Abstract
Laughter has been demonstrated to improve mental and physical health, and leads persons to recover from a stressful state. However, whether these effects are due to emotion or the company of other laughing persons or to laughter action regardless of emotion has not been proved yet. The present study aimed at clarifying the effect of laughter action itself. Sixty university students (21 men and 39 women, aged 20±0.45 years) were randomly allocated into three groups: laughter action group, light exercises group, and rest group. Stress recovery rate was compared among the three groups after doing a 15 minute mental arithmetic exercise as loaded stress. In terms of both physiological and psychological parameters, the rate of recovery was best in the laughter action group followed by the light exercise group and last, the rest group. This difference was statistically significant in ANOVA. Thus, the effect of laughter action itself regardless of emotion was shown in the present study. The present study, however, could not confirm or deny that the change of emotion evoked by the laughter action accelerated the rate of recovery found in the laughter action group. The mechanism of laughter in its ability to improve mental and physical health is still inside a black box.
