Too Scared to Laugh? Why We’re Afraid of Humor

We come into this world laughing. Any parent can tell you about the joy of babies laughing, for no known reason save the joy of it. As children age, they keep on laughing: on average, kids laugh 300 times a day. Yet the older we get, the less we laugh. The average adult laughs 15 times a day — a 95% reduction from the carefree days of childhood.

Where have the giggles gone? Did the chuckles canter away, leaving humor high and dry? Have our high-stress, high-tension lifestyles made it impossible to laugh? Some people think so. Yet these same people acknowledge that humor is one of the most affordable, accessible stress relief tools going. With that in mind, we have to ask: why aren’t adults laughing — even half as much as we used to when we were children?

Every action has a potentially negative consequence, and it’s fear of those consequences that keep us from acting. That fear is a tremendous motivator. We don’t engage in dangerous activities like bungee jumping or shark wrestling because we’re afraid of physical consequences. We don’t pick fights at work because we’re afraid of financial consequences. We don’t insult our spouse’s parents because we’re afraid of marital consequences.

You wouldn’t think laughter is scary, but for many people, it is. Researchers are just now beginning to delve into the many mysterious factors that force us to keep silent when we want to guffaw — but there are already some well known reasons people don’t laugh. These include:

Fear of Being Unique: The hardest thing to do can be being the first person to laugh: laugh at a joke, laugh at a funny situation, laugh at frustrating circumstances. What if no one else laughs? The fear of being the only one laughing, the only one who has a perspective different from the rest of the group, silences many people who would otherwise laugh. Look at how many people join in the humor after someone else has ‘broken the ice’: they saw the humor in the situation as well, but were reluctant to laugh until someone else went first.

This is a grown up job, act like a grown up! College days and kidding around at the sandwich shop are far behind you: now you’ve got a grown up career, with grown up responsibilities. This requires being serious at all times — which is too bad, since laughter can have positive effects on the workplace: lifting morale, building teams, increasing efficiency.

Fear of Being Unkind: All things being equal, most people prefer to not hurt those people who surround us. We stifle laughs in fear of being offensive. Yet there is good humor and bad humor: good humor, sometimes known as therapeutic humor, lifts and elevates the spirit, while bad humor is personal and mean-natured. It’s difficult to confuse the two; so there’s no reason to stifle the former for fear of the latter. When in doubt, start small by trying out humor with a few trusted friends who will let you know if you’re being obnoxious — as you use humor more, you’ll feel more confident about incorporating it into your daily routine.

Tagged with: humor and health • Humor Articles • Jokes • laughter • nurse humor

Filed under: Humor Articles

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