Effect of Comedy Video Clip on Autonomic Response and Subjective Happiness of Thai Early Adults

Abstract

In order to understand the association between positive emotional state and autonomic response as our purpose, the changes in subjective emotional states and electrocardiogram (ECG) indicators elicited by comedy video clip viewing were investigated in 40 healthy participants, aged between 18 – 26 years (M = 22, SD = 2.6). All participants who had normal vision were assessed their autonomic nervous response by ECG measurements, including heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR), SpO₂ level and skin temperature (ST), and further invited to scale the intensity of their positive feelings by the subjective emotional experience measure after watching neutral and comedy video clips. The self-evaluation of participants was confirmed that our comedy video clip used in this study enabled to evoke their subjective happiness, especially amusement with the highest intensity difference between neutral and comedy video clips. The significant correlation between each positively emotional state elicited by video clip viewing was also observed under the subjective happiness. Although the differences of those total average values on HR, RR, SpO₂ and ST levels did not show apparently between neutral and comedy video clip activations, an increase of SpO₂ level and a decrease of ST level after watching video clips were obviously noted when compared with those levels during eye open event. The HR level was decelerated after watching comedy video clip whereas its increase was induced by neutral video clip. The apparent increase of RR level was occurred during 9 minute-time point sequence of comedy video clip viewing. Comedy-induced changes in respiratory rate were associated with positive emotions including joy, mirth, contentment and happiness whereas saturation of peripheral oxygen (SpO₂) showed a positive correlation with amused feeling. These results indicate that subjective happiness elicited by video clip induces advantage impact on autonomic nervous function.