The Benefits Of Humor?

People naturally are triggered to smile when they feel happy and laugh when something is humorous, but there are multiple benefits of humor beyond a natural reaction. These include factors from improved communication to heart health. Since the day you were born, the first thing you saw was most likely a smile. Whether it was your parents excited about their new child or the doctor comforting you, you were pretty much guaranteed to have seen a smile. Research shows the mental and physical benefits of laughing and smiling are surprisingly significant.

There are many different types of smiles and laughter that are recognized by researchers.

“Smiles performed without the eye contraction may be perceived as insincere. Among humans, smiling is an

Humor creates not only friendship bonds, but bonds between humans not yet able to communicate in any other form. Humor is described as “having survival value between infant and caregiver. An infant's smile enables the infant to modify the caregiver’s behavior” (Solomon

251). In other words, before infants learn how to speak and communicate with their caregiver, they use laughter and humor to demonstrate their likes and dislikes. For example, when using humor and laughter, infants are able to modify the behavior of the caregiver to better cater the needs of the infant.

Not only does humor benefit younger generations, it can improve the lives of older generations as well. Older people can still receive benefits from laughter and humor as if they were 60 years younger. “A qualitative study by Malinski (1990) indicated that older couples who

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laughed at themselves ‘seemed happier, more self-assured, and more at ease with themselves than those who were not able to do so” (Solomon 254). In other words, when older couples were able to create humor and laugh at themselves, they see positive results within the couples mindsets. They appeared to be more happy and don't care about others opinions as

There are many different ways people use to cope with stress, most tending to be unhealthy. “For example, Grotjahn (1970) describes humor as a guilt free release of aggression”

(Solomon 255). For example, people may drink alcohol when stressed or find a negative habit to partake in to relieve their aggression. There can be consequences to forming negative coping habits as such, and when using humor, one will not feel guilty for relieving their stress.

Some enjoy smiles so much that they pay large amounts of money to permanently smile.

Botox injection receivers that create artificial smiles still receive similar benefits than people who manually smile. “Botox injections to prevent frowning, reported less anxiety and depression than before they received the injections” (Lin 384). In other words, when artificial smiles are induced, people felt noticeably better than before they induced the smiles. In summary, to smile or laugh even when you don't want to is to benefit your own good.

In conclusion, there are an excessive amount of benefits to smiling and laughing--both physical and mental. Most people don’t know about the benefits of smiling. It may be