The Expressive Pattern of Laughter

Abstract

Laughter as a vocal expressive-communicative signal is one of the least understood and most frequently overlooked human behaviors. The chapter provides an overview of what we know about laughter in terms of respiration, vocalization, facial action, and body movement and attempts to illustrate the mechanisms of laughter and to define its elements. The importance of discriminating between spontaneous and contrived laughter is pointed out and it is argued that unrestrained spontaneous laughter involves inarticulate vocalization. It is argued that we need research integrating the different systems in laughter including experience.

The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter

“…Pitch was also positively associated with judgments of laughs being "real." Arousal is likely a crucial component underlying the triggering of spontaneous laughter (Ruch & Ekman, 2001;Gervais & Wilson, 2005) so it might often be a reliable cue of speaker intentions. However, arousal might also be relatively easy to fake (Scherer, 2013), so there could be other important cues that perceivers use to discriminate between spontaneous and volitional laughter.…”

“…Speech production, on the other hand, involves specialized fine-motor control of supralaryngeal articulators that phylogenetically older vocalizations such as laughter and crying do not necessarily incorporate (Ruch & Ekman, 2001;Szameitat, Darwin, Wildgruber, Alter, & Szameitat, 2011). The evolutionary innovation of speech enabled the volitional articulation of calls formally under the exclusive control of a phylogenetically conserved, emotional vocal production system.…”

“…Some researchers have described a difference between: 1) emotionally-driven involuntary (i.e., spontaneous) laughter, and 2) volitional, non-emotional, articulated laughter (e.g., Keltner & Bonanno, 1997;Ruch & Ekman, 2001;Gervais & Wilson, 2005). Studies suggest that these laugh types depend on neurally dissociable production systems (Jurgens, 2002;Wild, Rodden, Grodd, & Ruch, 2003), but no research exists, to our knowledge, on the ability of individuals to distinguish between spontaneous and volitional laughter.…”

Individual differences in gelotophobia and responses to laughter-eliciting emotions

“…Amusement is the facet of joy most likely to induce laughter and empirical evidence supports this close relationship of amusement to laughter (Ruch, 1993;Ruch & Ekman, 2001). …”

Energy expenditure of genuine laughter

“…1 They are produced by contractions of the chest walls, and especially the diaphragm, forcing air through the vocal tract and often followed by a deep inspiration of air. 2,3 Smiling and laughing may occur spontaneously in response to humor or to appropriate emotional or sociological stimuli, and can be elicited upon command as either a voluntary or contrived (fake) laughter. These two types of laughter involve different neural pathways.…”