Why we laugh

TED Talk by Sophie Scott

Major takeaway:

Laugh as much as possible.

We laugh more with friends than we do alone.

That is because a social setting promotes laughter.

We are more likely to laugh at the way the joke is told, the person who is telling it and how fond we are of that person.

There are types of laughter such as posed laughter, helpless laughter etc.

Laughter actually comes from our ribcage. When we breathe, our ribcage oscillates in a normal way; in and out, in and out, in and out.

When we laugh the duration between the ins and the outs gets shorter and shorter, and we are involuntarily breathing out and not letting any air inside.

Hence, the “ha” sound. And the breathlessness.