in terms of the mental world," he said.
When babies laugh, they are
laughing at faces, smiles, and tickles that are physical and social responses,
notes Hall, but as they get older, they can understand humor.
"They start to understand that if
you tell something funny, people will laugh. As they get older, they start to
laugh at things that are entirely in their own head and play with an idea of
juxtaposition or irony, which is still mental play rather than physical play,"
adds Hall.
In terms of sharing a sense of
humor with someone else, Hall says research on mood shows that people
overwhelmingly favor people who share their sense of humor and that a person's
sense of humor is similar to what they think and feel.
"When two people are laughing at
the same thing they are basically saying 'I share your perspective, your
values, and I certainly share what you think is amusing,'" said Hall.
He adds that humorous banter in a flirtatious interaction is a sign of openness to the other person's
speech and that the person wants the conversation to continue.
"Rather than thinking 'I'm sure
you're going to be a compatible mate for my whole life,' I think instead what's
going on is a person is saying 'Keep talking. Let's keep this going,'" Hall
said.
