Do not torture, let go: Why tickling is not so harmless
Text: Olga Lukinskaya
Tickling at first glance seems something a priori pleasant.because it’s easy to cross the line between laughter and tears. Although it is associated with fun and good mood, many people recall tickling as a childhood nightmare. Adults often do not think that children's laughter does not necessarily talk about joy and pleasure and can only be a reflex. We tried to figure out what scientists think about it.
Charles Darwin, who came to the conclusion that she was connected with humor, studied tickling. Indeed, we react to funny jokes and tickling in a similar way: we smile, we laugh or giggle, a blush appears on our face, the hairs on the skin rise, there may even be tears. The opinion was expressed that both humor and tickling create some kind of tension, which is permitted by a fit of laughter. In the end, would a person laugh if tickling did not improve his mood? Almost two hundred years after Darwin's publications, scientists seriously tackled the analysis of tickling in laboratories and refuted the opinion of the famous evolutionist.
It is known that a person who has already been laughed at, is in high spirits and reacts better to subsequent funny stories. If humor and tickling are interconnected, then the “warm-up” reception, which is used at concerts when the best jokes are reserved for later, should work for them. Scientists at the University of California decided to check whether this is so. Seventy-two participants were included in the study and divided them into three groups: some were tickled after watching a comedy program, others were shown after tickling, while others were shown an unfunny video first and then tickled. How ridiculous the videos were and how intense the tickling was, participants rated on a scale from zero to seven.
What turned out? "Warming up" did not work. Tickling did not make the subsequent jokes funnier, but humor did not increase the feeling of tickling. And although the participants laughed while tickling, the feelings, they said, were rather unpleasant - and one even called them torture. Yes, tickling and humor cause the same external reactions, but people are happy to watch comedies and listen to jokes, but tickling is perceived as a negative experience. The researchers concluded that laughter as a reaction to tickling and humor is caused by different mechanisms.
Due to the fact that laughter is primarily a social phenomenon, and a person cannot tickle himself, it was believed that the reaction to tickling is a tribute to society, the subconscious disguise of sensations felt as pleasant. But in the experiments where the participants were tickled by the robot, they also laughed. It turns out that laughter when tickling occurs reflexively and only outwardly similar to the reaction to humor.
People are happy to watch comedies and listen to jokes, but tickling is perceived as a negative experience.
Why do you need it? It is believed that tickling is a process that simulates an attack and teaches defense against an aggressor. The most vulnerable parts of the body are usually sensitive to tickling, and the parent tickling the child actually teaches him to defend himself: push away, change his own position, press his hands to the ribs, protecting the armpits or sides. The resulting reflex laughter seems to indicate that the attack is not real, that all this is a game.
If tickling is a kind of attack, then an explanation of why a person is not able to tickle himself looks logical. This is because the element of surprise is lost; the cerebellum, receiving the corresponding nerve impulses, "teaches" the cerebral cortex to ignore touching the skin, that is, not to react to them with laughter or withdrawal. In this case, the brain knows that there is no external aggressor, and simply filters the extra information, not allowing it to form a tickling sensation.
In this tickling is not an unequivocal evil. She can help parents and children form affection: the light touch of a mom or dad makes a child laugh, which in turn makes the parents smile. After a while, in order to make the baby laugh, it is enough to make a characteristic movement with your fingers, without even touching. The most important thing is not to abuse tickling and not to provoke discomfort.
It is very important to stop on time. Often, requests to stop are not taken seriously by adults. "Well, you, I just tickle you" - senior responds to children's cries and attempts to push away. Remember that tickling is an invasion of personal space, and the invasion is painful. In the history of many examples of using tickling as a real torture, but despite this, it continues to be considered something frivolous. Shouts of “enough” and attempts to dodge are not a joke, but protection from invasion.
It is worth mentioning the tickling and in the context of abusa and sexual abuse. More than half of the abusers are not strangers, but people close to the child and his family. Tickling for them in many cases becomes one of the first "checks" of the reaction, when the exporter observes whether the child will complain to the parents; Often this does not happen, or the parents say: "It's okay, he just plays with you." It is best to establish a rule in the family that prohibits strangers from tickling children and strictly observing it. It is important from an early age to tell children about their body and permissible boundaries, encouraging the rule "no means no."
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