Laughter: Not for the Joke
Why do some people burst out laughing when someone falls down or gets hit, while others don't even smile? Why do certain situations provoke laughter in some people but not in others? Why do not girls and boys laugh at the same things? Why do not the events that provoke laughter in kids have the same effect on adults, and vice versa? Before researching the subject, laughter was just that and nothing more: a set of sounds, gestures and movements that are emitted when something or someone seems funny to us. An instinctive phenomenon, difficult to control, with a more playful objective than any other. But, then, if laughter is an instinctive phenomenon, which is part of our biological repertoire, it must have a function more linked to survival than to pure and simple amusement.
It is not said that entertainment, joy, pleasure and everything linked to positive emotions, are little. On the contrary, the benefits of laughter are documented as like: generate endorphins, reduce stress, release fear and anguish, placate anger, change our mental attitude, improve heart rate and pulse, promote digestion and a lot more utilities. What is said is this: why do some of us laugh at some things, while others laugh at others? What is this instinctive response of separating ourselves by those things that amuse us? Then it is found that the brain recognizes perfectly when laughter is false. And what happens in these cases is that it is not contagious; because it is not genuine, it does not provoke laughter in the listener.
It is very common that we find ourselves faking laughter in social situations, such as a job interview or on a first date that looks interesting. We all know that we are faking it: the person pretending to laugh and the person pretending not to realize that the other person is faking it.
We have a mechanism in our brain whose goal is to make it clear to us that there are things that do not make us laugh and things that do.
There is a documentary that talked about an episode of contagious laughter in Tanzania in 1960. It was so bad that they even had to close a school. They say that the laughter plague lasted 18 months and spread throughout the country. Except for these extreme cases, experts say that laughter becomes more contagious, not only when it is genuine, but when we know the people who laugh.
Human beings, evolutionarily speaking, are the product of chance: evolution is the result of fortuitous genetic mutations, consolidated by natural selection that chooses those changes that are beneficial for the survival of the organism. Everything we are and have today is the product of a detailed and millenary selection of its usefulness for our survival. So, the question that torments is what is so useful for our survival, to be able to distinguish 100% a true laugh from a false laugh?
Why do we laugh?
Thousands of years ago people laughed when a person was tortured and killed in the public square. And not so long ago, unfortunately, we laughed at sexist, homophobic or racist jokes. We are 30 times more likely to laugh with other people than we are alone (Provine, 2010). And there is more: we laugh more with friends than with strangers. Some pathologies, such as psychopathy for example, are strongly related to enjoying laughing at others (Proyer, 2012). Characteristic of a manipulative, impulsive and insensitive lifestyle, experts say.
Yes, as you can see: that shot of positivity is not the only reason why we laugh. We also do it involuntarily and automatically, for social reasons.
Laughter as a passport to belonging. We are programmed to laugh, genuinely, only with those whom we feel identif