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Laughter: A Scientific Investigation
Abstract
Laughter:. Scientific Investigation. By Robert R. Provine. 2000. New York: Viking. $24.95 (cloth).
... Some research has found that increased permissiveness toward deontological violations in moral judgments stem from the specific properties of humor rather than from general positive affect, such as elevation, suggesting that humor may cause people to condone indiscriminate moral behavior (Strohminger et al., 2011). Furthermore, evolutionary theories suggest that humor is triggered by a false alarm (Ramachandran, 1998) and that the laughter aroused by humor is often associated with harmless attacks, such as tickling and roughhousing (Rich, 2001;Gervais and Wilson, 2005). Humor may cause a seemingly important situation to be reinterpreted as unimportant (Rilling and Sanfey, 2011) or as a benign violation (McGraw and Warren, 2010;McGraw et al., 2013). ...
Human decision-making behaviors in social contexts are largely driven by fairness considerations. The dual-process model suggests that in addition to cognitive processes, emotion contributes to economic decision-making. Although humor, as an effective emotional regulation strategy to induce positive emotion, may influence an individual’s emotional state and decision-making behavior, previous studies have not examined how humor modulates fairness-related responses in the gain and loss contexts simultaneously. This study uses the Ultimatum Game (UG) in gain and loss contexts to explore this issue. The results show, in the gain context, viewing humorous pictures compared to humorless pictures increased acceptance rates and this effect was moderated by the offer size. However, we did not find the same effect in the loss context. These findings indicate that humor’s affection for fairness considerations may depend on the context and provide insight into the finite power of humor in human sociality, cooperation and norm compliance.
... Colaughter was defined as the simultaneous vocal production (intensity onsets within 1 s), in two speakers, of a nonverbal, egressive, burst series (or single burst), either voiced (periodic) or unvoiced (aperiodic). Laughter is acoustically variable, but often stereotyped in form, characterized typically by an initial alerting component, a stable vowel configuration, and a decay function (2,13,14). ...
Laughter is a nonverbal vocal expression that often communicates positive affect and cooperative intent in humans. Temporally coincident laughter occurring within groups is a potentially rich cue of affiliation to overhearers. We examined listeners’ judgments of affiliation based on brief, decontextualized instances of colaughter between either established friends or recently acquainted strangers. In a sample of 966 participants from 24 societies, people reliably distinguished friends from strangers with an accuracy of 53–67%. Acoustic analyses of the individual laughter segments revealed that, across cultures, listeners’ judgments were consistently predicted by voicing dynamics, suggesting perceptual sensitivity to emotionally triggered spontaneous production. Colaughter affords rapid and accurate appraisals of affiliation that transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and may constitute a universal means of signaling cooperative relationships.
Background
People with functional neurological disorder (FND) have abnormalities in sensory processing. Loss of ticklishness has been rarely reported.
Objectives
To describe associated clinical features in people with FND and loss of ticklishness and explore correlations with sensory changes.
Methods
Retrospective audit of clinical letters of people diagnosed with FND in a tertiary clinic and further cases identified in a general neurology clinic.
Results
Thirty‐eight patients with loss of ticklishness are described, of which most had other functional sensory symptoms and signs. It was more often localized to one limb, rather than generalized, in those with pain or weakness. Dissociation for the affected body part was often described.
Conclusions
Loss of ticklishness in FND is frequently described and offers insights into mechanisms of agency, sensory processing and interoception, which are known to be altered in FND.
Laughter is a nonverbal vocal expression that often communicates positive affect and cooperative intent in humans. Temporally coincident laughter occurringwithin groups is a potentially rich cue of affiliation to
overhearers. We examined listeners’ judgments of affiliation based on brief, decontextualized instances of colaughter between either established friends or recently acquainted strangers. In a sample of 966
participants from 24 societies, people reliably distinguished friends from strangers with an accuracy of 53–67%. Acoustic analyses of the individual laughter segments revealed that, across cultures, listeners’
judgments were consistently predicted by voicing dynamics, suggesting perceptual sensitivity to emotionally triggered spontaneous production. Colaughter affords rapid and accurate appraisals of
affiliation that transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and may constitute a universal means of signaling cooperative relationships.
Background. Collective efficacy, a group’s shared belief about its conjoint capability to act efficiently in pursuit of a common interest, has been associated with increased collective performance and various forms of individual and collective wellbeing. However, the evidence regarding the capacity of interventions to increase collective efficacy levels has not been systematically assessed.
Objectives. To conduct a systematic review on the effectiveness of interventions to increase collective efficacy levels. Secondary objectives were to explore the content components of effective interventions and to identify variations in outcomes according to different populations and research methods.
Data sources. Electronic searches were conducted on 11 databases, grey literature was searched in OpenGrey and Google, and reference lists were examined.
