Whether overheard in a crowded restaurant, punctuating the enthusiastic chatter of friends, or as the noisy guffaws on a TV laugh track, laughter is a fundamental part of everyday life. It is so common that we forget how strange -- and important -- it is. Indeed, laughter is a "speaking in tongues" in which we're moved not by religious fervor but by an unconscious response to social and linguistic cues. Stripped of its variation and nuance, laughter is a regular series of short vowel-like syllables usually transcribed as "ha-ha," "ho-ho" or "hee-hee." These syllables are part of the universal human vocabulary, produced and recognized by people of all cultures. Given the universality of the sound, our ignorance about the purpose and meaning of laughter is remarkable. We somehow laugh at just the right times, without consciously knowing why we do it. Most people think of laughter as a simple response to comedy, or a cathartic mood-lifter. Instead, after 10 years of research on this little-studied topic, I concluded that laughter is primarily a social vocalization that binds people together. It is a hidden language that we all speak. It is not a learned group reaction but an instinctive behavior programmed by our genes. Laughter bonds us through humor and play. Nothing to joke about
Despite its prominence in daily life, there is little research on how and why we laugh. I thought it was high time that we actually observed laughing people and described when they did it and what it meant. Research on laughter has led me out of my windowless laboratories into a more exciting social world of laughing gas, religious revivals, acting classes, tickle wars, baby chimpanzees and a search for the most ancient joke.
As a starting point, three undergraduate students and I observed 1,200 people laughing spontaneously in their natural environments, from the student union to city sidewalks. Whenever we heard laughter, we noted the gender of the speaker (the person talking immediately before laughter occurred) and the audience (those listening to the speaker), whether the speaker or the audience laughed, and what the speaker said immediately before the laughter.
While we usually think of laughter as coming from an audience after a wisecrack from a single speaker, contrary to expectation, the speakers we observed laughed almost 50% more than their audiences. The study also showed that banal comments like, "Where have you been?" or "It was nice meeting you, too" -- hardly knee-slappers -- are far more likely to precede laughter than jokes. Only 10% to 20% of the laughter episodes we witnessed followed anything joke-like. Even the most humorous of the 1,200 comments that preceded laughter weren't necessarily howlers: "You don't have to drink, just buy us drinks!" and "Was that before or after I took my clothes off?." being two of my favorites. This suggests that the critical stimulus for laughter is another person, not a joke.Students in my classes confirmed the social nature of laughter by recording the circumstances of their laughter in diaries. After excluding the vicarious social effects of media (television, radio, books, etc.), its social nature was striking: Laughter was 30 times more frequent in social than solitary situations. The students were much more likely to talk to themselves or even smile when alone than to laugh. However happy we may feel, laughter is a signal we send to others and it virtually disappears when we lack an audience.
Laughter is also extremely difficult to control consciously. Try asking a friend to laugh, for example. Most will announce, "I can't laugh on command," or some similar statement. Your friends' observations are accurate -- their efforts to laugh on command will be forced or futile. It will take them many seconds to produce a laugh, if they can do it at all. This suggests that we cannot deliberately activate the brain's mechanisms for affective expression. Playfulness, being in a group, and positive emotional tone mark the social settings of most laughs.
Giggly girls, explained
Whether overheard in a crowded restaurant, punctuating the enthusiastic chatter of friends, or as the noisy guffaws on a TV laugh track, laughter is a fundamental part of everyday life. It is so common that we forget how strange -- and important -- it is. Indeed, laughter is a "speaking in tongues" in which we're moved not by religious fervor but by an unconscious response to social and linguistic cues. Stripped of its variation and nuance, laughter is a regular series of short vowel-like syllables usually transcribed as "ha-ha," "ho-ho" or "hee-hee." These syllables are part of the universal human vocabulary, produced and recognized by people of all cultures.
Given the universality of the sound, our ignorance about the purpose and meaning of laughter is remarkable. We somehow laugh at just the right times, without consciously knowing why we do it. Most people think of laughter as a simple response to comed