Before I studied psychology, I used to think that people would laugh when funny things occurred. While I was right about that, I discovered there are lots of other psychological factors that make people laugh other than the funny part of a joke. When someone laughs at a joke, there will usually be more than one reason that makes him laugh—and the more reasons there are, the more powerful the joke will be.
I was attending a stand-up comedy show in Egypt, and when the man started to make fun of pedestrians crossing streets, everyone laughed their hearts out. The main reason those people strongly laughed was that almost all of them felt angry towards pedestrians who crossed streets carelessly. The joke wasn’t only funny, it also made the audience feel that they were right about being angry at those pedestrians. That is, people were laughing both because of the funny joke and because of the happiness experienced as a result of the psychological support they got.
The better a joke makes a person feel, and the more it includes other psychological factors, the more the person will like it. For example, if you envy one of your friends, and someone tells a joke that is funny and, at the same time, makes your friend seem stupid, then you will probably laugh at it louder than if you weren’t jealous of him.
In short, we don’t laugh only when we hear something funny; we also laugh when we experience some kind of happiness that results from the other psychological factors involved in the joke. I strongly discourage making fun of anyone or belittling someone to make someone else laugh. All I want to explain is that if your joke supports a person’s emotions, he will certainly like it a lot.
【小题1】What did the author find out after studying psychology?A．Only good jokes make people laughB．Many factors lead to people laughing.C．Funny things can make people laughD．Laughter can make people healthy.【小题2】Why did the audience laugh loud at the pedestrians?A．They played a trick on the pedestrians.B．The pedestrians behaved in a funny way.C．They could feel the pedestrians’ happiness.D．Their emotion was approved of by the show.【小题3】What does the underlined word “belittling” probably mean?A．AnnoyB．BlameC．Look down onD．Make up to【小题4】Which of the following best shows the structure of the passage?
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