57 Times People Laughed At Something Only To Realize It Was Not A Joke At All

This bizarre malfunction is officially called nervous laughter, or dimorphous expression.

It’s when one emotion, like fear or grief, produces the outward expression of its opposite.

When a situation gets too dark or uncomfortable, your brain panics and searches for an escape hatch. Inappropriate laughter then works as a psychological shield.

A 2015 study from Yale University found that our brains use “incongruous expressions,” such as crying when happy or laughing when terrified, to restore balance.

When you are hit with an overwhelming wave of negative emotion, your brain forces out a positive one to stop you from having a complete meltdown.

The most striking evidence for nervous laughter came from a very unsettling experiment done in the 1960s.

During the study, researchers asked participants to administer electric shocks to strangers, with shocks increasing from 15 to 450 volts.

The strangers were actually actors who weren’t really being shocked — but the participants didn’t know that. Most of the participants, as expected, showed signs of distress.

But some also laughed when they heard screams, and the nervous laughter increased as the voltage went up. While the chuckles may have come across as rude, these participants clearly felt distressed when administering what they thought were painful punishments.

Inappropriate laughter, as uncomfortable as it can be, plays an important role in overall emotional regulation.

 “When we laugh at a good joke or a comic routine, we tend to feel more relaxed afterward. Nervous laughter serves a similar function, allowing the individual to discharge anxiety and relax a bit,” says clinical psychologist Joe Nowinski.

Studies also show that laughter activates the endorphin system in the brain, the same receptors that are activated when using drugs like heroin. It literally produces pain-numbing and mild euphoria effects.

Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, in his research, explained that laughter first appeared in our history to tell those around us that whatever made us laugh wasn’t a threat.

Think about the last time a friend tripped and hit the floor. Your first move was probably to laugh. Not because you’re cruel. But because your brain ran the math instantly: they’re moving, no blood, no broken bones.

This is also why, when a toddler takes a tumble and looks up with that wobbling lip, a parent’s instinct (after making sure they’re alright) is often to smile or laugh before the child has even decided how to react.

“Perhaps laughter serves a self-regulation function. That is, it is ordinarily associated with happiness and may help to down-regulate the nervousness. Or perhaps, laughter in combination with nervousness suggests to other people around the person that they too should help down-regulate that nervousness,” says Margaret Clark, professor of psychology at Yale University.

Some people also build a habit out of it. Every tense moment and awkward silence can be met with a chuckle. They’ve learned, usually without realizing it, to use humor as armor.

It’s called a defense mechanism — an unconscious strategy that helps us cope with anxiety, stress, and emotions that feel too large to sit with.

The cruel irony is that the more uncomfortable you feel, the more you laugh; the more you laugh, the more uncomfortable everyone else gets.

Many experts advise against suppressing this emotional response whenever possible. They believe that laughter, in general, helps calm us and signals submissiveness to those we are interacting with.

But when it becomes a cause of distress, experts say what helps is working on the underlying anxiety — the fuel — rather than the laugh itself. “People who feel that they suffer from frequent social anxiety can benefit from practicing strategies such as mindfulness meditation,” suggests psychologist Joe Nowinski.