INTRODUCTION
How great is your sense of humor? Humor can be basically characterized as a sort of excitement that will in general evoke the laughter reflex. Research has found that people with a very good sense of humor tend to laugh a lot; laughter is an interesting human behavior of positive emotion. There are many different types of emotions that are expressed through laughter examples are happiness, mirth, joy, relief, confusion, embarrassment, and anxiousness. You might be wondering how possible is it to be embarrassed and still laugh about it, this article will explain the difference between mood, feelings, and emotion; our behavioral and physical reactions to emotion. So the question is; what is laughter and how does it tie in with emotion.
EMOTIONS:
Since the beginning of time, man has been studying emotions, are emotions learned, or are they consistent across cultures?. Many Philosophers, psychologists, and physiologists gave theories of emotion.
Charles Darwin believes that humans displayed similar emotions and that we could trace the evolutionary history of emotion across cultures and even across different species, he believed that all humans express emotion in a similar way. Emotions are reactions that human beings experience in response to events or situations. Today, psychologists generally define emotion as a psychological state involving three distinct components;1. subjective experience, 2. physiological state, and 3. behavior response. These components work together to explain how an individual perceives, interprets, and responds to an event or situation around us, to create what we experience as emotions.
1.)The Subjective experience: All emotions are subjected to experience, also referred to as stimulus. Subjective experience explains how you as an individual perceive an event regardless of how it is objectively occurring or how other people perceive it.
Subjective experience can go from something as basic as considering a variety to something to be major as losing a friend or family member or getting hitched. Regardless of how serious the experience is, it can incite numerous feelings in a solitary individual, and the feelings every individual feel might be unique. For instance, one individual might feel outraged and lament at the passing of a friend or family member while another may encounter serious trouble.
2. The Psychological response: This depends on how your body actually responds to an experience. Psychological responses interact with your subjective experience to shape which emotion you feel. This physiological response is the result of the autonomic nervous system’s (an involuntary physiologic process) reaction to the subjective experience you are having. Your heart might be racing because you're in danger or exercising also you might have goosebumps because someone said something nice about you or the weather is so appealing, even though they might have the same physiological response they have different subjective experiences, and this helps us to shape the type of emotion we feel.
3.The behavioral response: Behavioural responses is how you actually express your emotion. The behavioral response should be a smile, laughter, or a sigh alongside different numerous responses relying upon cultural standards and personality. Behavioral responses are essential to signal toward others, how we are feeling, however, research shows that they're additionally imperative to people's prosperity. The physiological and behavioral responses are very important in expressing your true emotions and your mental state. Individuals might decide to hide their behavioral responses to the emotion they are having; You might be angry (that's the emotion) but decide not to express it (behavior response), while some emotions can't be hidden, the subjective experience might be different. Our ability to understand others’ behavioral responses plays a huge role in our emotional intelligence. Research shows that extroverts are more likely to express their emotion than introverts.
These three mentioned components work together and constitute our true region of emotions.
LAUGHTER:
Laughter is a behavioral response to positive emotion; a nonverbal vocalization found across all languages, cultures, and across all ages. Laughter is studied under the philosophy of humor where we have three major theories of humor, the superiority theory, incongruity theory, and the relief theory. These theories explain why we laugh,
-superiority theory suggests that human derives pleasure from finding themselves superior to others or over a formal state of oneself.
-incongruity theory explains the idea of absurdity; absurdity is the element of the core of almost all humor where something doesn't make sense or add up.
-relief theory suggests that laughter is a mechanism by which psychological.
Tension is reduced so humor may be for example serve to facilitate relief of tension caused by one's fear.
In the 1800s, some psychologists believed that laughter evolved in the human race as an antidote to sympathy and that the emotions discharged in laughter always contain an element of aggression, they believe that laughter is a defense mechanism to hide one’s true feelings.
However, psychologists began to study humor; we might laugh at jokes, comedy, etc. They began to understand that laughter could be a social behavior. When laughing with someone we are talking to we are showing them that we like them, we understand them or agree with them. laughter is a way of communicating with each other in order to influence behavior, laughing together increases endogenous opioid release in the thalamus, caudate nucleus, and anterior insula as compared to laughing alone.
People often interchange Emotion and mood; we often use the two words Interchangeably in daily life but psychologists view them as two distinct things, emotions tend to be more intense than moods and they usually have a specific and identifiable cause, moods on the other hand tend to be milder than emotions and longer-lasting, it's also something hard to determine the specific event that causes a mood. Feelings arise from an emotional experience when a person is conscious of the experience.
Today, psychologists generally agree upon six basic emotions that are universal across cultures they are sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. These are called the primary emotion. complex emotions or secondary emotions are mixtures of the six basic emotions for example hate is a mixture of fear and disgust anger. unlike the six basic emotions, ex-emotions can differ in how they appear on a person's face and differs between cultures and individuals.
Conclusion
How we interpret and respond to our general surroundings makes up what our identity is and adds to our personality. The study of emotional psychology contributes to our understanding of how we think, perceive, and interpret emotions and how we use humor in a positive way to improve our mental health. It is said that laughter helps in releasing endorphins which can bring positive change to the mindset of a person. The study of laughter is called Gelotology. laughter is the best medicine.
