Laughter as medicine: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventional studies evaluating the impact of spontaneous laughter on cortisol levels

Hearing laughter: a prescription for anxiety relief

Anxiety can have adverse effects on cognition such as impairing test performance or restricting working memory. One way of reducing anxiety is through humor, and the present research investigated if the perception of laughter, which is often seen as a reaction to humor, could impact self-reported anxiety. Participants completed the STAI battery containing subscales for both state and trait anxiety before and after one of three manipulations: a laughter sounds rating task, a neutral sounds rating task, or a working memory span task. Results showed that perceiving laughter decreased both state and trait anxiety, taking a working memory test increased state anxiety, and perceiving neutral sounds had no effect on either type of anxiety. These findings are interpreted as evidence that the positive emotions induced by hearing laughter help to regulate anxiety by undoing arousal, even when negative emotions are not present.

The success elements of humor use in workplace leadership: A proposed framework with cognitive and emotional competencies

This qualitative study aims to investigate the competencies and effectiveness of humor use in workplace leadership. By exploring the elements underlying successful and unsuccessful humor use, this research offers insights into the competencies required for leaders to leverage humor effectively. Adopting a qualitative inductive approach, fifteen individual semi-structured interviews were conducted, generating a dataset of 51 critical incidents of humor use. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to identify key themes, resulting in the identification of five central elements: Reading the context, Intention and motivation, Judgement and decision, Skillful delivery, and Understanding reactions. These elements provide a comprehensive framework for understanding humor use in the context of workplace leadership, emphasizing the importance of cognitive and emotional intelligence / competencies. The study proposes a theoretical framework based on these findings, providing the foundation of a new paradigm for understanding and measuring humor use. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the competencies and complexities involved in using humor as a leadership tool and provides practical implications for leaders aiming to enhance their leadership effectiveness through humor.

Mini-review: Wild laughs: Ontogenesis and phylogenesis of humour

This mini-review discusses the existing evidence on various forms of humour and humour-like behaviour in non-human animals, combining ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspectives. The first section describes humour-like behaviours, from the simplest to the most complex form (from laughing, tickling, joking, and chasing to ToM humour). In the second section, we propose the SPeCies (Social, Physiological, and Cognitive) Perspective, which frames the various types of humour based on Social motivation, Physiological state, and Cognitive skills. Finally, in the third section, we discuss future directions for further development.

Recognition of emotions in German laughter across cultures

Laughter conveys a wide range of information relevant for social interaction. In previous research we have shown that laughter can convey information about the sender's emotional state, however other research did not find such an effect. This paper aims to replicate our previous study using participant samples of diverse cultural backgrounds. 161 participants from Poland, the UK, India, Hong Kong, and other countries classified 121 spontaneously emitted German laughter sounds according to the laughter type, i.e., joyful, schadenfreude, and tickling laughter. Results showed that all participant groups classified the laughter sounds above chance level, and that there is a slight ingroup advantage for Western listeners. This suggests that classification of laughter according to the sender's emotional state is possible across different cultures, and that there might be a small advantage for classifying laughter of close cultural proximity.