Laughter in Literature - Nature of Laughter

Nature of Laughter

Children are known to laugh a great deal more than adults: an average baby laughs around 300 times a day compared to an average adult, who laughs only around 20 times a day; however this can depend on a person's personality. According to some studies, the onset of adulthood causes a gradual change characterized by increased seriousness and a diminished engagement in laughter. Laughter is an audible expression or appearance of excitement, an inward feeling of joy and happiness. It may ensue from jokes, tickling, and other stimuli. Researchers have shown infants as early as 17 days old have vocal laughing sounds or laughter. It conflicts with earlier studies indicating that infants usually start to laugh at about four months of age. Laughter researcher Robert Provine said: "Laughter is a mechanism everyone has; laughter is part of universal human vocabulary. There are thousands of languages, hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter in pretty much the same way." Babies have the ability to laugh before they ever speak. Children who are born blind and deaf still retain the ability to laugh.

Provine argues that "Laughter is primitive, an unconscious vocalization." Provine argues that it probably is genetic. In a study of the "Giggle Twins", two happy twins who were separated at birth and only reunited 43 years later, Provine reports that "until they met each other, neither of these exceptionally happy ladies had known anyone who laughed as much as they did." They reported this even though they both had been brought together by their adoptive parents, who they indicated were "undemonstrative and dour." He indicates that the twins "inherited some aspects of their laugh sound and pattern, readiness to laugh, and maybe even taste in humor."

Norman Cousins developed a recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers films. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval."

Scientists have noted the similarity in forms of laughter induced by tickling among various primates, which suggests that laughter derives from a common origin among primate species.

A very rare neurological condition has been observed whereby the sufferer is unable to laugh out loud, a condition known as aphonogelia.