Eligibility criteria. A scoping exercise was conducted prior to the full systematic review; the included studies reported the effectiveness of interventions on any type of collective efficacy as determined by a quantitative measure. These preliminary included studies were then re-assessed and included in the review synthesis when the collective efficacy was related to health or wellbeing goals and the study followed an experimental, quasi-experimental or before-after design.
Study appraisal. Risk of bias was examined with the EPHPP Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies. Risk of reporting bias, contamination, and issues regarding clustering effects and intention-to-treat analyses were also assessed.
Synthesis methods. Findings were narratively synthesised following pertinent guidelines and supported by the use of a system of levels of evidence based on significance tests and the EPHPP quality assessments.
Results. A total of 1,412 unduplicated records were identified, of which 56 met the scoping criteria and 10 met the synthesis criteria. An overall positive pattern of effectiveness was observed. Within the synthesis categories, no conclusive evidence was found for interventions addressing neighbourhood, female sex workers, or family collective efficacy, but moderate positive evidence was found for interventions addressing adolescent collective efficacy. Moderate positive evidence was also observed for studies analysed at the individual level, contrasting with the weak positive evidence for studies analysed at the group level.
Limitations. The selection, extraction, and assessment of studies were only performed by the review author. Standardised effect sizes and confidence intervals were unavailable for the majority of estimates. The construct validity of the collective efficacy measures used across studies could not be verified.
Conclusions. Although the available evidence did not allow for a confident quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of interventions to increase collective efficacy levels, an overall positive pattern of effectiveness was identified. Moreover, the review highlights that the most consistent evidence concerns positive changes on adolescent collective efficacy.
Implications. Additional research on particular interventions and/or components is needed in order to make further generalisations and recommendations. There is a need for a systematic review and cross-validation study on collective efficacy measures. Future evaluations should attempt to follow randomised controlled designs, as well as conduct rigorous observational community-level studies.
The Baby Laughter Project (http://babylaughter.net) is a research program in developmental psychology that uses online surveys and parent submitted videos to study baby laughter. We discuss how infant laughter has been neglected in the study of both humour and of developmental psychology. We describe our surveys and research methodology, together with some of the questions we hope they can address. Some preliminary results are presented together with illustrative comments from parents who took part. These results show that the topics of infant laughter tracks other cognitive developments, that it is an important form of communication and bond between parent and child and a marker of social and emotional engagement. We conclude by suggesting that the highly important role of laughter in early development has until now been underestimated.
The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as envisioned by Edmund Husserl. I consider the possibility of a phenomenological and scientific investigation of laughter as a point of connection that might in the future bridge the gap Husserl feared had grown too expansive between the worlds of science and philosophy. Part I will describe some implications of the discovery of mirror neurons. Part II will address Husserl’s concept of embodiment as it relates to neuroscience and empathy. Part III will be a primer to investigating laughter phenomenologically. Part IV will be a continuation of the study of laughter and empathy as possible elements helpful in broadening the scope of what Husserl calls the Life-World.
Social play, a widespread phenomenon in mammals, is a multifunctional behavior, which can have many different roles according to species, sex, age, relationship quality between playmates, group membership, context, and habitat. Play joins and cuts across a variety of disciplines leading directly to inquiries relating to individual developmental changes and species adaptation, thus the importance of comparative studies appears evident. Here, we aim at proposing a possible ontogenetic pathway of chimpanzee play (Pan troglodytes) and contrast our data with those of human play. Chimpanzee play shows a number of changes from infancy to juvenility. Particularly, solitary and social play follows different developmental trajectories. While solitary play peaks in infancy, social play does not show any quantitative variation between infancy and juvenility but shows a strong qualitative variation in complexity, asymmetry, and playmate choice. Like laughter in humans, the playful expressions in chimpanzees (at the different age phases) seem to have a role in advertising cooperative dispositions and intentions thus increasing the likelihood of engaging in solid social relationships. In conclusion, in chimpanzees, as in humans, both play behavior and the signals that accompany play serve multiple functions according to the different age phases.
The role of laughter during psychotherapy is poorly understood. This study examined 10 unique sessions of psychodynamic psychotherapy with digital videotape and simultaneous measures of skin conductivity (SC) from patients and therapists. Independent observers coded laugh episodes using published criteria. Observers identified 167 laugh responses. Of the 119 patient laughs, 91 (76.5%) were patient as speaker, compared with 28 (23.4%) as nonspeaker audience. In contrast, of the 48 therapist laughs, only five (10.4%) were therapist as speaker, whereas 43 (90.3%) were as nonspeaker audience. The difference was highly significant (p < .001). Physiologic data showed that mean SC level increased regardless of role as patient, therapist, speaker, or audience (p < .001). Two-factor analysis of variance indicated that SC change scores were significantly larger when patients and therapists laughed together compared with laughing alone (p < .05). The results support an empirically based approach to the study of laughter and the use of psychophysiology as a measure of process during psychotherapy.
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