The Science of Laughter

Aristotle once suggested that we laugh only at inferior individuals, while Plato suggested that the act of laughing characterized a display of self-ignorance (1). A recent article published by Robert R. Provine, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, may have deciphered the evolutionary significance of laughter.

Primal laughter evolved in social animals which need an emotionally positive mechanism to allow social brains to integrate organisms together within the social hierarchy. “Laughter seems to be an automatic response to your situation rather than a conscious strategy.” Said Tyler F. Stillman who conducted psychological experiments on laughter (2). Organisms in positions of power will tend to laugh less at jokes, than an interview candidate might. Thus, jokes that I tell my classes always catch a few laughs, but the same joke told to a professor generally elicits little more than a funny look. Perhaps I am not a funny as I would like to think.

Laughter can be traced through the evolutionary tree of social organisms from humans, to primates, and even down to rats, which emit a series of high pitched squeaks before and during play at frequencies higher than the human ear can hear (1). In primates and humans, the first laughter response is the threat of tickling. This action will provoke laughter beginning at 4 weeks of age, and acts as a primal “green light”. Therefore, we laugh to cope, to fit in, to show friendly intention, or to make others feel comfortable in awkward situations. Ultimately, laughter could be the key to the development of complex social structures in all social mammals. Laughter allowed the formulation of human societies prior to the development of language or writing. We are evolutionary adapted to laugh.

(1) “Laughter” Wikimedia: the free encyclopedia. March 14, 2007 Wikipedia March 14, 2007.
(2) Tierney, John. “What’s So Funny?” The New York Times, March 16, 2007