The social life of laughter

Abstract

Laughter is often considered to be the product of humour. However, laughter is a social emotion, occurring most often in interactions, where it is associated with bonding, agreement, affection, and emotional regulation. Laughter is underpinned by complex neural systems, allowing it to be used flexibly. In humans and chimpanzees, social (voluntary) laughter is distinctly different from evoked (involuntary) laughter, a distinction which is also seen in brain imaging studies of laughter.

The Perception of Spontaneous and Volitional Laughter Across 21 Societies

“…However, this is more difficult to determine, as laughter occurs embedded within a variety of social contexts, resulting in many laugh types. A growing research corpus potentially addresses questions of function by examining the contexts in which laughter is generated as well as laughter's social consequences (e.g., Otten, Mann, van Berkum, & Jonas, 2017;Scott, Lavan, Chen, & McGettigan, 2014). In contrast, much less is known about how laughter is perceived.…”

No laughing matter: How the presence of laughing witnesses changes the perception of insults.

“…Indeed, laughter is universally recognized as an expression of joy (Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010), and it is associated with bonding, agreement, and affection (Scott, Lavan, Chen, & McGettigan, 2014). Moreover, laughter is often seen as a way in which negative emotional experiences can be "de-escalated" (Bloch, Haase, & Levenson, 2014;Scott et al, 2014;Yuan, McCarthy, Holley, & Levenson, 2010). Yet, we all know from experience that laughter is not unidimensionally positive.…”

“…To control for potential effects on the ERP of these factors, participants also read compliments with and without a laughing crowd. The laughter that accompanies compliments has a (standard) positive connotation, signaling shared joy, and positive affect (Scott et al, 2014) without the negative consequences for the listener. The low-level visual and auditory demands, as well as the high-level anticipatory demands, however, are the same.…”

Social Signals and Antisocial Essences: The Function of Evil Laughter in Popular Culture

“…Some patterns stand out from the data, however. By its associative coupling with prosocial helpless laughter, social laughter is generally pressed into prosocial services—to suggest, if not to directly reveal, happiness, mirth, affiliation, and approval (Galloway and Cropley; Scott et al.).…”