Sunday 11 April 2010

Laughter stalk ?

While walking on the railway platform alongside a lady.. suddenly a piece of mysterious flying roti comes and lands on top of her purse, the lady turns to see what came on her back.. and shockingly saw a piece of roti atop her purse...both she and I looked on top to search for the source, couldn't spot it tough.. ( may have been creativity of some spooky crows ;) , who sit on rooftop and at times shower their stool for free to the passerbys beneath ;) ) ...

looking at the sudden fall of the flying roti from nowhere onto the top of this lady's purse and her face expression of that sudden anonymous fall made me fall into peals of laughter..

Suddenly I realised why do we laugh..the situation was funny but it had actually put that lady in some sudden shock and embarassment.. Funny it was for the observer but embarrassing to the one who experienced it..

Confused still, I came and put search on internet of why do we laugh and I hit upon this site.
It says why we laugh can be categorized into three theories viz :
- incongruity theory humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't usually go together.
- superiority theory we laugh when we see somebody else doing something stupid or having some kind of misfortune and we feel superior to this person
- relief theory holds that laughter occurs when tension breaks without anything serious happening.
I could have categorised my laugh on Superiority theory.. but still would not know why I will laugh on some one's misfortune cause that would not have been my intention to show her my superiority.. or was it that it's so hard wired in us that it comes out as reflex action ..

So that next time you laugh you can categorise your laughter based on the laughter theories ...anyway Happy laughing and enjoy...;)

6 comments:

JD said...

Ha ha ha ... LoL ... though i've never thought of why we laugh ....

Rushabh said...

wow...incredible!

Anonymous said...

I think it would have made me laugh too. I like to laugh at absurd situations and even dark one. I guess I can be a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Ravish Sehgal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ravish Sehgal said...

nice theories behind laughing

Ravish Sehgal said...

thats why we laugh in class when someone gets a slap from teacher