Amusement

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Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or animal actively maintains the experience, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. It is an emotion with positive valence and high physiological arousal.

Contents

Amusement is considered an "epistemological" emotion because humor occurs when one experiences a cognitive shift from one knowledge structure about a target to another, such as hearing the punchline of a joke. [1] Emotions perceived overtime are focused on the daily dynamics of life as augment or blunt. [2] The pleasant surprise that happens from learning this new information leads to a state of amusement which people often express through smiling, laughter or chuckling.

Current studies have not yet reached consensus on the exact purpose of amusement, though theories have been advanced in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology. In addition, the precise mechanism that causes a given element (image, sound, behavior, etc.) to be perceived as more or less 'amusing' than another similar element to a particular individual is not clearly understood.

Theories

Two different theoretical perspectives about emotion provide contrasting origins of amusement:

Evolutionary

The evolutionary perspective proposes that amusement is a distinct emotion that evolved to enhance a species’ survival. Collective laughter helps define an ingroup, helping people recognize those similar to them and feel included. [3] [4] It also helps identify outgroup members and enhance the barrier between the two. Laughter can provide network support as encouragement, or it can inform ingroup members that they are losing majority favor and to adjust their behavior to reassimilate. [5]

Constructed emotion

The theory of constructed emotion suggests that when humans have a positive experience that increases their arousal, such as a faster heartbeat and increased sweat production, they cognitively seek out a label for that feeling. They will land on amusement if that experience resembles other amusement experiences they have had. [6] [7]

Emotional expression of amusement

The origin of the study of emotional expression is often attributed to Charles Darwin. [8] In 1872, Darwin published his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , in which he extensively describes his observations of how people and animals display emotions on their faces and through sound. [9] Darwin comments on amusement as an emotion of great joy during which a person is likely to laugh. He also notes that across all peoples humans can laugh until they are panting and tears roll down their cheeks. In the 1960s, Paul Ekman, an American psychologist, revived the study of emotional expression, proposing, like Darwin, that emotions were universally recognizable. [10] His early work focused on six basic emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise. [11] By the 1990s, Ekman had expanded this list to include several additional emotions, one of which was amusement. [12]

Displays of amusement have been distinguished from related emotions like embarrassment and shame. [13] More recent studies have confirmed that laughter is a distinct signal of amusement and is recognizable across cultures. [14] [15] [16]

Facial expression

An amused facial expression typically has these characteristics: [17]

Vocal burst

The expression of amusement is usually accompanied by genuine laughter. The experience of laughter changes the breathing pattern and often causes all the muscles to relax. [17]

Cultural considerations

As a positive, high arousal emotion, amusement falls in the same category as excitement and exhilaration. These emotions are highly valued in American culture where positive feelings that high in energy are seen as ideal. In contrast, East Asian cultures value positive, low arousal emotions such as contentment, calm and peacefulness. [18]

Clinical uses

Emotion regulation

Emotion regulation is the term for how people attempt to influence - increasing, decreasing, maintaining, or changing - how, when, and where they experience emotion. [19] Through changing how they think about a target of amusement, like a humorous video clip, people are able to increase and decrease how much amusement they feel, express in smiles and laughs, and experience in their bodies (e.g. increased heart rate and respiration). [20] Choosing to increase or prolong experiences of positive emotion is one way in which people can learn to cope when faced with challenges and develop resilience. [21]

Resilience

As a positive emotion, amusement contributes to the development of resilience in both children [22] and adults. [23] Positive emotions help people build social resources that foster their ability to cope during hard times. [24] Increases in resilience lead to higher life satisfaction and general happiness. [25]

People engaging in laughter therapy Laughter Yoga.jpg
People engaging in laughter therapy

Laughter therapy

Rapidly growing in popularity, laughter therapy, or humor therapy, focuses on promoting laughter as a therapeutic tool. [26] Usually implemented in a group, laughter therapy uses a variety of gag jokes like red noses and magic tricks to encourage laughter - fake or real. Laughter causes the body's muscles to relax which increases blood flow and oxygen intake. [27] Proposed benefits include: Stress management, [28] relaxation, improved mental functions, improved digestion, and pain relief. Some suggest that laughter activates similar brain wave frequencies as a meditative state. [29] However, scientific studies of these benefits are limited and have methodological issues. [30]

See also

Related Research Articles

Psychophysiology is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. While psychophysiology was a general broad field of research in the 1960s and 1970s, it has now become quite specialized, based on methods, topic of studies and scientific traditions. Methods vary as combinations of electrophysiological methods, neuroimaging, and neurochemistry. Topics have branched into subspecializations such as social, sport, cognitive, cardiovascular, clinical and other branches of psychophysiology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humour</span> Tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement

Humour or humor is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours, controlled human health and emotion.

