Laughter

Laughter PDF Author: Robert R. Provine
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101659254
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Do men and women laugh at the same things? Is laughter contagious? Has anyone ever really died laughing? Is laughing good for your health? Drawing upon ten years of research into this most common-yet complex and often puzzling-human phenomenon, Dr. Robert Provine, the world's leading scientific expert on laughter, investigates such aspects of his subject as its evolution, its role in social relationships, its contagiousness, its neural mechanisms, and its health benefits. This is an erudite, wide-ranging, witty, and long-overdue exploration of a frequently surprising subject.

Laughter

Laughter PDF Author: Robert R. Provine
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101659254
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do men and women laugh at the same things? Is laughter contagious? Has anyone ever really died laughing? Is laughing good for your health? Drawing upon ten years of research into this most common-yet complex and often puzzling-human phenomenon, Dr. Robert Provine, the world's leading scientific expert on laughter, investigates such aspects of his subject as its evolution, its role in social relationships, its contagiousness, its neural mechanisms, and its health benefits. This is an erudite, wide-ranging, witty, and long-overdue exploration of a frequently surprising subject.

Experiments in Laughter

Experiments in Laughter PDF Author: Stephanie Rodriguez
Publisher: Xist Publishing
ISBN: 1532443633
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
What are the Chemical Components of a Good Joke? Finding the funny in science, Experiments in Laughter is part of the Illustrated Jokes series. Featuring 24 supremely silly jokes, this sly book gets kids reading, learning scientific concepts, and laughing all at the same time.

Laughter

Laughter PDF Author: Anca Parvulescu
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262514745
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.

Maoist Laughter

Maoist Laughter PDF Author: Ping Zhu
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888528017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
WINNER — 2020 Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title During the Mao years, laughter in China was serious business. Simultaneously an outlet for frustrations and grievances, a vehicle for socialist education, and an object of official study, laughter brought together the political, the personal, the aesthetic, the ethical, the affective, the physical, the aural, and the visual. The ten essays in Maoist Laughter convincingly demonstrate that the connection between laughter and political culture was far more complex than conventional conceptions of communist indoctrination can explain. Their sophisticated readings of a variety of genres—including dance, cartoon, children’s literature, comedy, regional oral performance, film, and fiction—uncover many nuanced innovations and experiments with laughter during what has been too often misinterpreted as an unrelentingly bleak period. In Mao’s China, laughter helped to regulate both political and popular culture and often served as an indicator of shifting values, alliances, and political campaigns. In exploring this phenomenon, Maoist Laughter is a significant correction to conventional depictions of socialist China. “Maoist Laughter brings together prominent scholars of contemporary China to make a timely and original contribution to the burgeoning field of Maoist literature and culture. One of its main strengths lies in the sheer number of genres covered, including dance, traditional Chinese performance, visual arts, film, and literature. The focus on humor in the Maoist period gives an exciting new perspective from which to understand cultural production in twentieth-century China.” —Krista Van Fleit, University of South Carolina “An illuminating study of the culture of laughter in the Maoist period. Focusing on much-neglected topics such as satire, jokes, and humor, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of how socialist culture actually ‘worked’ as a coherent, dynamic, and constructive life experience. The chapters show that traditional culture could almost blend perfectly with revolutionary mission.” —Xiaomei Chen, University of California, Davis

The Social Influence of Laughter

The Social Influence of Laughter PDF Author: Donna Jean Nelson Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Laughter
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description


Humor and Laughter

Humor and Laughter PDF Author: Hugh Foot
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351514202
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
Humor and laughter play a vital part in our everyday social encounters. This book is concerned with the exploration of the psychology of humor and laughter by the foremost professional researchers in these areas. It examines the major theoretical perspectives underlying current approaches and it draws together for the first time the main empirical work done over the course of this century. Peter Berks brings this story up to the moment.The two major parts of the book deal with perception of and responses to humor, and its uses in society at large. The chapters themselves range from cognitive aspects of humor development, through the functions of humor and laughter in social interaction, to the use of humor by comedians and by the mass media. One of the general features of the volume is the concern with the variety of techniques and research methods which are used in studies aimed at understanding our responsiveness to humor and the contexts in which we create it.Humor and Laughter contains chapters by psychologists with longstanding research interests in humor and laughter, including Thomas R. Shultz, Mary K. Rothbart, Goran Nerhardt, Michael Godkewitsch, Walter E. O'Connell, and Harvey Mindess. Humor and Laughter presents wide-ranging theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on an important area of human behavior and social interaction. This book should interest many behavioral scientists and practitioners, particularly those in social and clinical psychology, psychiatry, child psychology and education, sociology, and related disciplines.

The Humor Code

The Humor Code PDF Author: Peter McGraw
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451665423
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Part road-trip comedy and part social science experiment, a scientist and a journalist travel the globe to discover the secret behind what makes things funny, questioning countless experts, including Louis C.K., along the way.

Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived By the Patient

Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived By the Patient PDF Author: Norman Cousins
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393326840
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
The story of a recovery from a crippling disease and the physician patient partnership that beat the odds by using the patient's own capabilities.

Ha!

Ha! PDF Author: Scott Weems
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465080804
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
An entertaining tour of the science of humor and laughter Humor, like pornography, is famously difficult to define. We know it when we see it, but is there a way to figure out what we really find funny -- and why? In this fascinating investigation into the science of humor and laughter, cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems uncovers what's happening in our heads when we giggle, guffaw, or double over with laughter. While we typically think of humor in terms of jokes or comic timing, in Ha! Weems proposes a provocative new model. Humor arises from inner conflict in the brain, he argues, and is part of a larger desire to comprehend a complex world. Showing that the delight that comes with "getting" a punchline is closely related to the joy that accompanies the insight to solve a difficult problem, Weems explores why surprise is such an important element in humor, why computers are terrible at recognizing what's funny, and why it takes so long for a tragedy to become acceptable comedic fodder. From the role of insult jokes to the benefit of laughing for our immune system, Ha! reveals why humor is so idiosyncratic, and why how-to books alone will never help us become funnier people. Packed with the latest research, illuminating anecdotes, and even a few jokes, Ha! lifts the curtain on this most human of qualities. From the origins of humor in our brains to its life on the standup comedy circuit, this book offers a delightful tour of why humor is so important to our daily lives.

Test This Book!

Test This Book! PDF Author: Louie Zong
Publisher: Imprint
ISBN: 1250800609
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
A bear and a frog attempt to answer the age-old question "How do books work?" in this clever, interactive picture book from animator Louie Zong. Test This Book! features a bear scientist and a frog scientist testing how books work in a variety of exciting, dramatic experiments. What happens when readers sit on their books? Shake them? Whisper secrets to them? The results are funny, surprising, and very, very informative. This hilarious picture book is a great read-aloud experience, as readers are rewarded for physically interacting with the book. And they also learn a little about the scientific method—the basis of all STEM education. An Imprint Book