‘Health is based on happiness.’ With this assumption, the famous American doctor and father of clown therapy, Patch Adams, founded his therapeutic method, a winning combination of humor and fun as essential ingredients for the physical and mental healing of the patient.
Today, experts are convinced that the so-called “Smile Therapy” is not only capable of helping patients to live better with their pathology, but also provides notable benefits in terms of breathing, oxygenation, circulation, etc. as in the reduction of stress and anxiety states. How many types of laughter are there for this? In this Psychology-Online article we will talk about the types of laughter and their meaning.
What is laughter and its benefits
Laughter is a nervous reaction that manifests itself in human behavior in different circumstances. Generally, this is a emotional response to a comic experience or intense sensations of joy, pleasure, well-being and optimism.
Additionally, laughter may also play a role in release of emotions of opposite nature, such as sadness and anger. In this case, in common language we speak of nervous or hysterical laughter. Physical causes can also stimulate laughter, regardless of any emotional context. For example, tickling or inhalation of diazote oxide (called “laughing gas”).
For scientists around the world, laughter truly makes life better and is the simplest and most economical path to personal well-being, whether physical or mental. Specifically, the benefits of laughter for the body and mind are the following:
- Improves blood circulation.
- Helps prevent cardiovascular diseases.
- Keeps the brain trained.
- and depression.
- Improvement of the immune system.
- Improves relationships with others and with oneself.
Etiquette Laughter
Sometimes people use laughter to get along with othersso whether we are with our boss or with friends, we tend to laugh at things that are simply not funny to fit the context in which we find ourselves.
Contagious laughter
Within the types of laughter, contagious laughter occurs when, for example, someone tells a joke and makes one person laugh, which makes another person laugh, and so on. People are made for respond with a laugh upon hearing the laugh itselfin the same way that a yawn is mysteriously contagious.
Nervous laugh
During periods of anxiety, we often laugh in an unconscious attempt to reduce stress and calm ourselves. However, nervous laughter usually only adds to the embarrassment of the situation. A nervous laugh often it is considered a fake laugh.
belly laugh
Belly laughter is considered the most honest kind of laughter. It can also be the most difficult type to experience, as you have to find something truly hilarious to experience this type of laughter that causes us to clench our stomach and gasp for air. In this article we show you different ways to.
silent laughter
Those of us who work in cubicles might think that silent laughter is a skill we’ve honed so we can laugh in situations where we shouldn’t. Among the types of laughter, silent ones are practiced in yoga classes either in laughter therapy sessionswhere it is often called a joker’s laugh.
Laughter to relieve stress
Laughter to relieve stress can take many forms, but it is usually manifests as a rash, in the same way as belly laughter. It is a way of laughing that relaxes the body both physically and emotionally.
Dove’s laughter
Specifically, dove laughter implies laugh without opening your mouth. It is often practiced in laughter therapy or laughter yoga. By keeping your lips closed, laughter produces a humming sound that resembles the sounds a dove makes.
Laughter
About 25% of women and 33% of men laugh by the nose. If this is your type of laughter, you should know that what happens is that when you laugh you exhale or suck through your nose. That is why the laughter is so loud and striking.
Canned laughter
The boxed laugh is a real laugh, it’s just that it is a laugh taken from one context and placed in another. Due to the social connection of laughter, television producers understand that placing a laugh box over the soundtrack of programming increases the chances that audiences will find the material funny. Plus, it’s also a useful resource if you want to.
Cruel laugh
If we talk about types of laughter, cruel laughter refers to when this gesture is used to laugh at someone else’s expense. To avoid this situation, in this article you will find different useful tools to learn how to.
Spastic laughter
This type of laughter consists of the manifestation of uncontrolled bouts of laughter triggered by irrelevant stimuli, that is, by stimuli or events that would not normally cause this emotional response. In some cases, the stimulus may have an opposite value, for example, when a person laughs in response to sad news and then abruptly switches to crying.
Thus, it is an uncontrolled laughter that can also appear in response to non-emotional stimuli, for example if an oscillating movement is made with the hand in the person’s visual field. In fact, this type of laughter has no emotional value, is not associated with feelings of happiness, but is just a mimic attitude. The person who bursts into laughter is often perplexed by her laughter, judges it as inappropriate, and does not understand why it comes out.
Spastic laughter is a typical expression of pseudobulbar syndrome which manifests itself in progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurodegenerative disease. Generally, it is also related to cerebrovascular pathologies due to multiple microinfarcts or others such as .
Gelastic crisis
This laughter is a rare type of partial epileptic seizure with fronto-temporal foci, characterized by the production of a stereotyped laughter not related to context. It is a sudden laugh, not triggered by an emotional stimulus, which may be accompanied by disorders and/or alterations in the state of consciousness.
Often, such crises are related to the presence of hypothalamic amartomas or benign malformations found in the hypothalamus area.
sardonic laughter
One of the types of laughter that manifests itself as a facial muscle spasm that seems to produce a smile, when in reality the person who expresses it is not laughing. It is typical of patients who contract tetanus, an infectious disease caused by a toxin that produces spastic paralysis of the muscles throughout the body, including those of the face, from which this wide-mouth smile expression is derived.
fatuous laughter
Fatuous laughter is empty, childish, superficial, arises without a stimulus that provokes it and in inappropriate contexts. This type of laughter is often accompanied by behaviors such as putting your hand in front of your mouth, shrugging your shoulders, or trying to hide. It is typical for people with frontal brain damage or severe psychosis. Find out what exists in this article.
Uncontrollable laughter
Uncontrollable laughter is a continuous and intense laughter crisis which gradually increases and leads to a very rare form of “situational” syncope. It does not depend on neurological pathologies, but on a lack of control on the part of the person who cannot stop laughing.
People affected by this type of laughter cannot stop laughing until they faint. The resulting syncope is probably related to changes in the mechanisms that regulate blood pressure.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to Types of laughter and their meaningwe recommend that you enter our category.
Bibliography
- Esposito, A. (2017). Pathological laughter: dal riso spastico alla Risata killer. Retrieved from: https://www.neuro-psi.it/risata-patologica/
- Heesen, B. A. (2015). The 10 different types of laughter. Retrieved from: https://www.readingeagle.com/2015/01/27/the-10-different-types-of-laughter/