Background and facts

Why do we smile?

Even the very youngest reward their parents with a radiant smile. And the fact that babies smile before they can speak, sit up or crawl is simply due to the fact that they do not have to learn it: Smiling is “innate”.

Among humans, smiling is perceived as an expression of sympathy, affection and mutual understanding and therefore helps to prevent conflict and promote calm, which is important for cohabitation in a group. Although it hasn’t been proven, it is highly likely that smiling is one of the most fundamental forms of communication among humans, which significantly pre-dates the development of language in our evolution. One indication of this is the fact that smiles are triggered and controlled in an area of our brains which, in evolutionary terms, is considerably older than the part that controls language. So smiling was originally also a threatening gesture that developed from a snarl. Just as today, it showed that a person had a healthy set of teeth. It therefore demonstrated strength and was an outwardly threatening gesture. Yet within the group smiling had and still has a connecting effect: showing teeth to one another meant being part of a strong community and being an equal partner within the group.

“There is no greater power than the power of laughter.” (Hugh Greene)

A smile or laugh is understood everywhere

Whether it’s in the bustling heart of a big city or the remote depths of the jungle: all over the world people smile in certain situations. All humans smile – it’s simply universal. This can be substantiated in an evolutionary sense too. Our ancestors – the apes – also show certain comparable facial expressions in situations where there was reason to be happy.

Sometimes a smile is employed in difficult situations too: for example a nervous or shy smile. In such cases a smile helps us to get through an unpleasant moment. Because when we smile at people, they generally smile right back.

Laughter as a “weapon”

In contrast to strengthening the sense of community within the individual group, laughing can also have an opposite effect on people who do not belong to the group. These can then easily become people at whose expense we laugh (> malicious laughter, laughing at somebody). So this kind of amusement can become a humiliating or even disgracing weapon against the person being laughed at. Yet in such situations laughter can have an overall positive effect, in that it diffuses an explosive situation with laughter, without offending too excessively the sense of honour of the person being laughed at.

This effect goes back to an important anarchic characteristic of laughter, based on the questioning of authority: with laughter any claim to respect and honour is fundamentally denied.

“Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Medical aspects of laughter

When we laugh, we use 17 muscles in our face and 80 muscles in our whole body. The eyebrows lift, the nostrils widen, the cheekbone muscles pull the corners of the mouth upwards, the eyes narrow to slits, breathing speeds up, air shoots through the lungs at up to 100 km per hour and the vocal chords start to vibrate. The sound of male laughter has at least 280 vibrations per second and female laughter 500. The diaphragm moves rhythmically. In contrast to these tensed muscles, the muscles in the legs relax and we tip forward when we’re laughing. The bladder muscles relax too – hence the idea of “wetting yourself with laughter”.

The number of stress hormones in the blood – adrenaline and cortisol – increases and happiness hormones, so-called endorphins, are released: relaxation sets in. Digestion is also stimulated, creating a positive effect on the entire metabolism.

The healing process of certain illnesses can be promoted through laughter. This involves exploiting the increased sense of well-being associated with laughter, which helps to release stress and therefore leads to an improvement in the general condition of a patient. In children’s wards especially, regular appearances by clowns have proven very positive.

There are even special types of therapy that aim to combat illness with laughter. By emptying the body of semiochemicals (certain hormones) the immune system is strengthened and illness is prevented. It is accepted, for example, that when laughing the body activates endorphins (happiness hormones) and thus creates a euphoric effect, which is comparable to that experienced by a long distance runner. When laughing, the cardiovascular system, diaphragm, vocal chords and face and stomach muscles are strongly stimulated, which leads to increased blood pressure, an increase in oxygen levels in the blood and to a type of internal massage for the lower belly. The physical efforts associated with this can quite easily lead to pain in the muscle areas used in people who otherwise do not laugh very often. However, these symptoms give way to a feeling of relaxation and easing when the laughter is kept up for longer and it is this, among other things, from which the therapeutic effect of laughing stems.

Tears of laughter

Since tears are produced through emotional situations and states of psychological emergency, pleasure as well as pain and sadness can stimulate our automatic nervous system. The tear ducts are activated and produce liquid. The precise circumstances have not been sufficiently researched, but scientists assume that people shed tears unintentionally in order to show the state of their feelings to others.