A woman is having a terrible time during labor and suddenly he shouts, “I shouldn’t! I couldn’t do it! No! no pi hear!”

I say “don’t worry”We said “These are just contractions”

So far, various theories have tried to explain what makes something so funny that it makes us laugh.

These include: breach (something forbidden), a feeling arrogance or superiority (teasing) and mismatch: the presence of two incompatible meanings in the same situation.

I decided to review all the available literature on laughter and humor published in English over the past decade to see if any further conclusions could be drawn.

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After reviewing more than a hundred papers, my work produced a new possible explanation: laughter is a tool nature has provided us with. help us survive.

I looked at research papers on theories of humor that provide important insights in three areas: the physical properties of laughter, the brain centers involved in laughter production, and the health benefits of laughter.

More than 150 articles have provided evidence of important features of the conditions that make people laugh.

By organizing all the theories into specific areas, I was able to summarize the laughter process in three main steps: bewilderment, solution and possible sign no more dangeras I will explain later.

This raises the possibility that natural selection may have preserved laughter over the past millennium to help humans survive. It may also explain why we are attracted to people who make us laugh.

evolution of laughter

The dissonance theory is good at explaining the laughter that humor produces, but it’s not enough. Laughing in this situation is not a common feeling that things are out of tune or out of harmony.

It’s about finding ourselves in a particular situation. normalcy shatters our expectations.

For example, if we saw a tiger walking down the street of a city, it might seem inconsistent, but it would not be funny, but rather terrifying. But it gets funny if the tiger rolls like a ball.

The animated antihero Homer Simpson makes us laugh when he falls off the roof of his house and bounces like a ball, or when he tries to “strangle” his son Bart with his eyes swollen and tongue flapping like rubber.

These are examples of how the human experience has shifted to an exaggerated, caricatured version of the world where anything, especially the ridiculous, can happen.

But for it to be funny, the event must also be perceived as follows. harmless. We laugh because we know that the tiger or Homer never hurt others and they never hurt themselves, mainly because their world is not real.

three steps

So we can reduce laughter to a three-step process. First, you need a situation that looks strange and creates a sense of dissonance (confusion or panic). Second, the anxiety or stress causing the inappropriate situation must be resolved and overcome (solution).

Third, the true release of laughter acts as a clear siren to warn others (relax) that you are safe.

Laughter may be a sign that people have used for thousands of years to show others that the fight-or-flight response is not necessary and that the perceived threat has passed.

That’s why laughing often contagious: unites us, makes us more social, signals the end of fear or anxiety. laugh life affirmation.

We can find this in the 1936 movie “Modern Times,” in which Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious punk obsessively fixes bolts in a factory like a robot instead of a man.

It makes us laugh because we unconsciously want to show others that the disturbing image of a man reduced to a robot is fiction. He’s a human, not a machine. There is no cause for alarm.

How humor can be effective

Similarly, the joke at the beginning of this post starts with a scene from normal life, then turns into something a little strange and disturbing (the woman is acting out of tune), but eventually we realize that it’s not serious and it’s actually pretty funny. (double meaning of the doctor’s answer causes relief), causes laughter.

As I have shown in a previous study of crying on human behavior, laughing has a huge impact. the importance of physiology our body. Like crying, chewing, breathing or walking, laughing is a rhythmic behavior. release mechanism for the body.

The brain centers that regulate laughter are those that control emotions, fears, and anxiety. The release of laughter calms the stress or tension of a situation and relaxes the body.

As clown therapy studies have shown, humor is often used in a hospital setting to help patients recover. can be humor It improves blood pressure and immune defense and helps overcome anxiety and depression.

The research reviewed in my review has also shown that humor is important in teaching and is used to emphasize concepts and ideas.

Humor associated with the study material retains attention and produces a more relaxed and productive learning environment. In a teaching setting, humor also reduces anxiety, increases engagement, and increases motivation.

love and laughter

Analyzing this data on laughter also allows to formulate a hypothesis as to why people fall in love with someone because they “make me laugh.” It’s not just about being funny. It could be something more complex.

If someone else’s laughter turns ours on, that person shows that we can relax, that we are safe, and that builds trust.

If their jokes make us laugh, they have the effect of making us overcome fears of a strange or unknown situation. And if someone’s ability to be funny inspires us to overcome our fears, we are more drawn to them.

In contemporary times, of course, we don’t think twice about laughing. We just enjoy it for the exhilarating experience and the sense of well-being it brings.

From an evolutionary perspective, this very human behavior may have served an important function in danger awareness and self-preservation. Even now, when faced with danger, we often respond with laughter with a sense of complete relief.

*This article was published on The Conversation and reproduced here under a creative commons license. Click here to see the original version.

**Carlo Valerio Bellieni is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Siena, Italy.