This natural reaction has always served us as a very direct way to communicate
One scientist was heard saying on the Chasing Life podcast: “For hundreds of years, laughter has been the glue that holds a group together.” Well, we can relax. There is no need to worry or threaten what is happening around us. So laughter was really a great survival tool for early human groups.”
Laughter accompanies Homo sapiens practically from its origins. is that this natural reaction has always served us as a very direct way of communicating, and despite the fact that we don’t all laugh at the same things, because this is a cultural construct, humans have evolved to understand and feel that laughter is almost a conciliatory gesture, an affinity and that usually suggests that everything is on Okay.
These responses are related to our bodies’ emotional and physiological reactions to laughter. The fact is that science has studied these benefits well, so its message is unanimous: laughter is always good for us.
Let’s understand why. The first thing to know is that a sense of humor can help us manage distorted thoughts, worries, and fears. This is because various studies link people who perceive positive emotions with greater cognitive flexibility.
Cognitive flexibility is our brain’s ability to adapt to obstacles, allowing it to seek out more creative and intelligent solutions to problems.
Significantly, “some authors advocate the inclusion of humor in the teaching and learning process as an enhancer of creative thinking,” states an article in The Conversation.
This branch of research suggests that positive thinking is a cognitive function that can be learned and practiced, like any other brain skill, and that it needs exercise to learn how to activate and use it.
Other research supporting this theory has shown that over time, people reduce their ability to produce and understand humor, so we laugh less as we get older. This also has to do with cognitive flexibility, because the brain, like the rest of the body, also decreases in strength with age and this leads to people losing the ability to abstract thinking and instant memory. Two major components of humor.
There is no universal or scientific theory to explain what makes something interesting. So any theory of humor always fails.
Laughter can also have an unhappy side. “Inappropriate laughter can sometimes be a sign that something is not working well from a cognitive standpoint,” reads a CNN article justifying its statement based on a study that showed that “one of the early signs of dementia is a change in the sense of humor and laughter in Inappropriate times.
Moreover, laughter is always a social tool. We are 30 times more likely to laugh in the company of another person than on our own.
