Just by hearing someone laugh, you can start laughing too!

How often have you seen someone yawn in the car next to you, or on the other side of the classroom, and you suddenly yawn too? Just reading the word "yawn" can trigger it off! Laughter works the same way - you see someone laughing, and for no apparent reason (other than the person might be looking rather strange!), you find yourself starting to laugh. This has nothing to do with a joke, it is a natural phenomenon which takes place in our social behaviours! For example, dubbed-in laughter is often added to sitcoms to encourage laughter among the viewers.

In Tanganyika in 1962, an outbreak of contagious laughter erupted in a group of 12-18 year old school girls. It went from one individual to the next then from one village to the next. This lasted six months and led to the closure of a number of schools!

Robert Provine, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland offers an explanation to this phenomenon of infectious laughter: he suggested that humans have a detector specifically devoted to laughter. This responds to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain that generates more laughter - hence, laughter becomes contagious!

So, all you non-jokers out there, focus on spreading compassionate humor through your laughter!