In psychology, a mood is an affective state. In contrast to emotions or feelings, moods are less specific, less intense and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically described as having either a positive or negative valence. In other words, people usually talk about being in a good mood or a bad mood. There are many different factors that influence mood, and these can lead to positive or negative effects on mood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sadness</span> Negative emotion

Sadness is an emotional pain associated with, or characterized by, feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, grief, helplessness, disappointment and sorrow. An individual experiencing sadness may become quiet or lethargic, and withdraw themselves from others. An example of severe sadness is depression, a mood which can be brought on by major depressive disorder or persistent depressive disorder. Crying can be an indication of sadness.

Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans, but they also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Ekman</span> American psychologist (born 1934)

Paul Ekman is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of the 100 most cited psychologists of the twentieth century. Ekman conducted seminal research on the specific biological correlations of specific emotions, attempting to demonstrate the universality and discreteness of emotions in a Darwinian approach.

An emotional expression is a behavior that communicates an emotional state or attitude. It can be verbal or nonverbal, and can occur with or without self-awareness. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple behaviors like crying, laughing, or saying "thank you," and more complex behaviors like writing a letter or giving a gift. Individuals have some conscious control of their emotional expressions; however, they need not have conscious awareness of their emotional or affective state in order to express emotion.

The critical positivity ratio is a largely discredited concept in positive psychology positing an exact ratio of positive to negative emotions which distinguishes "flourishing" people from "languishing" people. The ratio was proposed by psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada, who believed that they had identified an experimental measure of affect whose model-derived positive-to-negative ratio of 2.9013 defined a critical separation between flourishing and languishing individuals, as reported in their 2005 paper in American Psychologist. This concept of a critical positivity ratio was widely embraced by academic psychologists and the lay public; Fredrickson and Losada's paper had been cited more than 320 times by January 2014, and Fredrickson wrote a popular book expounding the concept of "the 3-to-1 ratio that will change your life". In it she wrote, "just as zero degrees Celsius is a special number in thermodynamics, the 3-to-1 positivity ratio may well be a magic number in human psychology."

Psychological resilience is the ability to cope mentally and emotionally with a crisis, or to return to pre-crisis status quickly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dacher Keltner</span> American psychologist

Dacher Joseph Keltner is a Mexican-born American professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who directs the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab. He is also the founder and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center, host of the podcast The Science of Happiness, and chief scientific advisor of Hume AI.

According to some theories, emotions are universal phenomena, albeit affected by culture. Emotions are "internal phenomena that can, but do not always, make themselves observable through expression and behavior". While some emotions are universal and are experienced in similar ways as a reaction to similar events across all cultures, other emotions show considerable cultural differences in their antecedent events, the way they are experienced, the reactions they provoke and the way they are perceived by the surrounding society. According to other theories, termed social constructionist, emotions are more deeply culturally influenced. The components of emotions are universal, but the patterns are social constructions. Some also theorize that culture is affected by the emotions of the people.

Discrete emotion theory is the claim that there is a small number of core emotions. For example, Silvan Tomkins concluded that there are nine basic affects which correspond with what we come to know as emotions: interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, fear, anger, shame, dissmell and disgust. More recently, Carroll Izard at the University of Delaware factor analytically delineated 12 discrete emotions labeled: Interest, Joy, Surprise, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Self-Hostility, Fear, Shame, Shyness, and Guilt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Determination</span> Positive emotional feeling

Determination is a positive emotional feeling that promotes persevering towards a difficult goal in spite of obstacles. Determination occurs prior to goal attainment and serves to motivate behavior that will help achieve one's goal.

