How does your brain react when people laugh at you?

"Imagine that someone called you useless useless person." So begins a report on a study conducted recently. Of course, hardly anyone will want to do it, but for the sake of experiment it is possible to imagine. Scientists from the UK and the Netherlands continue: "Now imagine that several people become witnesses and start laughing at you." These scientists wanted to know what is happening at this moment with your brain, that is, not only when you are being insulted, but when there are people around you who laugh at you.

Essence of the experiment

Psychologist and writer Christian Jarrett explains how this experiment was prepared: "Marte Otten and her colleagues asked 46 participants to read sixty insults and the same compliments that were shown on the screen, one word at a time. Half of the insults (for example, "You are unsociable and annoying") and compliments (for example, "You are strong and independent") had the outlines of the crowd shown at the bottom edge of the screen, and in such cases, immediately after the compliment or insult, the phrase "and they believe so The same "with the sound of laughter, which lasted for two seconds. Throughout the experiment, scientists recorded brain waves of participants with the help of an EEG (electroencephalogram). "

What are the results?

The brains of the participants showed much more impressive signs of emotional treatment after insults than after compliments. More specifically, the researchers looked for evidence of what is known as a "late positive potential," which Jarrett described as "a positive surge in brain activity that occurs between 30 milliseconds and 1 second after the stimulus." And when the insult was accompanied by the laughter of the crowd, this emotional treatment was much stronger and lasted much longer than when participants simply heard insults.

Reaction to the negative

You hear a compliment and move on. But the insult penetrates into your brain, and you think over its meaning for much longer than you reflect on the kind words in your address. And research shows that this effect is even stronger when the insult is accompanied by the laughter of the crowd. This can be seen as a neurological example of the "deviation in the negative," that is, the theory that the negative tends to cause a more extensive response in people than positive. If you ever received a positive evaluation for your work from almost all sides, but still fixed on individual manifestations of criticism, you already felt it on yourself. In other words, the brain works much more actively to process insults than to process compliments.