In my last blog, I argued it was important in this time of uncertainty and stress to keep jolly as it is understandable that many of us feel overwhelmed by this devastating pandemic but we can create a cheerful and optimistic attitude which will help us all cope with the trauma caused by Covid-19: https://timboatswain.wixsite.com/website/post/why-it-is-important-to-be-jolly-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic
I received a lot of positive feedback about my plea to be jolly but I was also, quite reasonably, asked how do we humans actually manifest jolliness. It is not just in what we say but there are clear signals of jolliness that we send to each other. These mainly start with a smile and then if we emotionally engage with each other in a shared jolly experience it can become vocalised into a laugh.
Smiling and laughing reveal their significance in our evolutionary past in that helpless babies exhibit smiles and laughter in the first few months of life which indicate that both are powerful survival mechanisms. Smiling and laughter are universal ways of revealing our state of mind: they not only transcend human cultures and are common to every race but are also observed among our cousins, the great apes, particularly chimpanzees.
This evidence then indicates that smiling and laughter are powerful physical survival traits from homo sapiens evolutionary past. What is going on, how does smiling and laughter help individual humans survive? In anthropology they are interpreted as a means of socialising, creating bonds, fostering friendly relations with others of our species and they are crucial to an individual's survival by averting aggression and competitive violence. Smiling and laughter are the opposite signals to hostility and are designed to placate and indicate friendliness to other humans. They can be perceived as cognitive strategies both to mollify potential competitors but also create alliances with our fellow human beings. The nuanced signal of smiling and laughing are fascinating in that we show our teeth, normally an aggressive act, but by turning our lips and face muscles upwards that aggression turns into a friendly and submissive indicator of happiness, amusement and engagement which in turn can lead to bonding between child and parents, to social alliances within and outside families, and in intimate contexts, pair bonding, the physical act of kissing and the reproductive act, sexual intercourse. It is interesting that in Arctic Inuit communities the euphemism for copulation is to ’laugh with each other’.
Laughter, which perhaps started originally among our hominid ancestors as a form of communication based on laboured breathing, elicits both an unconscious and conscious emotional response. It can be categorized as both spontaneous and volitional (an act of will). Laughter not only allays fears of anger and hostility but it also indicates a state of happiness the opposite to the act of crying which signals distress. Both crying and laughter can be contagious the way it connects people but also changes moods. Television comedies often use ‘canned laughter’ to elicit a response from the viewer, a shared sense of humour, and therapies like ‘laughing yoga’ can alter mental states by connecting people in a shared act resulting in both a social and individual sense of well-being.
There is also a negative side to laughter where it can indicate a pathology: there is the sinister lonely laughter of an individual (maniac) which can indicate psychopathic tendencies, inappropriate laughter linked to other mental illnesses; for example, random laughter is sometimes a symptom of dementia. There can be laughter at someone else’s misfortune or at something inappropriate so that it becomes an emotional escape mechanism, indicating immediate social embarrassment. I suspect we have all laughed at some time in an inappropriate situation - I can remember tittering at my grandmother’s cremation when the tinned music went flat, the mechanism conveying her coffin to the cremation chamber started creaking, and the chamber curtain got stuck reducing the solemn ceremony to farce.
The context, therefore, of our laughter is important but generally, laughter is a shared, positive experience which is a healthy social activity bringing us together and raising our spirits. Indeed, neuroscience has identified laughter as a powerful indicator of a positive mental condition which can enhance the cardiovascular function, fortifying our immune and endocrine systems - an excellent medicine.
More laughter, please!
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