Personal evaluations, laughter, and affective judgments.

Fifty-six subjects read positive or negative evaluations of their personality made by a bogus same-sex peer and then rated their immediate feelings. A second group of 22 subjects rated their feelings after reading the evaluations of a third person. It was found that personal evaluations evoked more spontaneous laughter than did the evaluation of a third person (p less than .001). Inclusion of the factor of laughter in the experimental design disclosed that subjects who laughed felt more pleasant than those who did not laugh (p less than .008) and that laughter was associated with affective state only in the negative evaluation condition (p less than .003).. Also, positive evaluations made the subjects feel good, and negative ones made them feel bad (p less than .001). Results seemed to suggest that extreme affective arousal engenders laughter which, in turn, alters the judgments of one's affective state.