Laughter helps you help the world go round.
May 4th, 2007 by Matt
Hilarity-maker extraordinaire, Mel Brooks, somewhat famously said: “I cut my finger. That’s tragedy. A man walks into an open sewer and dies. That’s comedy.” But a new scientific study might turn that idea on its tail, if just a bit:
A good laugh may not only lift your mood, but can make you more cooperative and altruistic towards strangers.
Laughter, a universal human behavior, has been shown in previous studies to act as a “social lubricant” and promote group cohesiveness. In this new study, researchers tested whether this sense of closeness would promote altruistic behavior.
You can read the details of the study by clicking on this sentence. But in a nutshell (what kind of nutshell I’m not really sure, I mean, seriously, you really can’t fit much in a nutshell but a nut) the study involved an “investment game.” Participants were broken into small groups and each individual could either invest their “money” in either “a private fund or a group fund — they would get back whatever they put in the private fund, while whatever was contributed to the group fund would be doubled and split evenly among group members, regardless of how much each person put in.” The groups were shown either serious films or ridiculous films before the investing. What the researchers discovered was that giggles lead to lending to the group fund, demonstrating an increase in altruism and a decrease in selfishness.
So, in the spirit of that, here’s a video clip we hope will make you chuckle, guffaw, and maybe even, as the kids say, “ROFL.” After the video is a link to a charity we give “big ups.” Maybe a little laughter will be good medicine for this organization.
Mel Brooks’ first film, a short, titled “The Critic.”
Anne Bancroft, Mel Brooks’ wife, died of uterine cancer. Please consider donating to the Gynecological Cancer Foundation.
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