Hearing laughter: a prescription for anxiety relief

ABSTRACT

Anxiety can have adverse effects on cognition such as impairing test performance or restricting working memory. One way of reducing anxiety is through humor, and the present research investigated if the perception of laughter, which is often seen as a reaction to humor, could impact self-reported anxiety. Participants completed the STAI battery containing subscales for both state and trait anxiety before and after one of three manipulations: a laughter sounds rating task, a neutral sounds rating task, or a working memory span task. Results showed that perceiving laughter decreased both state and trait anxiety, taking a working memory test increased state anxiety, and perceiving neutral sounds had no effect on either type of anxiety. These findings are interpreted as evidence that the positive emotions induced by hearing laughter help to regulate anxiety by undoing arousal, even when negative emotions are not present.

KEYWORDS:

• Laughter
• humor
• state and trait anxiety
• working memory

Acknowledgements

This research was presented as a poster at the 64th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data are publicly accessible in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/rkx48/. The experiment was not preregistered.

Notes

1 The specific sounds used from the databases were: (a) Laughter: IADS-2#: 221 (MaleLaugh), 226 (Laughing), 230 (Giggling); IADS-E#: 1385 (BabyLaugh1), 1386 (BabyLaugh2); (b) Neutral: IADS-2#: 170 (Night), 171 (CountryNight), 225 (ClapGame), 250 (MaleSneeze), 252 (MaleSnore), 262 (Yawn), 270 (Whistling), 322 (TypeWriter), 358 (Writing), 373 (Paint), 374 (Sink), 375 (Polaroid), 376 (Lawnmower), 377 (Rain1), 382 (Shovel), 700 (Toilet), 701 (Fan), 705 (Phone2), 708 (Clock), 720 (BrushTeeth), 723 (Radio), 728 (Paper1); IADS-E#: 0363 (MountainStream2), 0960 (Dripping2), 1072 (Twisting).