why do we laugh?

Question

why do we laugh? and why does it feel so good? (:
are we just wired up to find things funny and laugh about it?

Answer 1

Laughter is an outward expression of amusement (and at times, other emotions). It may ensue (as a physiological reaction) from jokes, tickling and others. Inhaling nitrous oxide can also induce laughter; other drugs, such as cannabis, can also induce episodes of strong laughter. Strong laughter can sometimes bring an onset of tears or even moderate muscular pain as a physical response to the act. Laughter can also be a response to physical touch, such as tickling, or even to moderate pain such as pressure on the ulnar nerve ("funny bone").

Laughter is a part of human behaviour regulated by the brain. It helps humans clarify their intentions in social interaction and provides an emotional context to our conversations. Laughter is used as a signal for being part of a group — it signals acceptance and positive interactions. Laughter is sometimes seemingly contagious and the laughter of one person can itself provoke laughter from others. This may account in part for the popularity of laugh tracks in situation comedy television shows.

Answer 2

Laughter, is an expression, that could either show amusement or other emotions. it is also a form of excercise as it involves a lot of facial muscles and nerves.it is an in-built characteristic in human.
it could come from psychological reactions to tickling, listening to jokes and funny enough it could come from inhaling some nitrous oxides, commonly known as laughing gas.
when we laugh, we ease out stress and we keep our whole system relaxed, for this reason, doctors have been using and are still in search of anasthetics that induce laughter.neuroendocrine and stress-related homones decrease on perception of episodes of laughter.
no matter how shallow a deep, the human laughter may be it is more often than not, contageous. For Freud, laughter is an economical phenomenon, whose function is to release psychic energy that has been wrongly mobilised by false expectation.

Answer 3

A funny one and I give you a star. Here is a funny(!!) ghosts chat. Two ghosts met and both chat about how they died. 1st ghost : How u died? 2nd ghost : I died of cold. 1st ghost : How does it feel when you're dying in cold? 2nd ghost : Actually, I was accidentally locked in the refrigerator. Initially, I was shivering, then my whole body started to freeze, later I felt the whole world was dark and I died suffocating. 1st ghost : Wow what a horrible way to die.... 2nd ghost : How about you? How u die? 1st ghost : I died from heart attack. 2nd ghost : I see, why did u have a heart attack? 1st ghost : Actually, I found out that my wife is having an affair with another man. One day, when I came back from work, saw a pair of man shoes outside my house. Then, I realized that the guy was in my house with my wife. When I rushed into the bedroom, my wife was alone. I must find where that bastard is hiding. So I searched the toilet, I ran downstairs, looked in the storeroom, but the bastard was not there. So, I ran upstairs and searched the wardrobe, but I found nothing. Because of all that running,I got a heart attack and died. 2nd ghost : Why you never look for the bastard in the fridge? The bastard was hiding there. We both might be alive now!!

Answer 4

Whether it's the giggling of your child or the enthusiastic hollers of a talk shows studio audience, we hear laughter every day. Nothing could be more common. But just because it's common doesn't make laughter any less strange.

For instance, the next time you're at the movies enjoying some comedy blockbuster, listen hard to the laughter around you. Why are all these strangers, in unison, exploding into such weird, gasping, grunting noises? Their laughs may suddenly stop seeming familiar, and more like the inhuman chatter of birds or the screeches of monkeys at the zoo.

Once you start looking at laughter as behavior, it can lead to some odd questions. Why do we do it? Do animals laugh? And why do we expect that any decent James Bond villain will cackle diabolically when revealing his plan for world domination? What's so funny?

To answer these and other mysteries of laughter, Web MD delved into the surprisingly contentious world of laughter research.

Why Do We laugh?

The answer may seem obvious: We laugh when we perceive something funny. But the obvious answer is not correct, at least most of the time.

"Most laughter is not in response to jokes or humor," says Robert R. Provine, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Provine should know. He has conducted a number of studies of laughter and authored the book Laughter: a Scientific Investigation. One of his central arguments is that humor and laughter are not inseparable.

Provine did a survey of laughter in the wild -- he and some graduate students listened in on average conversations in public places and made notes. And in a survey of 1,200 "laugh episodes," he found that only 10%-20% of laughs were generated by anything resembling a joke.

