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Why Laughter is Good for the Soul and Your Health

A recent review published last year in the journal Plos One found that spontaneous laughter leads to health benefits.

The article combined the results from eight separate studies to answer the question: Does spontaneous laughter reduce cortisol levels?

What is Cortisol?

Cortisol is an essential hormone that affects almost every organ and tissue in your body.

It’s produced by the adrenal glans and plays many important roles, including: maintaining blood pressure, supporting immune function, boosting metabolism, and helping you stay awake.

When you are under stress, your body produces more cortisol; therefore, it is a good measure of stress levels. Too much cortisol can lead to weight gain, digestive problems, muscle weakness, depression, and anxiety.

Universal Laughter and Deception

Laughter as Medicine

Since the 1970s, medical experts have learned that laughter can boost pain tolerance and improve overall well-being.

This recent meta-analysis identified eight studies in which participants were encouraged to laugh by watching a funny video, working with a laughter therapist, or participating in a self-administered laughter program.

Some of the studies measured participants’ cortisol levels before and after a laughter session and others included control groups, which measured cortisol levels of participants without laughter.

Combining the data, researchers found that cortisol levels fell by 31.9% for people who participated in laughter interventions — and even a single laughter session led to a 36.7% reduction in cortisol. It didn’t matter how long participants laughed; any laughter led to reductions in cortisol.

Their analysis concluded that “spontaneous laughter is associated with greater reduction in cortisol levels as compared with usual activities, suggesting laughter as a potential adjunctive medical therapy to improve well-being.”

Other Health Benefits of Laughter

universal laughter and deceptionThis recent review builds on previous research that has found that laughter can improve your overall health, well-being, and life satisfaction.

Here are few studies and benefits of laughter:

  • A 2018 review found that laughter and humor interventions appear to enhance well-being in older adults.
  • Laughter is also found to improve mental health and bolster personal development.
  • Evidence suggests that laughter helps improve cardiovascular health.
  • Laughter can decrease pain perception. One study found that laughter therapy reduced pain scores of people living with terminal cancer by nearly half.

The take-home message: Laughter is good medicine, and there is data to prove it. So do your best to find opportunities to laugh and giggle as often as possible.

The post Why Laughter is Good for the Soul and Your Health first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.

Lack of Facial Expressions May Reveal Severe Depression

Doctors may soon be able to diagnose a severe form of depression, known as melancholia, simply by looking at someone’s (lack of) facial expressions.

According to VeryWell Mind, melancholia is a form of major depressive disorder (MDD) that is characterized by a complete loss of pleasure in all or almost everything.

In addition, research has found that people with melancholic depression have a higher risk for unemployment, psychotic features, inpatient treatment, and suicide risk than people with non-melancholic depression

It is estimated by researchers that about 5-10% of people who are depressed have melancholia – which could represent as many as 2 million Americans.

Depression and Facial Expression Study

The study entitled “Markers of positive affect and brain state synchrony discriminate melancholic from non-melancholic depression using naturalistic stimuli” was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Author Dr. Philip Mosley and colleagues showed 70 depressed people, 30 of whom had melancholia and 40 of whom did not, two different videos.

  • Video 1 was a clip from Ricky Gervais‘ stand up comedy set ‘Animals,’ which involved funny skits about nature documentaries.
  • Video 2 was a short film called The Butterfly Circus, which features a moving story about a circus troupe inspiring hope in Depression-era America.

While the patients watched the videos, their facial and brain activity was recorded, the former with a camera to track every minute muscle twitch during the Gervais set, the latter with the patient in an MRI machine while watching The Butterfly Circus.

Depression Study Results

The difference between the two patient sets was stark. For the Gervais video, although the patients with non-melancholic depression were still depressed, they did respond with facial expressions and giggles.

Meanwhile, the patients with melancholic depression were completely impassive. Mosley describes them like “statues” with “no facial movement at all, no smiling, no chuckling.”

Severe 'Melancholia' Depression Could Be Diagnosed by Facial Expression

Something similar happened in the MRI machine. The brains of patients with non-melancholic depression lit up, particularly in the cerebellum, which is involved with automatic emotional responses.

