Laughter

Curiosity Journal #5

 

 

    For this journal I chose to attend the AWC cafeteria because it is easy to find groups of people and to see how they interact with other individuals. The group I chose to observe and take notes on were my friends from the AWC soccer team because we tend to try to be more social and we tell much more jokes than the average person.

I noticed that self-esteem seems to have a big influence not on how much someone laughs but the way they laugh. For instance, one teammate sitting directly in front of me was laughing with his hand over his mouth. Whether if he was eating or not the hand still kept getting raised to his face. After a few minutes of observing I noticed that his teeth weren't that straight and/or as white. I believe that this young adult had self-esteem issues with his teeth. That also made this person try to avoid laughing as well. Besides that the group seem to laugh a great amount. Each person contributing to the conversations with jokes of their own. There seemed to be a lot of hopping on the chairs if something was extremely funny. For example, I remember someone mentioned how they got lost going to a new class. The people at my table would react very different from the occasional “ha ha ha” laugh. They would stretch their mouths really wide as they either hopped or clapped their hands together fastly. It was always one person who would start the laughter and that would just continue till another person began talking and took the role of the comedian until it was time for the next. The group was involved with both males and females but I noticed that each gender seemed to laugh a bit more when it was of only that gender alone. For example, in the beginning as we sat down the table was of four males and two females. The jokes were funny as both genders would laugh the usual “ha ha ha” type of laugh, but when the females left then the jokes seemed to get more harsh and the laughter would increase. The males seemed to laugh much more when compared to the females.

I also took a walk to Starbucks as I observed the crowd there. I noticed there was a different crowd when compared to the people in the cafeteria. Starbucks seems to have more people who have recently graduated from high school. You can tell which school each group came from. There seems to be a lot of gossip and laughter comes from people making fun of others. Boys seem to make a lot of jokes to impress girls and make them laugh. Girls seem to laugh more when the boys have something to say, very flirtatious.

I think that laughter was a big key in this certain group. We depend on it very much, whether if it's just an icebreaker or to keep the conversations going. I also noticed that for many people it is just natural to always throw in jokes into any sentence that comes out of their mouth. In general, I do believe that laughter is a big part of how people interact, but another contribution to social interaction is how a person is. The reason I observed how my friend interacted and how he was self-conscious about his teeth shows that many people hold back and tend not to be as interactive and jokeful because of certain hold backs like having a low self-esteem. So it really depends how a person is. I do agree with the observations of provines research. Laughter is a universal language that everyone understands. Were born with the capacity to laugh.