Laughter as a Buffer for Negative Thoughts in Anxiety-Provoking Situations (2013)

Undergraduate: Kelly Knowles

Faculty Advisor: Sara Algoe
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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Laughter is a phenomenon that occurs in a variety of contexts and has effects at social, cognitive, and physiological levels. Laughter is linked to positive emotions, which have been theorized to broaden thought-action repertoires and build social and psychological resources; however, few studies have examined the effects of laughter experimentally. In times of anxiety, people could especially benefit from laughter. In this study, I use laughter as an intervention to reduce induced anxiety. I compare the effects of genuine laughter to those of forced laughter, relaxation, and a control condition without an intervention on subjective ratings of anxiety and cognitions. Although laughter did not affect self-reported ratings of anxiety, it significantly lessened the degree of negative thoughts regarding the anxiety-provoking situation compared to the other three conditions. Genuine laughter also reduced attentional bias toward social threat compared to the control condition, as measured by an emotional Stroop task. Future research could extend this finding by exploring the utility of laughter in a therapeutic setting with clinically anxious clients, as anxiety disorders are characterized by an attentional bias to perceived threat and inflexible, negative cognitions about situations or objects that are found threatening. Using laughter along with traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy might increase treatment success rates and overall client well-being.