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Mirth

Mirth refers to the unique positive emotion associated with humor. Alternative terms sometimes used in the research literature to refer to this emotion are amusement, exhilaration, and humor appreciation. Many theories of humor focus particularly on its cognitive aspects, but it is also important to recognize that humor is fundamentally an emotional phenomenon. Just as other emotions (e.g., joy, anger, fear) occur in response to specific types of cognitive appraisals of the environment, the emotion of mirth is evoked by a particular set of cognitive appraisals that we commonly refer to as humor. This entry discusses the elements that characterize mirth, the physiological responses associated with mirth, how mirth is displayed, and the possible motivational functions of mirth.

In addition to humor, the emotion of mirth may be elicited by other stimuli, such as nitrous oxide (N2O, or laughing gas), rough-and-tumble childhood play, and playful tickling. An individual’s threshold for experiencing mirth at any given time can also be raised or lowered by factors such as the social context (e.g., the presence of other laughing people), one’s current mood state (cheerful vs. depressed), health status, level of fatigue, or ingestion of alcohol or psychoactive drugs. There are also more enduring individual differences in the tendency to experience mirth, which are associated with personality traits such as extraversion and one’s overall sense of humor.

Mirth is closely related to other positive emotions such as joy or happiness, but it also has some qualitatively distinct experiential elements, including suddenness of onset, perception of funniness, feeling of playfulness, and sense of diminishment of the seriousness or importance of things. Like other emotions, mirth can range in intensity, from the mild feelings of amusement evoked by a simple pun, to intense paroxysms of hilarity accompanied by rollicking laughter. Also like other emotions, mirth has physiological, expressive, and motivational aspects, in addition to the experiential component.

Physiological Aspects

Mirth is associated with increased heart rate, skin conductance, blood pressure, skin temperature, and muscle tension. These bodily changes result from activation of the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) system, the well-known fight-or-flight response under the control of the hypothalamus, and are mediated by increased production of catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine) in the adrenal glands. In addition to SAM activation, extended periods of mirth can be associated with activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical system, the classic stress response involving increased cortisol production in the adrenal cortex.

It may seem strange that the positive emotion associated with humor, which is thought to be beneficial for health, is accompanied by the same pattern of physiological arousal as are stress-related negative emotions such as anxiety and anger, which have been associated with adverse health outcomes. However, it is important to note that stress-related illnesses tend to result from chronic activation and inadequate recovery from sympathetic arousal, whereas mirth is associated with phasic, short-term arousal increases that are less likely to have adverse consequences. It is also likely that these emotions have important differences at the neurological level, including the biochemical molecules (e.g., neuropeptides, neurotransmitters) that are produced in the brain, which in turn may have different effects on health.

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