influence blood pressure and the other type can negatively influence blood pressure. A more detailed comparison will now be made between beneficial and harmful humour.
Harmful humour can be sarcastic or aggressive, e.g., “Madame, I’d like to drink to your beauty…So you can imagine how hard up I am for a drink!” (Groucho Marx)
Harmful humour can also be self-deprecating (ingratiating oneself), e.g., “My father had an ulcer for a long time, but he finally got rid of it…I left home.” (Alan Feiman)
The aggressive form of humour can result in offending someone. The self-deprecating form of humour can make people uncomfortable being around the self-deprecator. These harmful examples of humour can result in making less friends …show more content…
Before going into the research conducted at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, two terms related to stress need to be identified. They are eustress (moderate, beneficial, positive stress) and distress (harmful, dangerous, negative stress) (Bains et al., 2015). As for the Loma Linda experiment, memory tasks (memorizing a word-list) were given to the experimental group and control group (CG). The CG saw no video and sat quietly in a room alone (experienced distress)—resulting in an elevated amount of (salivary) cortisol. The experimental group watched a funny video (experienced eustress)—resulting in less cortisol. Thus, the experimental group had better recall from the word list than the CG. This study supports the hypothesis that laughter results in eustress which produces less cortisol; less cortisol results in less stress; and less stress can delay the onset of cognitive impairment (dementia) in older adults (Bains et al., …show more content…
Would Cousins have recovered without laughter? Florence A. Ruderman, author of the article A Placebo for the Doctor, stated that there was no empirical evidence supporting Cousins’ supposed miraculous recovery, and perhaps he was misdiagnosed and recovered naturally from a non-fatal disease. Cousins had said that for every 10 minutes of laughter, he had 2 hours of pain-free sleep. His anecdotal statement was not supported by any empirical evidence (Ruderman, 1980); yet, scientific evidence for the analgesic effect of laughter comes in the form of endorphins. These are hormones produced by the central nervous system. Laughing (and jogging) both increase the release of endorphins which induce euphoria and act as an analgesic. This is why marathon joggers feel a runner’s high. Laughter also raises the serotonin levels in the brain which, alongside endorphins, create a feeling of well-being and even happiness (Savage et al., 2017). Notably, laughter and jogging both have similar effects compared to those of
Harmful humour can be sarcastic or aggressive, e.g., “Madame, I’d like to drink to your beauty…So you can imagine how hard up I am for a drink!” (Groucho Marx)
Harmful humour can also be self-deprecating (ingratiating oneself), e.g., “My father had an ulcer for a long time, but he finally got rid of it…I left home.” (Alan Feiman)
The aggressive form of humour can result in offending someone. The self-deprecating form of humour can make people uncomfortable being around the self-deprecator. These harmful examples of humour can result in making less friends …show more content…
Before going into the research conducted at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, two terms related to stress need to be identified. They are eustress (moderate, beneficial, positive stress) and distress (harmful, dangerous, negative stress) (Bains et al., 2015). As for the Loma Linda experiment, memory tasks (memorizing a word-list) were given to the experimental group and control group (CG). The CG saw no video and sat quietly in a room alone (experienced distress)—resulting in an elevated amount of (salivary) cortisol. The experimental group watched a funny video (experienced eustress)—resulting in less cortisol. Thus, the experimental group had better recall from the word list than the CG. This study supports the hypothesis that laughter results in eustress which produces less cortisol; less cortisol results in less stress; and less stress can delay the onset of cognitive impairment (dementia) in older adults (Bains et al., …show more content…
Would Cousins have recovered without laughter? Florence A. Ruderman, author of the article A Placebo for the Doctor, stated that there was no empirical evidence supporting Cousins’ supposed miraculous recovery, and perhaps he was misdiagnosed and recovered naturally from a non-fatal disease. Cousins had said that for every 10 minutes of laughter, he had 2 hours of pain-free sleep. His anecdotal statement was not supported by any empirical evidence (Ruderman, 1980); yet, scientific evidence for the analgesic effect of laughter comes in the form of endorphins. These are hormones produced by the central nervous system. Laughing (and jogging) both increase the release of endorphins which induce euphoria and act as an analgesic. This is why marathon joggers feel a runner’s high. Laughter also raises the serotonin levels in the brain which, alongside endorphins, create a feeling of well-being and even happiness (Savage et al., 2017). Notably, laughter and jogging both have similar effects compared to those of