Meanwhile, studies by Lefcourt and others have found that levels of immunoglobulin A, an antibody secreted in saliva to protect against respiratory invaders, drops during stress—but it drops far less in people who score high on a humor scale.
While these findings suggest how laughter might benefit our health, nobody has yet proven that these immune effects translate into faster healing, because humor's impact on actual recovery has never been scientifically confirmed.
Laughter: The Proper Dose
Now that we know what laughter can do, it's important to recognize when it's most effective. Here are some things to keep in mind to live life happily ever laughter.
Humor may help some people more than others.
There's one problem with nearly all the research that links humor and mood; it's what scientists call "correlational." The fact that two things happen at the same time doesn't mean one caused the other. So if folks with a strong sense of humor are less affected by stress, "it doesn't mean laughing is what's helping them cope," says Martin. Rather, it could be that if they're coping well, they can laugh a lot.
In Martin's view, by adulthood our sense of humor has essentially reached its final form: And for those of us whose internal humor settings are on the low side, he believes laughter may not help as much. For example, in one study, participants' levels of immunoglobulin A increased when they viewed humorous videos. But they rose most in people whose tendency to laugh was greatest to begin with. So the serious and sober among us may benefit less from laughter.
Others dispute this idea, asserting that humor is an equal-opportunity life-enhancer. "Anybody who has normal mental development can engage in and benefit from humor," insists Morreall. "All they have to do is put themselves in this more playful state of mind. We have to give ourselves permission to do something we did very easily when we were three years old."
Martin, though, remains unconvinced. "My sense is that research hasn't been as successful as people had hoped. It seems to be pretty hard to teach someone to change their sense of humor." Nonetheless, if you're a natural humor powerhouse, laughter's force may be especially at your command.
Control and choice may enhance laughter's benefits.
Numerous studies show that psychological and physical health
improve when people feel a sense of control in their lives, whether over their jobs, future, relationships, or even their medical treatment. Laughter's benefits may have a similar origin, suggests Morreall.
"When we're stressed, we often feel like we have no control of the situation," he says. "We feel helpless. But when we laugh, at least in our minds, we assume some control. We feel able to handle it."
One implication of this is that the more control people have over the type of humor to which they're exposed, the more they may benefit from it. At least one study bears this out. When patients recovering from surgery at a Florida hospital were allowed to choose the humorous movies they saw, they required less painkillers than a control group that saw no movies. But a third set of patients, force-fed comedies that may not have been to their liking, did worst of all.
Perhaps that should come as no surprise. Humor is intensely personal. Jim Carrey's comedy has little in common with Woody Allen's.
"To harness laughter's benefits, it's essential that each person is matched to his or her favorite brand of humor," says Lefcourt. Often, that's remarkably difficult, even for folks close to you. "I'm sometimes very surprised at what people I know find funny," he says.
In the long run, conscientiousness may outperform laughter as a health aid.
Even if laughter proves to aid recovery, it may not be an asset in the long run, contends Howard Friedman, professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside. Friedman and colleagues have been following the fates of the "Termites," a group of 1,528 11-year-olds that the legendary psychologist Louis Terman began studying in 1921. Terman asked teachers and parents to assess various personality traits of his preteen subjects. Friedman's team found that individuals judged as being cheerful and having a good sense of humor as children have been dying sooner than their less jovial classmates.
The reason, he thinks, is that cheerful people may pay less
attention to threats to their physical and psychological well-being. "In the short term, I think it is helpful to be optimistic about a particular illness," says Friedman. But the same good-natured attitude that helps us laugh off the threat of illness ("I'm going to be just fine") may work against us when we're presented with the opportunity to eat unhealthy foods or light up a cigarette.
In fact, the only personality trait that consistently increased longevity among the Termites, Friedman says, was conscientiousness, possibly because folks with this trait are more likely to avoid hazardous behaviors. So laugh all you like—but temper it with a bit of caution.
While laughter may not be a panacea, there's still much to be gained from it. And, truth be told, there's room for plenty of additional chortles in our lives: Fry found that by the time the average kid reaches kindergarten, he or she is laughing some 300 times each day. Compare that to the typical adult, whom Martin recently found laughs a paltry 17 times a day. (Men and women laugh equally often, Martin adds, but at different things.)
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