The broaden-and-build theory in positive psychology suggests that positive emotions broaden one's awareness and encourage novel, exploratory thoughts and actions. Over time, this broadened behavioral repertoire builds useful skills and psychological resources. The theory was developed by Barbara Fredrickson around 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion classification</span> Contrast of one emotion from another

Emotion classification, the means by which one may distinguish or contrast one emotion from another, is a contested issue in emotion research and in affective science. Researchers have approached the classification of emotions from one of two fundamental viewpoints:

  1. that emotions are discrete and fundamentally different constructs
  2. that emotions can be characterized on a dimensional basis in groupings

Positive affectivity (PA) is a human characteristic that describes how much people experience positive affects ; and as a consequence how they interact with others and with their surroundings.

The study of the evolution of emotions dates back to the 19th century. Evolution and natural selection has been applied to the study of human communication, mainly by Charles Darwin in his 1872 work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin researched the expression of emotions in an effort to support his materialist theory of unguided evolution. He proposed that much like other traits found in animals, emotions apparently also evolved and were adapted over time. His work looked at not only facial expressions in animals and specifically humans, but attempted to point out parallels between behaviors in humans and other animals.

A functional account of emotions posits that emotions facilitate adaptive responses to environmental challenges. In other words, emotions are systems that respond to environmental input, such as a social or physical challenge, and produce adaptive output, such as a particular behavior. Under such accounts, emotions can manifest in maladaptive feelings and behaviors, but they are largely beneficial insofar as they inform and prepare individuals to respond to environmental challenges, and play a crucial role in structuring social interactions and relationships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Cordaro</span> American psychologist

Daniel Cordaro is an American research scientist and psychologist who specializes in emotion psychology and human wellbeing. As a former faculty member at Yale University, Cordaro is best-known for his research in human emotion and positive psychology. Formerly the director of the Universal Expression Project at the University of California, Berkeley, Cordaro has conducted various worldwide studies on human emotional expression.

June Gruber is an American psychologist. She is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Positive Emotion and Psychopathology Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is known for her research on positive affectivity and mental health. She is a licensed clinical psychologist.

References

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  10. ↑ Ekman, Paul (1989). "The argument and evidence about universals in facial expressions". Handbook of Social Psychophysiology: 143–164.
  11. ↑ Ekman, P., Sorenson, E. R., & Friesen, W. V. (1969). "Pan-cultural elements in facial displays of emotion". Science. 164 (3875): 86–88. Bibcode:1969Sci...164...86E. doi:10.1126/science.164.3875.86. PMID   5773719. S2CID   16462814.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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  17. 1 2 "Emotional Intelligence Quiz". Greater Good Science Center. Retrieved 23 November 2017.
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  19. ↑ Gross, James J. (1998). "The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review". Review of General Psychology. 2 (3): 271–299. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.476.7042 . doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271. S2CID   6236938.
  20. ↑ Giuliani, N. R.; McRae, K. & Gross, J. J. (2008). "The up-and down-regulation of amusement: experiential, behavioral, and autonomic consequences". Emotion. 8 (5): 714–719. doi:10.1037/a0013236. PMC   4138973 . PMID   18837622.
  21. ↑ Tugade, M. M. & Fredrickson, B. L. (2007). "Regulation of positive emotions: Emotion regulation strategies that promote resilience". Journal of Happiness Studies. 8 (3): 311–333. doi:10.1007/s10902-006-9015-4. S2CID   51834346.
  22. ↑ Bai, S., & Repetti, R. L. (2015). "Short-term resilience processes in the family". Family Relations. 64 (1): 108–119. doi:10.1111/fare.12101. PMC   4523303 . PMID   26246651.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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  26. ↑ Burbank, Luke. "The Growing Popularity of Laughter Therapy". NPR.org. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  27. ↑ "Laughter Therapy". Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  28. ↑ Mayo Clinic Staff. "Stress relief from laughter? It's no joke". www.mayoclinic.org. Mayo Clinic. Retrieved 5 February 2018.
  29. ↑ Eckelkamp, Stephanie (2 May 2014). "Laughter Therapy is the New Meditation". Time.com. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  30. ↑ Martin, R. A. (2001). "Humor, laughter, and physical health: Methodological issues and research findings". Psychological Bulletin. 127 (4): 504–519. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.127.4.504. PMID   11439709.

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