Why do we sometimes get giggled?

Why do we sometimes get giggled? It has happened to all of us on more than one occasion. We are among a group of friends and suddenly, due to some nonsense, we go from laughter to laughter and we are unable to stop it, soon infecting everyone else. Now, what is striking about this phenomenon is that it can also occur in the least appropriate situations.

Almost without knowing how or why, laughter can appear in stressful situations. It arises, for example, when we try to take out our subway ticket and when we insert the coins, they get stuck. Also We can experience this phenomenon in the middle of an exam, when we get stuck in an elevator. or in any circumstance in which we feel some anxiety.

How can it be? What psychological mechanism governs this peculiar type of laughter?

Reasons why we sometimes get giggled?

People laugh at logical things and also at the most illogical and irrational dimensions.. But even so, after those moments of absolute effusiveness there is something that we always experience: relief, relief and tranquility. The truth is that few mechanisms define the human being as much as laughter because with it we strengthen social ties and at the same time release emotions.

Now, it is interesting to keep in mind that this mechanism is not exclusive to our species. There are also animals that laugh, such as chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas and even rats. The psychobiologist and neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp reminds us in his book Affective Neuroscience that In the animal kingdom there are many creatures that enjoy being tickled and are capable of laughing.

However, will chimpanzees also experience what we define as silly laughter? At the moment it has not been proven, but what we do know is what motivates and explains these unusual but always sparkling reactions. We analyze it.

Laughter without meaning or end: the complicity that unites us

Many of us have had that fun experience at some point. We are with that usual friend or our partner and suddenly we see a stimulus or something happens that only we understand. Complicity is usually inscribed in small details, in gestures, and this can sometimes cause that spontaneous laughter to arise. between two, those laughter that go in crescendo and that we cannot control.

Silly laughter among friends, for example, is a very common phenomenon.

Silly laughter and the self-regulatory function: I laugh because I am nervous

Margaret Clark is a professor of psychology at Yale University and co-author of an interesting study. In it she tells us about what is known as “dimorphic expressions of positive emotion.” What does this proposal mean? It means that Sometimes, positive emotions do not appear as a reflection of a happy, joyful, relaxed or satisfied internal state.

There are times when certain emotional reactions They are intended to regulate our internal state. To understand it better we will give a simple example. We have the first date with the person we like. Suddenly, in the middle of that dinner we start laughing and we can’t stop. The other person, surprised and not knowing what caused this situation, can only look at us without knowing what to say.

Obviously, we don’t laugh in response to happiness or fun. In those circumstances in which emotions are very intense, this mechanism usually appears as a way to regulate nervousness. It is the brain’s response to promote homeostasis and thus allow us to obtain some relief and regain control of our cognitive, social and psychological functions.

When laughing without knowing why reduces stress in a specific situation

Silly laughter appears in moments of complicity with friends and also when we feel very nervous. Now, there are other types of situations in which this mechanism can appear automatically without us realizing it. We talk about stress. Let’s take a new example that may be very familiar to us.

We are at work, late in the afternoon and about to end our day. But we need one last thing: to print some reports to deliver to a specific department of the company. However, when we press print we get a warning that it is missing black ink. We install it. We request the print again and then it notifies us that it is missing magenta ink.

At that moment when we feel saturated, exhausted and tremendously stressed, silly laughter suddenly emerges. We laugh almost desperately and sometimes even letting tears fall. This reaction is another resource for the brain to generate relief, to reduce the peak of anxiety and stress in the mind and body by giving us a good dose of endorphins.

Thus, and on average, after that good time under the absolute dominance of silly laughter, it is common to feel a deep relief and see things differently. Laughing heals, laughing comforts and also acts as a fabulous resource for emotional homeostasis.

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