Laughter influences social bonding but not prosocial generosity to friends and strangers

Humans deploy a number of specific behaviours for forming social bonds, one of which is laughter. However, two questions have not yet been investigated with respect to laughter: (1) Does laughter increase the sense of bonding to those with whom we laugh? and (2) Does laughter facilitate prosocial generosity? Using changes in pain threshold as a proxy for endorphin upregulation in the brain and a standard economic game (the Dictator Game) as an assay of prosociality, we show that laughter does trigger the endorphin system and, through that, seems to enhance social bonding, but it does not reliably influence donations to others. This suggests that social bonding and prosociality may operate via different mechanisms, or on different time scales, and relate to different functional objectives

Real-time magnetic resonance imaging reveals distinct vocal tract configurations during spontaneous and volitional laughter

A substantial body of acoustic and behavioural evidence points to the existence of two broad categories of laughter in humans: spontaneous laughter that is emotionally genuine and somewhat involuntary, and volitional laughter that is produced on demand. In this study, we tested the hypothesis these are also physiologically distinct vocalisations, by measuring and comparing them using real-time MRI (rtMRI) of the vocal tract. Following Ruch & Ekman (2001), we further predicted that spontaneous laughter should be relatively less speech-like (i.e. less articulate) than volitional laughter. We collected rtMRI data from five adult human participants during spontaneous laughter, volitional laughter, and spoken vowels. We report distinguishable vocal tract shapes during the vocalic portions of these three vocalisation types, where volitional laughs were intermediate between spontaneous laughs and vowels. Inspection of local features within the vocal tract across the different vocalisation types offers some additional support for Ruch and Ekman’s (2001) predictions. We discuss our findings in light of a dual-pathway hypothesis for the neural control of human volitional and spontaneous vocal behaviours, identifying tongue shape and velum lowering as potential biomarkers of spontaneous laughter to be investigated in future research

Decoding brain basis of laughter and crying in natural scenes

Laughter and crying are universal signals of prosociality and distress, respectively. Here we investigated the functional brain basis of perceiving laughter and crying using naturalistic functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach. We measured haemodynamic brain activity evoked by laughter and crying in three experiments with 100 subjects in each. The subjects i) viewed a 20-minute medley of short video clips, and ii) 30 min of a full-length feature film, and iii) listened to 13.5 min of a radio play that all contained bursts of laughter and crying. Intensity of laughing and crying in the videos and radio play was annotated by independent observes, and the resulting time series were used to predict hemodynamic activity to laughter and crying episodes. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to test for regional selectivity in laughter and crying evoked activations. Laughter induced widespread activity in ventral visual cortex and superior and middle temporal and motor cortices. Crying activated thalamus, cingulate cortex along the anterior-posterior axis, insula and orbitofrontal cortex. Both laughter and crying could be decoded accurately (66–77% depending on the experiment) from the BOLD signal, and the voxels contributing most significantly to classification were in superior temporal cortex. These results suggest that perceiving laughter and crying engage distinct neural networks, whose activity suppresses each other to manage appropriate behavioral responses to others’ bonding and distress signals

An Evaluation of Manual and Semi-Automatic Laughter Annotation

Ludusan B, Wagner P. An Evaluation of Manual and Semi-Automatic Laughter Annotation. In: Proceedings of Interspeech 2020. ISCA; 2020: 621-625.With laughter research seeing a development in recent years, there is also an increased need in materials having laughter annotations. We examine in this study how one can leverage existing spontaneous speech resources to this goal. We first analyze the process of manual laughter annotation in corpora, by establishing two important parameters of the process: the amount of time required and its inter-rater reliability. Next, we propose a novel semi-automatic tool for laughter annotation, based on a signal-based representation of speech rhythm. We test both annotation approaches on the same recordings, containing German dyadic spontaneous interactions, and employing a larger pool of annotators than previously done. We then compare and discuss the obtained results based on the two aforementioned parameters, highlighting the benefits and costs associated to each approach

Laughter as a Priming Agent for Change

The purpose of this study was to analyze the importance of laughter as a factor in influencing employee job satisfaction ratings. The Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1985, 1997) and pulses of laughter were used in this study. To explore the relationship between laughter and job satisfaction, results of the Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1994) were collected quarterly (four times a year) for three consecutive years, beginning six months prior to the start of the two-year study and six months post. The study sample was composed of 545 employees (34% male, 66% female) operating out of 10 employee-owned retail chain locations across Midwestern United States. A quasi-experimental, time-series research model, utilizing a one-way repeated measure multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used in this study. The MANOVA determined significant differences existed. Further studies should be carried out in different settings to shed light on the versatility of laughter on job satisfaction and laughter pulses as a means of non-participatory intervention. Keywords: job satisfaction, supraliminal laughter, occupational stress, employee assistance program (EAP), mental health, counseling, priming, non-participatory interventions, counselor educatio