“With people with melancholic depression,” Mosley said, “those emotional regions of the brain – the ones involved in detecting and responding to stimuli with an emotional tone – were just doing their own thing, disconnected, not integrated with the rest of the brain, not involved in processing with other regions of the brain that are relevant in these tasks.”

Depression Study Implications

This study’s discovery could help doctors differentiate between melancholia and regular depression earlier. While melancholia is a more severe condition, it’s still treatable.

Dr. Mosley suggests these patients don’t tend to respond well to traditional talk therapy, so diagnosing them early could also help establish a more tailored treatment plan for them.

If a person with the condition is diagnosed early, most respond very well to medications, which work to balance the chemistry of the brain. And quicker treatment can help them avoid the most invasive therapies that may be required if the condition has progressed.

The post Lack of Facial Expressions May Reveal Severe Depression first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.

To Be A Better Negotiator, Show More Facial Expressions

Listen to Dr. Matsumoto on Negotiate Anything Podcast

You may think that in a tough negotiation you need a good poker face, but recent research suggests that being pleasant and facially expressive could actually yield you better results.

Researchers out of Nottingham University in the UK collected data from over 1500 conversations while paying close attention to movements in the face like smiles, eyebrow raises, and nose wrinkles.

Their paper was published in Nature and is entitled “Being facially expressive is socially advantageous”.

They found that people who displayed more facial expressions were seen as more likable and socially successful.

Lead researcher Dr. Bridget Waller said this could explain why humans have more complex facial expressions than any other species.

Negotiation Study Methodology

In Study 1, the researchers recorded semi-structured video calls with 52 participants interacting with a confederate across various everyday contexts.

The researchers showed recorded clips of conversations to more than 170 people and asked them to rate how “readable” (in terms of emotions and expressions) and likable the subjects were in the videos.

In Study 2, they examined video calls of 1315 participants engaging in unscripted Zoom chats.

Facial expressivity indices were extracted using automated Facial Action Coding Scheme (FACS) analysis and measures of personality and partner impressions were obtained by self-report.

Negotiation Study Results

interview-office-meeting-greeting-hand-shakeIn Study 1, more facially expressive participants were more well-liked, agreeable, and successful at negotiating (if also more agreeable).

Participants who were more facially competent, readable, and perceived as readable were also more well-liked.

In Study 2, they replicated the findings that facial expressivity was associated with agreeableness and liking by their social partner, and additionally found it to be associated with extraversion and neuroticism.

These characteristics are part of the five most significant personality dimensions (the Big Five) identified by psychologists, which enable them to characterize personality differences between individuals in a comprehensive way:

  • Openness: willingness to adopt new ideas, experiences and values
  • Conscientiousness: dependability, punctuality, ambitiousness and discipline
  • Extraversion: sociability, assertiveness, adventurousness, dynamism and friendliness
  • Agreeableness: willingness to trust others, good natured, outgoing, obliging, helpful
  • Neuroticism (Emotional stability): self-confidence, equanimity, positivity, self-control

According to the study’s abstract, “these findings suggest that facial behavior is a stable individual difference that proffers social advantages, pointing towards an affiliative, adaptive function”.

Study Implications

This is the first large-scale study to examine facial expression in real-world interactions and researchers say it suggests that more expressive people are more successful at attracting social partners and in building relationships.

The work is part of a project known as Facediff (Individual differences in facial expressivity: Social function, facial anatomy and evolutionary origin), which is funded by the European Research Council.

Detecting Deception in Negotiation

Detecting Deception in Negotiation

Negotiations Ninja featured Humintell’s own Dr. David Matsumoto on their podcast to discuss detecting deception in negotiation!

During the episode Dr. Matsumoto shares his insights on how to read facial expressions, emotions, and intent. For those in negotiation, it’s sometimes difficult to understand what a person is actually feeling or thinking when they’re engaging face-to-face.

Dr. Matsumoto shares the research on less obvious facial expressions a procurement professional may encounter along the way. He’s sharing research into micro-expressions including what they are, what they reveal about the person, and how they communicate with the brain.

This is a fascinating conversation about everything from discipline in judo, to the way our approximately 23 facial muscles work, to his number one tip for professionals – active observation.

The post To Be A Better Negotiator, Show More Facial Expressions first appeared on Humintell.