Laughing Matters - Science Stories


Most babies have their first laugh by the time they are four months old. Eight-month-old Annie is now an expert at using laughter to communicate.

You can hear it from people all over the world, no matter what language they may speak. Babies laugh long before they can talk. It’s not something you learn in school or from your parents. Laughter must be something that is programmed and built in, a part of what we call human nature.

We usually think of laughter together with humor—a response to something funny. And we know that laughter also works the other way. Things seem funnier when someone else is laughing. Radio and TV shows seem funnier when a background recording of laughter is played at the right times. And you may have seen people break out laughing just from seeing someone else doing it. That’s another characteristic that tells us laughter is a built-in part of us.

A Fresh Look
So what can we possibly learn by studying laughter? A scientist who did study it began by thinking about laughter in a new way.

He imagined that he was an alien visiting Earth from another planet to study people. He watched how people behave. He tried to understand a strange part of their behavior called laughter. He studied how people laugh, why they laugh, and how they use laughter in their lives.

That’s the way scientists study behavior of wild animals. They ask the same kinds of questions about birds and their songs. The scientist, Dr. Robert Provine, realized that we know more about bird songs than about human laughter.

Ha-ha-ha!
Just as one might do in studying bird songs, Dr. Provine studied the sound pattern of laughter. He found that each person has a characteristic laugh. Women’s laughter is usually higher pitched than that of men.

But we all have a common laugh pattern. We make the ha-ha-ha sounds all in one breath and while we are breathing out. The first ha’s are louder, and the last are weaker, as if we are running out of breath.

The ha’s come in a nice rhythm, about five in a second. It’s hard to change that simple pattern. If you purposely try to change the pattern, you will discover how standard and automatic your laugh really is.

Checking out other animals showed that none of them laughs the way people do. The closest is the chimpanzee, which makes laughlike sounds when tickled. But chimpanzee laughter seems more like panting because there is only one ha with each breathing-in and each breathing-out. Real laughter is special for humans.

A Serious Side
How do people use laughter in their lives? You already know part of the answer. We don’t laugh very often when we are alone. Laughter is something we use socially, when we are reacting with another person, or in groups.

To find out more, Dr. Provine trained his students at the University of Maryland Baltimore County to listen in on laughter and find how it is used. The students listened in on twelve hundred group conversations in public places, such as schools, malls, and college campuses.

Seriously. . . why do we chuckle?

People all over the world laugh in much the same way.

What they learned was a surprise. Most laughter did not come after jokes. It happened just as a part of conversation. In fact, it came from the speaker even more often than from the listeners. And it usually came at the end of a sentence.

They found that people often use laughter in almost the same way we use punctuation in writing—like a period or a question mark. Laughter is sprinkled in between sentences to separate ideas and to make some ideas stand out.

When we use laughter, what message are we giving? You may have noticed we use laughter in two different ways. Sometimes we use it to laugh at someone, to make fun of them. To me, that has always seemed unfair-like hitting someone who is already down.

Laughing Together
More often we laugh with someone. Then it’s a way of showing approval or agreement, that we are thinking alike. Laughter is a part of the way we communicate.

Dr. Provine’s study has taught us interesting things about something so common that most of us have never thought about it. There is still a lot to be learned, such as why laughing is so contagious.

Most of what Dr. Provine learned came from watching and listening to people. You and I can do that, too. It’s like bird watching, except that people are more fun.