Where does the nervous laugh come from?

Have you ever wondered why, at the most tense moment, we laugh? Know someone who usually laughs when they shouldn’t? we, from awesome.clubwe explain this behavior that, at first, may seem strange.

Laughter is a reaction produced when we are relaxed and something amuses us. The brain emits the impulse of laughter to relax the body, making us enjoy the moment. But this can also happen when we go through a moment of stress. Because? The explanation lies in one of our basic instincts: defense.

Laughter comes when you are exposed or in a position of vulnerability. That is, you feel that something or someone can hurt you. The body, in a desperate attempt to release accumulated tension, makes you laugh and thus feel that everything is under control. In this case, laughter works as a kind of denial. The body tries to dissipate tension by trying to generate a positive reaction, an unconscious attempt to calm down. The brain believes that with this, you will be able to convince yourself that you are not sad, or that there is nothing that causes tension around you.

Another situation where this type of laughter occurs is when we feel threatened. The feeling of relaxation that the body seeks when emitting laughter affects not only ourselves, but those around us. You are likely to laugh nervously when attacked. In this case, your body is trying to tell the person who is attacking you that you are not afraid, that you are calm and that the aggression will not affect you. When that happens, rest easy and know that laughter is just a defense mechanism that appears to protect us from others.