Laughter: A Known Mystery

Laughter, an expression that is familiar to almost all of us. At some point of our lives we have had a good laugh or have heard someone else laugh, what is laughter that makes it so unique, so different; is laughter some sort of contagious disease because it seems to transfer really fast from one individual to another. This makes laughter a really powerful behaviour that can convey from one individual to another without any contact; although, laughter cannot be a disease, it's considered to very good for us; in fact it's considered "the best medicine".

So if Laughter is not a disease then what is this sudden urge to create this sound of a laughter, why don't we say something in our human languages; could that mean laughter is a language on its own understood throughout our specie? But languages are words that we can utter in any situation, although laughter seems to be an individuals' urge that seems to be related to humor. Laughter plays a really important part in our social structure, it has great impact on a person personality, behavior and impression the person puts on other people; the pleasant and friendly atmosphere create within a conversation could be the cause of laughter and still we barely know anything about laughter. Since laughter is such an important expression, its helps humans socially accept other people in the society that's why it is very important to study the mechanism and natural history of laughter. Robert R. Provine, with the help of his assistants took the task to explore laughter and describe some question relating to it.

The human laugh is very hard to describe in words, it cannot be explained in some language, its something that breaks the boundaries of a language and emerges as an international voice that is understood by everyone. It is very hard to study laughter since test subjects cannot produce real laugh on a given command. Therefore, the best way to study laugh would be to observe people in their normal routine or at social gathering. After recording some laughter sounds and analyzing them in the Sound Laboratory of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.; Robert R. Provine and his assistants realized that although laugh is something really hard to imitate into a languages it can still be associated with a few sounds likes ha-ha-ha or ho-ho-ho. There is a lot of variation between the individual laughing but the main sound created is very similar, but this variation only lies within the first and the last note; if there is variation in other notes, or the notes are mixed with each other it creates a rather awkward sound not considered laughter by many people. The laughter also loses its meaning when pronounced in long or shorter intervals than normal; also it was observed that laughter of females have a high fundamental frequency, rather than men who have more of a deep fundamental laughter sound. All these are just variations to the original sound of laughter which is why all the humans still recognize them as laughter.

Humans are not the only species which are familiar with the use of laughter, after some close observation it was found out that chimpanzee also laugh but their laugh is not the same as human it is more of a panting sound. Chimpanzees are considered to have a rough laugh rather than a smooth sound produced by humans, but chimpanzees laugh could have been what humans and chimpanzees common ancestors shared, but through evolutionary time human came to develop a more smooth laughter. Another important difference between human and chimpanzees laugh is that chimpanzee's only laugh during physical contact while human seem to laugh more at verbal humor.

Laughter is more often used as a way of socializing rather than expression of emotion, from studies it was found that people tend to laugh more at things during social gathering compared to a individual person experiencing the same thing alone. Most of the laughter occasions were when people were not trying to make others laugh, but most of the laughter comes from individual remarks. But the placement of the words is very important in the statement to make someone laugh otherwise it could have no effect on the audience. Gender has a big effect on peoples laughter, it was observed that females tend to laugh a lot to male audience, compare to male audience laughing to females; also male speakers get more laugh compare to female speaker from audience of both genders. So from this observation it can be concluded that males are the leading humor producers while females are leading laughers.

Both males and females use laughter to convey messages to the speaker or the audience. It can be used by the audience to show that they value what the speaker is saying, it can also be used to oppose someone or agree with someone; it can also be used to create an friendly environment within a group or show acceptance or rejection to someone in the social group.

Laughter is very effective in conveying messages to individuals but it is also very contagious. It can travel from one person to another very easily, without any contact or special mechanism. The Television comedy shows make good use of this contagious laughter by using laugh track to simulate laughter of an audience; this way the audience watching the show automatically get the urge to laugh with the crowd of audience. But too continuous laughter can became obnoxious to people and can lose its meaning. According to Robert R. Provine, laughter could be contagious because there is a neural circuit that response only to laughter, this makes laughing special to that neuron and evokes laughter in other individual when they hear the sound of laughter.

Laughter is a very important part of our daily routine and the study by Robert R. Provine tried to explain what laughter really is in our daily lives and its application. This study can be extended further to cure diseases that might be related to laughter problems; these diseases cause abnormal, inappropriate or excessive laughter. Right now, we have only touched the tip of the iceberg; there are many questions that are still to be answered. We need to explore many unique things about laughter, maybe then we can explain the basis of evolutionary importance of laughter and its history.

Reference

Provine, R.R., 1996, Laughter, Am. Sci. 84: 38-45

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