Humor and Laughter as Medicine: Physiological Impacts and Effects

Sample

For the most part, humor has been viewed as a social phenomenon that has its primary focus on human relationships. Most research takes the form of investigating the impact that humor and the communication of humor have on a variety of social situations, relational contexts, as well as the production of humorous messages. This chapter is a diversion from this traditional approach in that it has an inward focus on humor. That is, it looks at how humor and its close relative, laughter, affect the physiologic processes of the human body. Therefore, this chapter discusses some of the origins of humor and laughter in medicine as well as explains the psychobiological processes that underlie this complex form of human communication.