WHY do we laugh? Because we find something funny, most people would say.
Robert Provine, a behavioural neurobiologist at the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County, once thought so too. But then he and his students began
skulking about the college campus, notebooks in hand, recording exactly what
really made people laugh.
Twelve hundred “laugh episodes” later, Provine was convinced that most
laughter has little to do with jokes or funny stories. The vast majority of
laughs followed mundane statements such as “It was nice meeting you, too” or,
“Can I join you?”, which, as Provine dryly notes, “do not meet traditional
standards for humour”. Only some 10 to 20 per cent followed anything remotely
recognisable as a punch line. So what are the majority of laughs actually
about?
The search for an answer brings you face to face with problems that are at
once both the bane and lifeblood of virtually all research into human emotions.
You may think the social context of the emotion is obvious; but then you realise
that people laugh when they’re nervous as well as amused, disappointed as well
as joyous, and sometimes simply because someone else is laughing.
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You may also set out with the belief that the emotion has evolved into
something rather sophisticated, requiring the brain’s conscious, cognitive
centres to respond to subtle social cues like punch lines; but then you realise
that most people cannot will themselves to laugh on command or suppress an
unwanted attack of the giggles. Laughter arises not from our conscious mind but
from a primitive, precognitive part of our brain, says Provine. “We’re talking
about something that’s very deep in our animal nature”.
Provine is one of the few researchers trying to go beyond anecdote and
speculation by looking at laughter as an animal behaviourist might study
birdsong or a wolf’s howl. He believes that, like birdsong, laughter functions
as some kind of social signal. And others would agree. Indeed, studies have
shown that people are thirty times more likely to laugh in social settings than
when they are alone, in the absence of pseudosocial stimuli like television.
Even nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, loses much of its potency if taken in
solitude, says Willibald Ruch, a psychologist at the University of
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To many researchers, laughter is about strengthening social bonds. “Laughter
occurs when people are comfortable with one another, when they feel open and
free. And the more laughter, the more bonding within the group,” says Mahadev
Apte, a cultural anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
This feedback “loop” of bonding-laughter-more bonding, plus the desire not to be
singled out from the group, may explain why laughter is often
contagious—sometimes dramatically so. In 1962, for example, an epidemic of
laughter among schoolgirls in Tanganyika lasted for six months and forced
officials to close schools.
The first human laughter, far back in antiquity, may have begun as a gesture
of shared relief at the passing of some danger, says John Morreall, a
philosopher at the University of South Florida in Tampa who also leads seminars
on humour in the workplace. “It’s a signal that now we can relax,” he
speculates. When someone laughs, muscles do in fact relax throughout the body.
Most people know the feeling of laughing so hard they have to hold onto
something to keep from falling. Since this relaxation inhibits the biological
fight-or-flight response, laughter may be a signal of trust in one’s
companions—a ritual disarming, in effect. This would explain why tickling
by a stranger usually fails to produce laughter and why sudden encounters with
old friends might prompt laughter designed to reaffirm the social bond.
Politicians and other public speakers understand the power of laughter to
break down barriers and forge a connection with their audience. A large part of
President John Kennedy’s charm came from his ability to make jokes at his own
expense, says Morreall. By inviting the audience to join him in laughter,
Kennedy bridged much of the social gap between his wealthy, patrician status and
ordinary voters. Almost every after-dinner speaker opens with a joke for a
similar reason.
But laughter can exclude as well as include, as another American president
learnt to his cost. During his term in office, Gerald Ford suffered a number of
well-publicised misfortunes, including falling down the steps of the
presidential plane. As a result, says Morreall, the public laughed at Ford,
rather than with him. “Laughter often unites the group against the outsiders,”
says Morreall.
Similarly, laughing when no one else does may also mark a person as an
outsider. Stand-up comedians understand this risk and include cues in their
routines—such as changes in intonation—to let the audience know when
a laugh is expected, says Jason Rutter, a sociologist at Salford University who
studies comedians.
Even telling a joke can be risky—what if nobody laughs? That
vulnerability may explain why studies repeatedly find that dominant individuals,
whether tribal elders or workplace bosses, use humour more than
subordinates—when the boss laughs, everyone laughs. In such cases,
controlling the laughter of a group becomes a way of exercising power. “They’re
controlling the emotional climate of the group,” says Morreall.
Such differences in the use of power may also account for an intriguing
observation made by Provine and his skulkers, and confirmed by most, though not
all, of the other studies available. Listeners, especially women, laugh almost
half again as often when the speaker is male. This might reflect real
differences in how men and women use laughter, or it might merely show that men
generally wield greater power in society. No one has done the carefully
controlled study that would be needed to separate the two. One way to start,
suggests Provine, might be to see whether listeners of both sexes laughed less
at Margaret Thatcher’s jokes when she was Prime Minister than those of male
leaders.
But the role of laughter is even more complex than this. People laugh not
only when they feel good, but in uncomfortable situations as well. Some
schizophrenics suffer from bouts of pathological laughter. And they often report
that this state is accompanied by a feeling of urgent danger, together with a
sense that they are unable to do anything about the threat.
But why laugh at all in such a case, or when embarrassed or disappointed?
Clearly, says Provine, laughter—like other human behaviour—must have
evolved to change the behaviour of others. After all, it is difficult to see any
evolutionary advantage in expressing an emotion for its own sake. In an
embarrassing or otherwise threatening situation, laughter may serve as a gesture
of appeasement, a way of deflecting anger. And, if the threatening person joins
the laughter, the risk of confrontation may dissipate. “If I can change our
discourse from serious to not serious, I’m not threatened so much any more,”
says Lawrence Mintz, a cultural historian at the University of Maryland in
College Park.
In contrast to all these theories, which interpret laughter primarily as a
means of forming connections between people, a second camp sees laughter first
and foremost as an aggressive act. “Laughter equals winning,” says Charles
Gruner of the University of Georgia. Gruner believes that laughter originated
from the cry of triumph and derision that a fighter might utter when he defeats
his foe.
As evidence, Gruner claims that he can find an element of aggression in every
instance of humour, even the most innocuous. Even a baby, he says, laughs not to
bond with its parents but because they give it what it wants.
Other experts concede that at least some laughter—particularly among
males—is indeed aggressive in nature, but few follow Gruner in contending
that all of it is. “Babies laugh before they have any self-conception at all,”
notes Morreall. “They’re clearly not laughing because they’re putting other
people down.”
In the end, though, a convincing explanation of why people laugh must wait
for more and better data. Laughter appears in so many contexts that researchers
sometimes feel they are trying to battle the Hydra. When it comes to pinning
emotions down, “fear is a piece of cake”, says Morreall. “Anger is a piece of
cake. Even love is easier than laughter.”
