Aplique as estratégias da postagem anterior e comente seu desenpenho
Ticklish Mysteries
What Is Tickling? Why Does It Make People Laugh? Why Do Adults Say They Don't Like It?
Ever wonder why people are ticklish? If so, you're in not alone—great writers and thinkers, including Aristotle, Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin have pondered the subject. But they were not able to answer the question. In fact, so far, no one has—but that’s not to say people aren’t studying it. While there’s not a lot that’s definitively known about tickling, there’s more research on the subject than I’d expected.
Defining tickling
Tickle researchers (yes, there are people who do this for a living!) separate tickling into two distinct categories:
- Gargalesis is the kind of tickling that makes you laugh and squirm (Let’s call this laughter-associated tickling.)
- Knismesis is the kind of tickling you experience when you run your fingernails or a feather lightly over your skin—or, as a creepier example, imagine the feeling of a spider crawling up your leg. It’s probably not something that would make you laugh. (We’ll call this light-touch tickling.)
Researchers also note that the laughter that comes with tickling seems to be different than the laughter that comes from watching a funny movie. For example, there’s a “warm up” effect with humorous laughter—if you hear several jokes in a row, the later ones may seem funnier than the first because the first jokes got you warmed up. The same is not true with ticklish laughter. One study found that people didn’t laugh harder when being tickled after watching a funny movie than people who had not watched the movie. One prominent tickle researcher, Christine Harris, Ph.D., compared this idea to the fact that crying from cutting an onion and crying at a funeral are very different states.
Why can't you tickle yourself?
Once again, there is no convincing, scientific data on this subject. But, one idea is that, like the startle reflex, laughter-associated tickling requires that you not know it’s coming. Some studies back this up by showing that people laugh more when they are blindfolded and don’t know where or when they’ll be tickled. If you try to tickle yourself, you’ll know where and when it’s going to happen and that might “cancel out” the tickle you’d ordinarily feel.
There could be advantages to not being able to tickle yourself. For example, I wouldn’t want to involuntarily start laughing during a meeting with my boss just because I’d scratched my stomach!
Is being tickled fun?
A final mystery about tickling is why we laugh even though most adults say that they don’t like to be tickled—and some people hate it. Kids, on the other hand, seem to enjoy it more than adults, as long as it doesn’t go on too long. It’s as if being tickled is pleasurable when we’re young but something we grow out of as we age. Whether that’s true or not is just one more mystery about ticklishness.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário