Laughter has been called “the best medicine.” In the least, it’s good psycho-therapy.
Imagine a study that randomly assigns individuals with relatively mild forms of mental dis-ease to either one hour weekly sessions of talk therapy, or one hour weekly of laugh therapy. I wonder how the outcomes would compare.
I also wonder whether observing individuals laugh in the wilds of their natural social groups (not in a controlled environment) could actually tell us something about them. Like an analysis of a auditory inkblot, but scientific.
A new study about the “laughter” of spotted hyenas got me wondering. In the news release, Hyenas’ laughter signals deciphered, I learned:
Acoustic analysis of the ‘giggle’ sound made by spotted hyenas has revealed that the animals’ laughter encodes information about age, dominance and identity.
Let me state outright that once again we discover that animals (other animals) are more complicated than too often assumed. Naw, the sounds of animal x aren’t meaningful. Yah, maybe not meaningful in human terms.
So here’s what I wonder: If a hyena’s laughter-sounds can tell us something about its age, social position/relationships, and identity, can human laughter likewise tell us more than we have to date left unheard, at least consciously?
Maybe, like a medical doctor telling patients to cough as he presses a stethoscope to their chest, psychotherapists ought to instruct their patients to laugh. Ah-hah. That doesn’t sound good. Do you have a history of being a doormat to loved ones? Kinda sounds like it. We’ll have to clear that up.
Of course, some people already do claim to be able to “read” a person by his or her every gesture. While I don’t doubt that some are somewhat adept at this, until I see good science conducted on the subject, I remain skeptical. Still . . . . I wonder.
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