Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

Today's post continues our recent tradition of excellent guest blogging: James Telesford (the author of this particular guest post) is an advanced graduate student in the social-personality psychology program at UC-Berkeley. This is James' first post on the blog. Enjoy!

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."

                                                                        -Kurt Vonnegut

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Potentially life altering events such as the dissolution of a long-term romantic relationship, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, moving to a new city (or just across town, for that matter), or any other such experiences are major causes of stress. Recent research in social and personality psychology has demonstrated that we can adopt several strategies to help us decrease the negative emotions surrounding these events (Gross and Thompson, 2007). Among the most adaptive responses to stressors is cognitive reappraisal. In other words, one way to decrease the stress of a negative event is to think about it in a different way, in order to consciously change the event’s meaning, and thereby, lesson its emotional impact.

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