Humor and Health:
The evolutionary benefits of laughing easily
According to Mora-Ripoli (2012), the old cliche that laughter is the best medicine is really true: laughter, even in the absence of something that is funny, can actually be healing. "Laughter can lead to direct physiological changes to the muscular, cardiovascular, immune, and neuroendocrine systems, which would have immediate or long-term beneficial effects to the body" (Mora-Ripoli 2013:57). Although humor can provoke laughter, the two are not necessarily conjoined and even forced laughter produces positive physiological changes in the body in terms of heart rate, blood pressure, and other critical factors that have benefits for the subject. This suggests that laughter is not a cultural product but an advantageous biological 'adaption' of the human species as a social animal.
The unique benefits of laughter (as opposed to humor or enjoying something entertaining) are tied to its mutuality. Although it is certainly possible to laugh in isolation, because laughter is a form of articulated expression, people are far more likely to laugh when they are part of a group, and sociability is linked to good health. In fact, evolutionary biologists have speculated that laughter began as a positive "biological adaptation, a trait that gave humans some sort of evolutionary benefit. What could that be…laughter signals social interest, especially in a romantic context" (Van Vugt 2012). Yet another cliche is true: the idea that 'he makes me laugh' as a reason to love someone may actually be hard-wired into our DNA.
The 'feel good' chemicals stimulated by laughter in the modern human body and brain are the result of centuries of evolutionary selection of people who like to laugh and who are more likely to marry and pass on their genes to their offspring. Laughter stimulates positive social interactions, 'smoothing' relationships between people. In contrast, humor such as sarcasm does not have the same effect and may be very cerebral and isolating in nature. On an articulated level, what seems funny can be very culturally 'bound.' While all societies laugh, the subject of humor is not always a universally transmissible concept and many cultural miscommunications have arisen because of a different...
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