WHY DO WE LAUGH?

WHY DO WE LAUGH?

What a ripper question posed this week by a six-year-old grand-nephew of mine!

Being the smartarse that I pretend to be, what a surprise to look at it and have to admit – “I don't know.” My cue to dive once again into another Great Un-known expedition.

Here's what popped for me in Stage One –

• I know from experience, and have had to express as an actor, many different kinds of laughter – full-hearted belly bellows, girly giggles of embarrassment, screeches of derision, hysterical cackles, screams of hilarity, polite chuckles, guilty snortles, uncontrollable “corpsing”, hoots of rejection, guffaws of pleasure, titters of guilt, eruptions of disbelief, howls of release after a bout of sobbing, barks of contempt, brays of disgust.... add you own to the list
• I rarely know when a real laugh is coming. We use the expression of “bursting” into laughter because laughs do break over us like a rogue wave.
• One of the remarkable things about laughter is that it occurs unconsciously. You don’t decide to do it. You don’t consciously produce laughter. And once it has started it is nigh impossible to consciously drop it. There's a very real sense that we do not laugh; we “are laughed” - by something we do not understand. That’s why it’s very hard to laugh on command, or to convincingly fake laughter. (Don’t take my word for it: Ask a friend to laugh on the spot.) Most people can't bung-on a plausible laugh. And to anyone with half a gram of awareness, phony laughter is as obvious as a bad actor faking a yawn. As reactions go, natural laughter may be as genuine as we can humanly get. It's certainly a lot more genuine than anything verbal.
• Which brings me to my next “got-it” – on the development timeline, laughter precedes language, possibly by millions of years. Babies laugh and giggle long before they start doing the “Mum-mum”, “duh-duh” thing. The first laughter appears at about 3.5 to 4 months of age, long before we’re able to speak. Laughter, like crying, is a primary way for a pre verbal infant to interact with the mother and other caregivers.
• Laughter seems to be part of the universal human vocabulary. A healthy adult laughs an estimated 15 to 20 times a day – I have to take that on trust, I haven't actually counted. All members of the human species understand a laugh – when they do it and when they hear it. Unlike English or French or Swahili, we don’t have to learn to speak it. We’re born with an inbuilt capacity to laugh.
• Laughter is a social thing, and it's far from confined to primates. It simply bubbles up from within us in certain situations. In fact, we don't have to think about it too much: I understand that a typical 10-minute conversation has an average of 5.8 bouts of laughter --- unless it's with a politician or your undertaker. To an aware person, laughter provides powerful, uncensored insights into our unconscious.
• This primate is aware, very aware, of two different kinds of laughter – “laughter-with” and “laughter-at”. Involvement with the first kind is an inclusive experience; the second is exclusive – separated and separating. So while we may choose to remain blissfully ignorant of our laughing, we “know” what we're doing when laughing is “doing” us.
• Those who have actually studied laughter tell me that, contrary to what you might think, it relatively rarely follows a “joke”. Stand-up comedians like Robyn Williams, Adam Hills and Billy Connelly don't tell jokes: they regale us with stories, each in his very unique style. Funny about that. I vividly remember a 1988 film by David Selzer called “Punchline”, in which Tom Hanks plays a brilliant, acerbic stand-up comedian who inspires and teaches an aspiring housewife/comedian (Sally Field) the difference between telling jokes and “being funny”.
• Laughing is one of the most primitive forms of communication we have. It's buried deep in the amygdala. Perhaps it's a kind of prehistoric “LOL”, a reassurance given and received during social interaction, that “this rough-and-tumble interaction is not meant as, or taken to be, an attack or insult”. In and of itself laughter is its own form of interacting with its own bare-bones rules.
• I found theories that state “laughter is predominantly social – we don't laugh alone”. I strongly disagree with that. I live alone and spend a lot of time openly laughing; if you lived with me, you probably would, too ....... Perhaps because I know and live 24/7 from a presumption of Duality, I “catch myself”, and both I and Me sometimes relax into one of the many forms of laughing I outlined above. “We” really get that life is the joke, and I am the jester.
