How’s That Funny?: The Psychology Behind Laughter

Many experienced comedians know how to amuse, excite, and entertain an audience. From Gabriel Iglesias to Kevin Hart, comedians possess a unique way of saying spontaneous phrases at the correct times to captivate an audience. At their shows, there are chuckles every second—to the point where people can’t stop laughing. How can something be funny enough to make our brains and bodies have a physical response? 

  A joke is something someone says to induce amusement or laughter. The best comedians have a method for coming up with  jokes, known as misdirection. They first set up the audience with a claim and convince them that it is true using enthusiasm and persuasive techniques, then delivering a punchline where comedians subvert expectations and surprise listeners with something that is totally unexpected. Specific regions of the brain are activated when a joke is structured using misdirection, and these neurological pathways lead to laughter.

For the past decade, researchers have studied the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRIs), a form of brain imaging, to explore human responses to humor. Research has shown that the brain’s reward circuit—responsible for reactions to pleasurable experiences—is linked to humor response. Although scientists are still researching this correlation, different parts of the brain react in different ways depending on the way humor is delivered—for example, visual humor, a joke, etc. 

Dr. Vinol Goel, the first researcher to use fMRI to understand humor, conducted a study in 2001. His procedure involved imaging the brains of 14 college student participants as they were given two types of humor: semantic jokes, which rely more on abstract concepts, and puns, which play on words. Goel concluded that when participants listened to a semantic joke, blood flow increased towards their bilateral posterior temporal lobes. This region of the brain is involved in semantic—relating to meaning—language processing. However, when the participants listened to the puns, their left inferior prefrontal cortex, involved in phonological processing (using sounds of a language to process spoken and written language), was activated. After further questioning the participants, Goel found that the funnier jokes (both semantic and phonetic), in comparison to the “not funny” ones, all activated a portion of the brain's reward system, known as the medial ventral prefrontal cortex. 

An additional study published by John Allman and graduate student Karli Watson focused on how people’s brains react as they view language-based and purely visual sight cartoons. Allman concluded that the sight cartoons activated high-level visual processing areas in the brain, while the language-based cartoons activated language-processing areas in the left temporal lobe. However, both activated emotional regions of the amygdala and midbrain. Scientists conclude that the brain’s responses to different types of humor and joke delivery—visual or auditory—are based on the areas of the brain that are activated. 

Compared to the mental response, laughter is the physiological response when the brain recognizes humor. When we laugh, we exhale; our shoulders move up and down alongside the core of the body (the abdomen). The core of the body moves because of the diaphragm, a muscle below the lungs and heart that contributes to inhaling and exhaling. Air whooshes through the vocal cords to make noises, which we recognize as laughter. Not only is air constantly let out of the body, but it is let out at very high pressures because the diaphragm rapidly forces air out of the body. These physical actions are why laughter cannot be sustained for long—due to the constant contraction of muscles, there would be muscle cramps and pains. The muscle contractions may also cause some people to hug their own abdomen when they laugh very expressively. It may seem strange, but the brain signals the body to respond to a joke in this manner. The brain may also signal the body to respond to stress through laughter, because laughter causes the release of endorphins, neurotransmitters produced in the brain that act as the body’s “painkillers.”

Amusing or stressful stimuli have also been shown to cause laughter. Based on the type of stimulus, a different region of the brain is activated—each is responsible for producing different emotions. When someone laughs, a region is activated, and the brain’s response is to make the body rapidly inhale and exhale at high pressures, forcing air out and making a laughing sound. The next time you’re at a comedy show, or even reading the Humor section of The Spectator, remember that what you read will affect how the brain and body respond.