Laugh and the world laughs with you. Even better, you might live longer, a Norwegian researcher reports.
Adults who have a sense of humor outlive those who don't find life funny, and the survival edge is particularly large for people with cancer, says Sven Svebak of the medical school at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
He released his study of about 54,000 Norwegians, tracked for seven years, at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting.
At the start, patients filled out questionnaires on how easily they found humor in real-life situations and how important a humorous perspective was.
The greater a role humor played in their lives, the greater their chances of surviving the seven years, Svebak says. Adults who scored in the top one-quarter for humor appreciation were 35% more likely to be alive than those in the bottom quarter, he says.
In a subgroup of 2,015 who had a cancer diagnosis at the start, a great sense of humor cut someone's chances of death by about 70% compared with adults with a poor sense of humor, Svebak says.
笑一笑,世界與你同笑。但據挪威研究人員稱,笑的功效甚至不止于此,笑還可以延年益壽。
挪威科技大學醫學院的斯文·斯維白克說,有幽默感的成年人比認為生活無趣的人壽命長,這一點在癌癥患者身上尤為明顯。
斯文對約54000個挪威人進行了長達七年的跟蹤調查,他在美國身心研究學會召開的一個會議上公布了這一調查結果。
研究人員先讓病人們填寫調查問卷,其中包括在現實生活中發現幽默的容易程度以及幽默視角的重要性等問題。
斯維白克說,病人的幽默感越強,他在七年之內活下來的可能性越大。幽默感得分位居前四分之一的病人生存下來的幾率比排在后四分之一的病人高35%。
據斯維白克介紹,對一個共有2015名癌癥病人的小組的研究表明,幽默感較強的人死亡的幾率比沒什么幽默感的人低70%左右。