• Like other primitive emotions, Laughter is, however, also social and extremely contagious. Just listening to recorded laughing can evoke fits of giggles in subjects (which is why television studios use laugh tracks on sitcoms). In fact, according to research, you're 30 times more likely to laugh when others are laughing around you. That's why seeing a comedy “live” with an audience is infinitely more satisfying than watching it alone on TV without a live audience. A perverse example of this happened just a few weeks since in which a bunch of people were put into a trance by a hypnotist and coerced into antics. Once I realised that the show had a live audience and they still found it necessary to add canned laughter, I knew the show was in trouble. It lasted 3 weeks.
• Given a clear run, though, we do laugh at the sound of laughter itself. That’s why the Tickle Me Elmo doll is such a success — it makes us laugh and smile. There are even forms of yoga predicated on this phenomenon of spreading ripples of laughter.
• We all know situations where we've observed, “If I didn't laugh about this, I'd bloody well cry”. As a counsellor I've found there is an incredibly fine line between crying and laughing, and one of the most cleansing and transforming experiences is to be immersed in a crying jag that morphs into laughing. That's evidence of a miraculous shift, and you know life will never be quite the same again.
• Laughter, like most capabilities, can be used for everything from benefit to grievous harm. Very little is known about the specific brain mechanisms responsible for laughter. But we do know that laughter is triggered by many sensations and thoughts, and that there are marked variations as well as similarities between people as to what they find “laughable”. We also know that “regional” (tribal?) humour often works well. For example, in Australia we get off on jokes about New Zealanders and Tasmanians which are mostly recycled jokes about Poles and the Irish. British psychologist Richard Wiseman, Ph.D., the author of Quirkology, has revealed clear regional preferences for what we find funny. Americans often like jokes that include a sense of superiority. (Texan: "Where are you from?" Harvard grad: "I come from a place where we do not end our sentences with prepositions." Texan: "OK, where are you from, jackass?") Europeans tend to laugh at jokes that make light of anxiety-provoking topics, like marriage and illness. (A patient says, "Doctor, last night I made a Freudian slip. I was having dinner with my mother-in-law and wanted to say, 'Could you please pass the butter?' But instead I said, 'You silly cow. You have completely ruined my life.'") And Brits? Wiseman finds that they are tickled most by wordplay. (Patient: "Doctor, I've got a strawberry stuck up my bum." Doctor: "That's OK. I've got some cream for that.")
• We also know that laughing activates and animates many parts of the body, some of which may have been dormant for some considerable time. Research has linked the enlivening effects of laughter with boosts in immune function, pain tolerance, cardiovascular health, change of attitude and maybe even memory retention. The Reader's Digest still has a regular feature titled “Laughter Is the Best Medicine”. When we laugh, we alter our facial expressions and make primitive sounds. While waiting in my chiro's room a few days ago I read something I found very funny and slipped into a surreptitious laugh. Immediately the receptionist looked up in concern - “Are you alright?” “Yep, I'm terrific. Just having a laughette.” During exuberant laughter, the muscles of the arms, legs and trunk involuntarily get heavily involved. Laughter also utterly modifies our pattern of breathing. A bloody good laugh can be the most cleansing experience we can have. There's even a form of yoga (Hasayayoga) that is based on strong evidence that voluntary laughter produces the same, or similar physiological and psychological benefits as spontaneous laughter. It's a theory that Dr. Patch Adams put very successfully into practice in a context of Healing. Even forced laughter, if supported, will quickly turn into real and contagious hilarity. Laughing takes a solvent to heart, mind and spirit. The same pleasure sensors in the brain that are activated when we eat chocolate become active when we find something funny. It's a natural high. In fact, a 2003 brain-scan study published in the journal Neuron found that the dopamine reward centres and pathways in the brains of subjects lit up when they were treated to a funny cartoon, but not when they were shown an unfunny version. And, I'm told, ten to 15 minutes of daily laughing burns 10 to 40 calories. On it's own that can't be bad. (Saves me giving up chocolate entirely.)

