Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

This hypothesis, that laughter serves to reduce tension, ran into some uncharitable data gathered by Robert Provine. Rather than restrict himself to the sterile confines of the laboratory, or rely on abstract, armchair conceptual analysis, Provine turned his astute ear to the laughter that occurs in the real world. He had three undergraduate assistants surreptitiously record bursts of laughter in malls, in friendly conversations on street corners, in the cafeteria banter of college students. This small band of laugh collectors recorded over 1,200 laughs in all. Provine transcribed these episodes into laughter narratives and then dissected what people were talking about just prior to laughter.

Humor often did precede laughter. Who wouldn’t have laughed or at least chuckled with head tilted back, closed eyes, and collapsed torso and shoulders after hearing the following statements?

 

 

She’s working on a PhD in horizontal folk dancing.

 

 

You just farted!

 

 

Poor boy looks just like his father.

When they asked John, he said that he wanted to grow up to be a bird.

 

Do you date within your species?

 

 

Was that before or after I took off my clothes?

 

 

Is that considered clothing or shelter?

 

 

Humor-oriented utterances, however, represented only 10 to 20 percent of prelaugh statements. Importantly, Provine found that laughter followed all sorts of utterances. Over 80 percent of the laughs did not occur in response to humor. Consider some of the following utterances that produced laughter.

 

 

I see your point.

 

 

I hope we all do well.

 

 

We can handle this.

 

 

I told you so!

 

 

Are you sure?

 

 

Why are you telling me this?

 

 

What is that supposed to mean?!

 

 

Not exactly knee-slapping fare ready for The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Robin Williams, the class clown, or the town wit. If these elicitors of laughter were just exceptions to the rule, we could readily discount them. But conversational events unrelated to humor were the rule and not the exception, and beg for more precise theorizing about laughter.

THE COOPERATION SWITCH

 

What, then, is the conceptual unifier of the cackles, guffaws, hisses, chortles, snorts, and melodious songs that we hear every day, or at least on the days that are more pleasing to the soul? We have seen that the time-honored thesis—humor—does not suffice. It fails to explain many, even the vast majority, of laughs that occur in our daily living. For Bachorowski and her colleague Michael Owren, the answer is cooperation. In an insightful analysis, Bachorowski and Owren argue that laughter builds cooperative bonds vital to group living. It does so through two mechanisms.

The first is contagion: We routinely laugh, and experience exhilaration and levity, at the sound of another’s laugh. The contagious power of laughter motivated the introduction of laugh tracks on TV, a history that Provine details in Laughter. Recent neuroscience evidence suggests that when we hear others laugh, mirror neurons represent that expressive behavior and quickly activate action tendencies and experiences that simulate the original laugh in the listener’s brain. Specifically, laughter triggers activation in a region of the motor cortex in the listener, the supplementary motor area (SMA). Bundles of neurons leaving the SMA go to the insula and the amygdala, thus triggering the experience of mirth and amusement in the perceiver of the laugh. When we hear others laugh, this system of mirror neurons acts as if the listener is laughing.

Laughter builds cooperative bonds through a second mechanism, Bachorowski and Owren propose: Laughter rewards mutually beneficial exchanges—successful collaborations at work, in the kitchen, in child rearing, with friends. Laughter signals appreciation and shared understanding. Laughter evokes pleasure. Given that each individual has a signature laugh, produced by the particulars of the vocal apparatus, laughs become unique rewards of cooperative exchange, building trust between individuals.