Laughter and Medicine

What makes me laugh? 

The typical things, of course: inside jokes so convoluted even I can't trace their origins anymore, when my sister and I "watch television" (read: dramatically narrate made-up stories while a movie plays in the background), every time my father tries to be cool. Group chats and the kind of gossip I really shouldn't enjoy as much as I do. Reading books with witty banter because, yes, I am the type to verbally and dramatically react to things happening in fictional universes. 

The other typical things, too, of course: the laugh I have reserved for when I'm lying*, the one for when I'm uncomfortable and desperate for an escape. A friend laughs everytime she gets hurt, and another's biggest fear is laughing at a funeral one day. While maybe the less obvious response to "What makes me laugh", these answers certainly aren't uncommon (well, the funeral one might be). This begs the question: is there a singular thing I could say to make everyone laugh?

The data does, unfortunately, point to no. Apparently, women laugh 71% of the time when a man tells a joke, but a man only laughs 39% of the time when women tell jokes. Whether or not the women are laughing because they found the joke funny or because they were uncomfortable was not disclosed in this particular study. Women laugh more at self-deprecating humor, the elderly laugh more at jokes about hearing loss, and during World War II, the British laughed at Hitler until he decided against invading their country. 

All this to say, I guess what humor really does is create an "Us" and "You". Men vs. Women, Elderly vs. Young, Allies vs. Nazis. Powerful vs. Powerless. Those who understand vs. Those who don't. We laugh because we're on the inside, and yes, that always means someone is on the outside. Hm...not so funny now, is it?

*I was originally trying to research why we laughed when we lied, and came up with nothing majorly inventive. I did, however, find a test you can do to determine if you're (likely to be) a good liar: draw a capital Q on your forehead with your finger. If you drew it so that you saw it the right way, you're a low-self monitor. If you drew it so that someone looking at you would be able to see it the right way, you're a high-self monitor. High-self monitors are basically more concerned with others' perceptions of them than low-self monitors. They're also more likely to be liars.