Did you know...
Although we think that laughter comes from an audience after something funny is said by a speaker, in actuality, the speaker laughs almost 50% more than the audience.
Only 10-20% of the laughter witnessed in a recent study followed something funny being said. That shows that it is the other person, the relationship, not the words, that stimulate the laughs.
Laughter is 30 times more frequent in a social setting than when we're alone. This shows that laughter is a signal we send to others and it disappears when there's no one else around.Laughter is extremely difficult to control consciously.
Ask a friend to laugh. She probably can't on command.
Females tend to do more of the laughing (126% more) and males tend to do most of the laugh getting. Chances are the class clown will be a boy.
When it comes to what men and women look for in a mate, women seek out a sense of humor and men are more likely to offer one. So girls look for men to make them laugh and boys are eager to fulfill that request.
Laughter is contagious. If you've ever experienced a case of the giggles, you know how spontaneous and hard to control laughing can be. Even canned laughter on TV laugh tracks has been shown to make viewers laugh as if they were part of a live audience.
Although laughter did not evolve to make us feel good or improve our health, scientists have found that it raises our heart rate and blood pressure and helps temper intense pain. While it might not be "the best medicine," surgery patients who watched comedic videos requested fewer aspirin and tranquilizers than another group who watched dramas.
The energetic activity of laughter encourages creativity. By loosening up our mental gears, it fosters out-of-the-ordinary ways of looking at things.
Humor is intensely personal. You might find Jim Carrey hilarious while your friend thinks Mike Meyers is the funniest and your brother laughs the hardest at South Park. We can know someone really well and find what he or she laughs at surprising.
By the time a child reaches kindergarten, he or she is laughing some 300 times a day. Sorry to say that by the time that kid grows up and becomes an adult, he or she will laugh only about 17 times a day.When we go to the doctor, we laugh about four times during our visit and 70% of the time the doctor doesn't laugh back!
Men will laugh more if they know their audience well, while women laugh more in the presence of men. Both are attempting to subtly shape others' responses.
Although the healing power of laughter is still being debated, the stress levels of students who recently participated in a study were shown to significantly lower after watching a humorous movie.
Info from BeingGirl.com
