German scientists reveal the best way to kill inappropriate laughter: don’t freeze your face — rethink the joke analytically to strip away its funniness. Suppressing giggles physically backfires, but mental reframing keeps your poker face intact even when others are cracking up.
According to the Daily Mail, scientists at the University of Göttingen (Germany) have studied how to keep a serious face if you suddenly find yourself in a situation where you feel like laughing, but you don’t want to.
The team warned that trying to stop people from showing their feelings by force can only make them want to laugh more. According to the study, not being able to keep a poker face can even “damage your reputation, ruin professional relationships, and make people disapprove of you.” “Poker face” is a term used in poker that means having a face that shows no emotion.
In a report on their work, the researchers wrote: “When it’s not okay to laugh, not being able to control it can lead to serious problems with other people or your reputation.”
They say that laughter is contagious and often happens without a person wanting it to. This makes it important for people to control their laughter.
How was the study conducted?
The team involved 121 people in three experiments. Participants listened to short jokes, while scientists used a special machine to record their muscle reactions when they smiled and laughed. You can’t see these signals with your naked eye.
During the experiments, the participants were asked to:a) stop laughing by looking at bright wallpaper;b) try not to show any emotions; andc) use a method called reappraisal, which is a way of thinking about jokes in a less funny way.
The analysis showed that hiding your emotions and finding other things to focus on are good ways to stop yourself from laughing.
At the same time, the scientists noted that not showing your emotions in social situations can increase your internal stress or discomfort. They also found that when someone else laughed in these situations, it was even harder to control their facial expressions.
“Another person’s laughter made it hard for the test subjects to control their own facial reactions,” the researchers wrote.
“When I heard someone else laughing, it was hard for me to stop laughing. This just shows how much our feelings depend on other people and how much we need other people to be around,” said Professor Anna Schacht, the main author of the study.
Her team found that the best way to stop inappropriate laughter is to change the situation. For example, if you think about why you find something funny, you can turn a joke into a puzzle that needs to be solved.