What makes something funny? Can humor improve our lives? | Barking Up The Wrong Tree
The key to humor is surprise.
Humor is the brain rewarding us for finding errors and inconsistencies in our thinking.
...humor is the way our brain copes with the truth of not being able to serve up the truth to many humorless individuals who deserve a healthy dose thereof.
...I think...maybe...gifs of cats. Seriously, no. To prove this, sit 20 people in a room w Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There will be someone who will not laugh. They even have jobs which require no humor, like customs agent, IRS, proctologist... This is interesting from a neuropsych perspective: http://discovermagazine.com/2002/may/featbiology
Perhaps the non-laugher's mother smells of elderberries?
Thanks for the Discover magazine article. Really does seem like we were made to laugh.
Great advice from Richard Wiseman:
People who spontaneously use humor to cope with stress have especially healthy immune systems, are 40 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, experience less pain during dental surgery and live four and a half years longer than average…On the basis of the results, the researchers recommended that people laugh for at least fifteen minutes each day.
I challenge any American to watch this clip and not laugh:
(You have to be American to know about Richard Simmons)
If I ever feel really down, I watch that video.
Another favorite is Wayne Brady on Dave Chappelle, but that is a slightly less universal taste:
I just saw this nugget: "In fact, you can predict how many women a man has slept with by how funny he is."
I suppose it's a general statistical trend, rather than a hard and fast rule, as my own humor-filled life seems to violate this rule.
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