It doesn’t happen often to me but every once in a while something will be so funny that I will laugh until I am rolling around with side splitting hilarity.. and then I feel so great afterwards.

Laughter has a lot to do with human relationships. We laugh to put people at ease, to show approval, to flirt, to contribute to the energy of an event or a moment, to tell people we are not dangerous, to show we ‘get it’. We often laugh out of nervousness.

On April Fools’ Day, Cindy Gendrich’s students may have an advantage when planning practical jokes.

In the theater professor’s first-year seminar, “Why Do People Laugh?” they have serious discussions about what causes giggles and guffaws.

Practical jokes are not a guaranteed way to generate laughter, Gendrich said. “Lots of theorists have observed that compassion is the enemy of humor—from the Greeks to Henri Bergson. April Fools’ Day jokes fall into the same category as watching an episode of the TV show ‘Wipeout.’ Most of us stop laughing if someone gets hurt,” she said. “The question my students grapple with is how we are sometimes able to turn our compassion buttons to ‘mute’.” [continue reading…]