User:Galenmcneil/sandbox

Emotional Expression of Amusement
The origin of the study of emotional expression is often attributed to Charles Darwin. In 1872, Darwin published his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in which he extensively describes his observations of how people and animals display emotions on their faces and through sound. Darwin comments on amusement as an emotion of great joy during which a person is likely to laugh. He also notes that across all peoples humans can laugh until they are panting and tears roll down their cheeks. In the 1960s, Paul Ekman, an American Psychologist, revived the study of emotional expression proposing, like Darwin, that emotions were universally recognizable. His early work focused on six basic emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust and surprise. By the 1990s, he had expanded this list to include several additional emotions, one of which was amusement. Displays of amusement have been distinguished from related emotions like embarrassment and shame. More recent studies have confirmed that laughter is a distinct signal of amusement and is recognizable across cultures.

Facial Expression
An amused facial expression typically has these characteristics :
 * Head: Thrown back with jaw lifted
 * Eyes: Crow's feet at the eyes indicating that the muscles have tightened
 * Mouth: Open, jaw dropped with relaxed muscles

Vocal Burst
The expression of amusement is usually accompanied by genuine laughter. The experience of laughter changes our breathing patten and often causes all our muscles to relax.

Cultural Considerations
As a positive, high arousal emotion, amusement falls in the same category as excitement and exhilaration. These emotions are highly valued in American culture where positive feelings that high in energy are seen as ideal. In contrast, East Asian cultures value positive, low arousal emotions such as contentment, calm and peacefulness.

Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation is the term for how people attempt to influence - increasing, decreasing, maintaining or changing - how, when and where they experience emotion. Through changing how they think about a target of amusement, like a funny video clip, people are able to increase and decrease how much amusement they feel, express in smiles and laughs and experience in their bodies (e.g. increased heart rate and respiration). Choosing to increase or prolong experiences of positive emotion is one way in which people can learn to cope when faced with challenges and develop resilience.

Resilience
As a positive emotion, amusement contributes to the development of resilience in both children and adults. Positive emotions help people build social resources that foster their ability to cope during hard times. Increases in resilience lead to higher life satisfaction and general happiness. Studies of positive emotion typically include measures of amusement, but do not assess for its unique impact by differentiating between the effects of discrete positive emotions like gratitude, love and compassion.

Laughter Therapy
Rapidly growing in popularity, laughter therapy, or humor therapy, focuses on promoting laughter as a therapeutic tool. Usually implemented in a group, laughter therapy uses a variety of gag jokes like red noses and magic tricks to encourage laughter - fake or real. Laughter causes the bodies' muscles to relax which increases blood flow and oxygen intake. Proposed benefits include: Stress management, relaxation, improved mental functions, improved digestion and pain relief. Some suggest that laughter activates similar brain wave frequencies as a meditative state. However, scientific studies of these benefits are limited and have methodological issues.