The other 80%-90% of comments that received a laugh were dull non-witticisms like, "I'll see you guys later" and "It was nice meeting you, too." So why the laughs?

Provine argues it has to do with the evolutionary development of laughter. In humans, laughter predates speech by perhaps millions of years. Before our human ancestors could talk with each other, laughter was a simpler method of communication, he tells WebMD.

It's also instinctual. "Infants laugh almost from birth," says Steve Wilson, MA, CSP, a psychologist and laugh therapist. "In fact, people who are born blind and deaf still laugh. So we know it's not a learned behavior. Humans are hardwired for laughter."

But perhaps because laughter is so ancient, it's much less precise than language.

"Laughter isn't under our conscious control," says Provine. "We don't choose to laugh in the same way that we choose to speak." If you've ever had an inopportune laughing fit -- in a lecture, during a high school play, or at a funeral, for instance -- you know that laughter can't always be tamed.

What Is Laughter?

First of all, laughter is not the same as humor. Laughter is the physiological response to humor. Laughter consists of two parts -- a set of gestures and the production of a sound. When we laugh, the brain pressures us to conduct both those activities simultaneously. When we laugh heartily, changes occur in many parts of the body, even the arm, leg and trunk muscles.
Under certain conditions, our bodies perform what the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "rhythmic, vocalized, expiratory and involuntary actions" -- better known as laughter. Fifteen facial muscles contract and stimulation of the zygomatic major muscle (the main lifting mechanism of your upper lip) occurs. Meanwhile, the respiratory system is upset by the epiglottis half-closing the larynx, so that air intake occurs irregularly, making you gasp. In extreme circumstances, the tear ducts are activated, so that while the mouth is opening and closing and the struggle for oxygen intake continues, the face becomes moist and often red (or purple). The noises that usually accompany this bizarre behavior range from sedate giggles to boisterous guffaws.

Why Do We Laugh?

Philosopher John Morreall believes that the first human laughter may have begun as a gesture of shared relief at the passing of danger. And since the relaxation that results from a bout of laughter inhibits the biological fight-or-flight response, laughter may indicate trust in one's companions.
Many researchers believe that the purpose of laughter is related to making and strengthening human connections. "Laughter occurs when people are comfortable with one another, when they feel open and free. And the more laughter [there is], the more bonding [occurs] within the group," says cultural anthropologist Mahadev Apte. This feedback "loop" of bonding-laughter-more bonding, combined with the common desire not to be singled out from the group, may be another reason why laughter is often contagious.
Studies have also found that dominant individuals -- the boss, the tribal chief or the family patriarch -- use humor more than their subordinates. If you've often thought that everyone in the office laughs when the boss laughs, you're very perceptive. In such cases, Morreall says, controlling the laughter of a group becomes a way of exercising power by controlling the emotional climate of the group. So laughter, like much human behavior, must have evolved to change the behavior of others, Provine says. For example, in an embarrassing or threatening situation, laughter may serve as a conciliatory gesture or as a way to deflect anger. If the threatening person joins the laughter, the risk of confrontation may lessen.
Provine is among only a few people who are studying laughter much as an animal behaviorist might study a dog's bark or a bird's song. He believes that laughter, like the bird's song, functions as a kind of social signal. Other studies have confirmed that theory by proving that people are 30 times more likely to laugh in social settings than when they are alone (and without pseudo-social stimuli like television). Even nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, loses much of its oomph when taken in solitude, according to German psychologist Willibald Ruch.

Answer 5

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
why do we laugh?
why do we laugh? and why does it feel so good? (:
are we just wired up to find things funny and laugh about it?

Answer 6

Take a visit to my 360 blog. I've an entry with 9 reasons why we laugh. Pls. don't forget to comment, OK?

Answer 7

Laughter is God's instant remedy for all of us, to ease tension between our fellow men, to help us cope with our anxieties and stress and to make us accept something silly as part and parcel of life.

Answer 8

we just laugh
a sign of relief or for comical sense

we just laugh

Answer 9

cos people say dumb things or look silly ....its called emotion......