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
Linguist Deborah Tannen described gender differences in speech in
her best-selling book, You Just Don't Understand (Ballantine, 1991). The
gender differences in laughter may be even greater. In our 1,200 case
studies, my fellow researchers and I found that while both sexes laugh a
lot, females laugh more. In cross-gender conversations, females laughed
126% more than their male counterparts, meaning that women tend to do the
most laughing while males tend to do the most laugh-getting. Men seem to
be the main instigators of humor across cultures, which begins in early
childhood. Think back to your high school class clown -- most likely he was
a male. The gender pattern of everyday laughter also suggests why there
are more male than female comedians. (Rodney Dangerfield likely gets more
respect than he claims.)
