Two Truths About Laughter
Try to remember moments when you laughed even though nothing was funny. At a funeral, in a situation that frightened you, at a moment when you felt guilty, or when you were trying to connect with someone without anything funny going on…
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Laughing, although we associate it with happiness or fun, does not mean that people who laugh a lot are very happy. This is because laughter is actually an instinctive coping mechanism. Laughing soothes our emotional pain, reduces our stress and strengthens our relationships with others. Scientific research on laughter has found that it can even reduce physical pain.
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Although it may not seem appropriate in some settings to show this behaviour, which we culturally link with happiness, fun and humour, laughing reduces the release of cortisol, a hormone known to be linked with stress, and in this way becomes a functional coping mechanism.
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Based on this, we can reach two conclusions.
1) We cannot clearly conclude that people we see laughing all the time are actually very happy.
2) Bringing more activities into our lives that help us laugh makes it easier to cope with experiences that negatively affect our mood.
Psych. Malik Kubilay Çadırcıoğlu
