Laughing Flashcards
How much do we laugh per day?
- Daily laughter records taken over 3 days, by both males and females ranging in age from 17-79
- 18 daily incidents
What are the potential health benefits associated with laughter?
- Positive effect on cardiovascular and respiratory system
- There is some evidence showing that exposure to comedy shows can increase pain threshold
- Stress-moderating effect - The more humorous the outlook on life, the more cognitive appraisals/attributions
- Increased well-being
What is the Superiority theory of laughter?
- The laughing at the misfortunes of others
- This generated a feeling of superiority
- Getting enjoyment out of laughing at people who think they’re better than us: richer, wiser
- The laugher is with malice and is harmful
What is the Incongruity theory of laughter?
- Laugher is derived because of an unexpected outcome, it is either illogical or inappropriate
- As we live in an orderly world, we laugh at things that don’t fit the pattern that we are used to
- This could be to unrelated things combined for a comic effect
What percentage of laughter is down to a ‘formal effort at humour’?
20%
What does laughing show in a social context?
- Our acceptance of the other person
- That we care for the other person
- Our like/love for the person
How does laughter aid a caregivers relationship with a child?
- Strengthens the social bond
- By making the child laugh and then repeating the process a ton emotional interaction cycle starts
What does laughter do in groups?
Increases cooperation and cohesiveness
How much more frequent is laughter in a social context over solidarity?
30x
- Highlights laughter as a social signal and a form of communication
Describe the dubbed laughter study (procedure & results) in reference to sitcoms
- Group of participants
- They all listened to 2 recordings, one had dubbed laughter, one did not.
Findings: - Participants laughed more frequently to the recording with dubbed laughter compared to the one without
- Participants also rated the material with the dubbed laughter more amusing
Is laughter a contagious behaviour? Describe a real life study and its results to explain.
- Tanganyika Epidemic
- Began as an isolated fit of a small group of 12-18 year olds
- Spread throughout the school, which closed
- Spread from one individual to the next
- ‘Infected’ neighbouring communities
- 14 schools closed
- 1,000 people were affected
- Disrupted normal community life for 6 months
Is laughter a contagious behaviour? Describe a laboratory study and its results to explain.
- 128 undergraduate students
- 10 trials from a laughter box
- It was recorded whether they laughed or smiled during the trial
- The majority of the undergraduate laughed in response to the first presentation of the box
- Laughter then declined over the trials
What makes laughter so contagious?
Nothing is yet determined, but:
- There is some evidence that the brain prepares to ‘join in’ with laughter
- We experience an auditory activation when we hear emotional sounds (e.g. laughter)
What % of pre-laugh comments are humorous?
10-20%
How is laughter present in conversations?
Speech, facial expressions, gestures, postural changes
Describe a study that discusses laughter in regards to males and females.
- 1,200 episodes of naturally occurring laughter in public places
- Speakers laughed more than audiences (46% more)
- Females laughed more than males
- Audiences laugh more at male speakers (127% more)
How much more do speakers laugh compared to their audience?
46%
Explain the gender differences in laughter.
- Females laughed more than males
- Males got more laughs than females (127% more)
Where does most laughter occur?
99% laughter is in pauses at the ends of phrases or sentences, this is for both the audience and speaker
How many times does laughter interrupt speech?
8/1,200 in the case of the speaker
0/1,200 in the case of the audience
Sum up how laughter can interrupt speech?
Audiences do not tend to interrupt speakers speech with laughter, a study was conducted and it found that no times did the audience interrupt the speak with laughter out of 1,200.
However, the speaker was interrupted 8/1,200 times, which is still a very low figure.
Why does speech not seem to be interrupted by laughter?
Speech seems to have priority access over the single vocalisation channel that we have. There also seems to be a lawful, (probably neurologically based) process that governs the placement of laughter within speech.
Is laughter a recognisable emotional across cultures? Describe a study and its results to explain.
- Investigation of the non-verbal expression of emotion in the human voice across cultures
- 2 groups of participants, one from a western society and the others from the Himba tribe
- Both groups recognised; anger, disgust, fear, sadness and laughter
- Suggesting that laughter is a emotion recognised across many different cultures
- However not many other positive emotions were recognised by both parties
What are the differences between human-infants and Great Ape-infants laughter?
- Human infants laughter was a predominantly voiced sound
- Great Apes laughter was a more breathy panting sound
How do chimps use laughter to strengthen social bonds?
Laughter for chimps was in related to play and maintenance, which when repeated gives the same strengthening effect that a child and its caregiver have through laughter.
Is there laughter in non-human primates. Explain and discuss the results of a study.
Laughing Rats:
- Rats chirp at 50 kHz, which is not audible to the human ear. (Readily emitted during tickling)
- The chirps are more frequently emitted by young rats and during tickling
- The rats were seen to be social bonded to ticklers and became conditioned to seen tickling
- Rats preferred to spend time with other rats that chirp a lot
What evidence is there that laughter came before talking?
- There are neural circuits for laughter that exist in very ancient regions of the brain
- The things that make animals laugh (tickling) is associated with early infancy
What is the earliest sign of humour in humans?
- The earliest time we see signs of laughter is at around 18 months
- It was initially though to be not until around 6 - 7 years
What makes babies laugh?
Ripping paper, sounds, animals, approaching tickles
In regards to social laughter, at what ages do the % of children laughing at it differ?
Social laugher is unexpected stimuli and is usually understood by older infants, e.g. peek-a-boo
8m - 25% 11m - 71% 14m - 50% 17m - 86% 24m - 67%
What is clowning?
Clowning is the repetition of odd actions that have previously led to laughter to re-elicit laughter
Describe a clowning study
- 16 infants, ages: 8, 11, 14, 17 & 24 months
- Majority of all age groups reported to show any clowning
- Clowning frequencies:
Once a week was high for all age groups
Daily: 8m = 69%, 11m = 60%, 14m = 73%, 17m = 64%, 24m = 62%
What are the ‘typical’ things laughter shows?
- Similarity of interest
- Sharing a similar attitude towards things
- Allows for further mutual understanding
- Shows an awareness of social patterns and expectations
What does laughing with others show?
- Interest in others laughter as an emotional reaction
- An interest in the targets of others laughter
- An interest in a participant or audience for one’s own laughter
- An ability for emotional relatedness
What does clowning show:
- An interest in others amusement
- A desire to re-elicit humorous reactions
- The ability to casually link ones own actions to others reactions
- An awareness of audience attention
