Sophie Scott

It has a slower lag than adrenaline, which works really quickly.

So it works much more slowly, cortisol.

But you find cortisol levels drop off when people have been laughing.

So you're feeling less stressed, you're feeling more relaxed.

There does seem to be.

So this has been studied less about laughter, but more about jokes.

But of course, the jokes are an attempt to get laughter going.

What you find in high stress professions, like the police or the fire service or medics or nurses, you tend to find that there are professional jokes, things around which people joke.

So in the UK...

Apparently, one of the things that the police laugh about in the UK is the fire service.

They make jokes about the fire service and presumably vice versa.

And they also will make jokes about the things that they have to deal with, which can make their humor seem very dark.

But actually, I think that's doing several things all at once.

So it's giving people a reason to laugh together.

You're doing a high stress job in a team.

You're going to improve your sense of bonding by getting a chance to laugh together.

You are...

going to be able to deal with some of the stressful things you have to deal with by expressly laughing at it.

You are going to feel better together by laughing at things.

You are keeping other people out.