Laughter is a daily reminder that we humans are animals. In fact, as recorded laughter slows down, listeners can’t tell whether the sound is coming from a person or an animal.
We throw our heads back and grin like monkeys, showing our teeth. Sometimes we flip out, lose the ability to speak for a moment, and momentarily revert to a monkey sound. And just as jeers and howls strengthen bonds between a pack of primates or a pack of wolves, laughter helps us connect with others.
Laughter is evolutionarily old. Mammalian laughter, known as a “play cue,” accompanies playful interactions and signals benign intentions, allowing play to continue. Chimpanzees laugh. The mouse laughs. The dog laughs. Maybe even the dolphins will laugh.
And laughter is an essential feature of human social interaction. Of course, I laugh when it’s funny. But we laugh out of embarrassment, politeness, nervousness, and ridicule.
I’m a psychology researcher who studies how people use laughter to connect with, and sometimes disconnect from, others. For humans, laughter has expanded from its original function as a signal for play to a variety of social functions.
Laughter facilitates social interactions
Laughing in amusement is a response to what humorists call a “benign violation,” a situation that could represent a threat but is deemed safe by the person laughing. (Psychologists love to spoil good things like comedy by over-explaining them.)
Laughter is a way of communicating that the interaction is playful, harmless, and nonserious. People may laugh when they’re having fun, but it’s often not a reliable sign that the person is having a good time. Awkward interactions, misunderstandings, ridicule, and other potentially unpleasant moments are all tempered by laughter.
My colleagues and I were interested in whether the tendency to laugh is a consistent trait for each person regardless of context, or whether it depends on the person with whom they interact. One study had people have a series of one-on-one conversations with 10 strangers. Then we counted how many times they laughed.
Surprisingly, we found that the frequency with which people laugh is fairly consistent, at least when talking to strangers. Some people laugh, some people don’t. Who they were talking to didn’t have a strong influence. At least in our sample, there were no cheerful partners who made everyone they talked to laugh.
It turns out that people who are more likely to laugh enjoy conversations less. If you inherently like talking to strangers and feel comfortable doing so, you may not feel the need to laugh a lot and smooth out the interaction. Because I believe it’s working. But people felt that these great laughers had more in common.
Therefore, in a conversation between strangers, laughing a lot is not a sign of fun, but it will make your partner feel similar to you. They’re more likely to agree that the two of you have something in common, which is an important element of social connection. I think that people borrow the play signal of laughter and transform it to influence situations that at first glance have nothing to do with play.
laughter conveys a message
We humans have incredible control over our voices. Not only can we speak, but we can also change the meaning of our words by changing the pitch of our voices, the placement of vowels, the strength of our breath, and the nasality of our voices. A breathless “hello” becomes a flirtatious invitation, a growled “hello” becomes a threat, and an upturned, high-pitched “hello” becomes a scary question.
This made me think, “Perhaps people change their laughter depending on what they want to convey.”
After all, while some laughter is thought to be uncontrollable, the kind that leaves you physically debilitated and starved of oxygen, most everyday laughter can be controlled, at least to some extent. That’s it.
It turns out that a lot of research has already been done on different forms of laughter. Despite differing perspectives and techniques, researchers agree that laughter takes many different acoustic forms and occurs in a variety of situations.
The most common approach to classifying different forms of laughter is by the internal state of the person laughing. Is that laughter “real” and a reflection of a truly positive state? Or is it a result of embarrassment, schadenfreude, or hilarity?
I wasn’t satisfied with those approaches. Laughter is a communicative behavior. Therefore, it seems to me that instead of classifying laughter based on how it made the person feel, we should classify it according to how it affects those listening. The word “cat” conveys the same information to the listener whether the speaker loves or hates cats. And assuming that laughter sounds the same, the effect it has on the listener is the same regardless of how it makes you feel.
pleasurable, reassuring, or threatening
Keeping in mind the communicative nature of laughter, my colleagues and I proposed that laughter can be boiled down to three basic social functions under the guise of playfulness.
First, there is laughter as a reward. This type is most clearly associated with the evolved role of laughter as a play signal. It’s fun to listen to and play, making playful interactions even more fun.
Then there’s the affiliate laugh. It conveys the same message of being harmless without delivering explosive pleasure. People can use it to reassure, soothe, and calm down. This is the most common type of laughter in everyday conversation. People interrupt conversations with this laugh so that their intentions are not misunderstood.
Finally, there is the dominant laugh. This type flips non-serious messages. By laughing at someone, you are communicating that they are not worth taking seriously.
My colleagues and I have identified acoustic characteristics of laughter that make it more rewarding, approachable, or dominant. He also found that people’s laughter changed during conversations that highlighted three social issues. The changes are subtle, as context such as the situation, the relationships between people, and the topic of conversation can go a long way in clarifying the meaning of laughter.
There is no such thing as a fake smile. All laughter serves a true social function and helps us navigate complex social interactions. And while you’re doing it, you look and sound so silly that no one will take themselves too seriously if you laugh.