According to Robert R. Provine, one of the world's leading academic experts on laughter (as distinct from those experts who actively provoke it) the modern-day ha-ha! probably evolved as an early form of communication. Our primate ancestors use a similar sound—a sort of pant-pant/hah-hah—to reassure one another that their rough-and-tumble play is all in good fun and not an attack.

In his studies, Provine and his team also found that most laughter does not follow bald jokes. People laugh after a variety of statements such as “Hey John, where've ya been?” “Here comes Mary,” “How did you do on the test?” and “Do you have a rubber band?”. These certainly aren’t jokes. But in a certain context, they may become very funny – eg if the conversation has been about the dangers of slingshots and the next photo is of a politician, “Do you have a rubber band?” may get a very hefty laugh.

I think humour is very much about Context, and good comedians are excellent context creators. They 'set us up ' for the punchline, and we willingly allow them to do it, as long as we know we'll get a shot of “release” – that burst of energy – as our reward

And the best raconteurs have another outstanding talent – Timing. We don’t decide when to laugh at these moments. Our mind makes the decision for us. Curiously, laughter seldom interrupts the sentence structure of speech. It punctuates speech. We only laugh during pauses when we might otherwise cough or breathe. That's when an experienced comedian jumps in and presses the “funny” button. I've heard Rowan Atkinson, for example, get laughs this way simply reading the telephone directory.

An evolutionary perspective It seems highly likely that laughter evolved from the panting behaviour of our ancient primate ancestors. Today, if we tickle chimps or gorillas, they don’t laugh “ha ha ha” but exhibit a panting sound. That’s the sound of ape laughter. And it’s the root of human laughter.

Apes laugh in conditions in which human laughter is produced, like tickle, rough and tumble play, and chasing games. Other animals also produce vocalisations during play, but they are so different that it’s difficult to call them “laughter” with absolute certainty. Rats, for example, produce high-pitch vocalisations during play and when tickled. But it’s very different in sound from human laughter, and we have no way of knowing yet whether rats have a sense of humour. I wouldn't, however, deny the possibility; they are social animals, too.

When we laugh, we’re often communicating playful intent. “Ha ha ha’s” are bits of social glue that have a bonding function within individuals in a group. Humour's function and intent is often positive, but it can be negative too. As I said before, there’s a difference between “laughing with” and “laughing at.” People who are laughing at others may be trying to force them to conform, or isolating them from the group. At the same time, they are bonding themselves to “the group” – an essential element of pack behaviour.

"There is no magic formula or key for what's funny," says Scott Weems, Ph.D., a research scientist at the University of Maryland, and the author of Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why. But, in general, he says, what often makes us laugh is when our brain is expecting one thing and then, in the space of a few words, that expectation is turned on its head. Take the classic Groucho Marx joke: "One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas, I don't know."

And there is always the tried and true way of getting young boys to laugh – fart at the least appropriate moment. It never fails. Never – not even at a funeral.

No one has actually counted how much people of different ages laugh, but young children probably laugh the most. At ages 5 and 6, we tend to see the most exuberant laughs. Adults laugh less than children, probably because they play less. And laughter is strongly associated with play – the process of learning life skills.

We have learned a lot about when and why we laugh, but much of it has been counter-intuitive. Work now under way will tell us more about the brain mechanisms of laughter, how laughter has evolved and why we’re so susceptible to tickling — one of the most enigmatic of human behaviours.

In the meantime -------

Even those with zero sense of humour can reap the benefits of laughter. How? Fake it. A 2002 study in Psychological Reports reveals that encouraging yourself to laugh, or even just to smile, can improve your mood. I can attest to that. It's true. But the willed smile/laugh must come from something within for it to work. Just pasting a smile on your dial, like Malcolm Turnbull, gets the opposite result. But when your smile reflects a growing inner desire to exude real warmth, the human brain is not able to distinguish spontaneous from self-induced laughter; therefore the corresponding health-related benefits are alike.

Laugh, for the best reason possible – no reason at all.