Le rire dans la littérature populaire vietnamienne à l’époque féodale

I would like to focus on some aspects tied up with Laughter in Vietnamese popular literature in the feudal time, namely the Middle Age period and more specifically from the Xth to the XIVth centuries. The Vietnamese popular literature, of people’s creative endeavour and commonly of oral transmission from generation to generation, has largely contributed to characterize the Vietnamese culture and its national identity. Further back in time claimed Rabelais «Rire est le propre de l’homme». In the multi-millennial Vietnamese culture, laughter, embedded with an instructive/pedagogic significance while inculcating ethic values in its criticism of vicious and sinful conduct, has played an important role on people’s everyday life, simultaneously creating moments of joy, of entertainment, i.e. comic relief. Indeed, one laughs at misshapenness often linked to mistakes or the fake. The bad is the comic’s theme. One never laughs at beautiful and pleasant issues. Sometimes, bad is one’s inner feature without one’s own awareness. Thus, one tries to show one’s beauty. It is precisely in this paradoxical relation that bad becomes above all laughter’s origin. Laughter is also a weapon against negative phenomena greatly featuring the feudal society. In so doing, laughter has a deep social meaning. Vietnamese popular literature falls back to a great extent upon the comic, everyday laughter. For the Vietnamese commonly optimistic people, enjoying life, laughter is deeply and outstandingly imbued of a comic dimension. All along their history the Vietnamese have created a large number of bawdy stories aimed at satisfying their needs both for entertainment and struggle against negative influences, sins or even social inequalities and oppression. As a matter of fact, the Vietnamese popular literature comprises a valuable set of tales of comic nature, popular songs, as well as satiric poems, fables, buffoon’s tall tales (from popular theatre - Sân Khâu Chèo) making use of strategies to arouse laughter. Indeed, these are the underpinnings of the extremely rich satiric popular literature. 1 Actas do Colóquio Internacional «O Riso na Cultura Medieval» @ Universidade Aberta – Todos os direitos reservados 2 Actas do Colóquio Internacional «O Riso na Cultura Medieval» @ Universidade Aberta – Todos os direitos reservados Some Vietnamese popular tales, excerpts of buffoon’s roles in the popular theatre «Chèo» will be presented to describe the object of laughter and its triggering strategies. In the Vietnamese History, not only entailing the feudal period but also the contemporary one, laughter has always built on a satiric discursive component in the Vietnamese popular literature. Indeed, this literature constitutes a rich diversified treasure deeply inculcated in the Vietnamese culture, also shaping the borderlines of its national identity

In Summation

Mr. Chairman and my Good Friends I thought, it was the prerogative of our politicians to talk at the slightest provocation (laughter). But here, I find myself talking In and out of turn almost from the time I entered this magnificent auditorium. I thought, atleast the concluding session would be a listening sess-ion for me; but our stern Chairman has decreed otherwise (laughter) and here I am again

Automatic Discrimination of Laughter Using Distributed sEMG

Laughter is a very interesting non-verbal human vocalization. It is classified as a semi voluntary behavior despite being a direct form of social interaction, and can be elicited by a variety of very different stimuli, both cognitive and physical. Automatic laughter detection, analysis and classification will boost progress in affective computing, leading to the development of more natural human-machine communication interfaces. Surface Electromyography (sEMG) on abdominal muscles or invasive EMG on the larynx show potential in this direction, but these kinds of EMG-based sensing systems cannot be used in ecological settings due to their size, lack of reusability and uncomfortable setup. For this reason, they cannot be easily used for natural detection and measurement of a volatile social behavior like laughter in a variety of different situations. We propose the use of miniaturized, wireless, dry-electrode sEMG sensors on the neck for the detection and analysis of laughter. Even if with this solution the activation of specific larynx muscles cannot be precisely measured, it is possible to detect different EMG patterns related to larynx function. In addition, integrating sEMG analysis on a multisensory compact system positioned on the neck would improve the overall robustness of the whole sensing system, enabling the synchronized measure of different characteristics of laughter, like vocal production, head movement or facial expression; being at the same time less intrusive, as the neck is normally more accessible than abdominal muscles. In this paper, we report laughter discrimination rate obtained with our system depending on different conditions

The Good, The Bad, and The Funny: A Neurocognitive Study of Laughter as a Meaningful Socioemotional Cue

Laughter is a socioemotional cue that is characteristically positive and historically served to facilitate social bonding. Like other communicative gestures (e.g., facial expressions, groans, sighs), however, the interpretation of laughter is no longer bound to a particular affective state. Thus, an important question is how basic psychological mechanisms, such as early sensory arousal, emotion evaluation, and meaning representation, contribute to the interpretation of laughter in different contexts. A related question is how brain dynamic processes reflect these different aspects of laughter comprehension. The present study addressed these questions using event-related potentials (ERP) to examine laughter comprehension within a cross-modal priming paradigm. Target stimuli were visually presented words, which were preceded by either laughs or environmental sounds (500 ms versions of the International Affective Digitized Sounds, IADS). The study addressed four questions: (1) Does emotion priming lead to N400 effects? (2) Do positive and negative sounds elicit different neurocognitive responses? (3) Are there laughter-specific ERPs? (4) Can laughter priming of good and bad concepts be reversed under social anxiety? Four experiments were conducted. In all four experiments, participants were asked to make speeded judgments about the valence of the target words. Experiments 1-3 examined behavioral effects of emotion priming using variations on this paradigm. In Experiment 4, participants performed the task while their electroencephalographic (EEG) data were recorded. After six experimental blocks, a mood manipulation was administered to activate negative responses to laughter. The task was then repeated. Accuracy and reaction time showed a small but significant priming effect across studies. Surprisingly, N400 effects of emotion priming were absent. Instead, there was a later (~400–600 ms) effect over orbitofrontal electrodes (orbitofrontal priming effect, OPE). Valence-specific effects were observed in the early posterior negativity (EPN, ~275 ms) and in the late positive potential (LPP, ~600 ms). Laughter-specific effects were observed over orbitofrontal sites beginning approximately 200 ms after target onset. Finally, the OPE was observed for laughs before and after the mood manipulation. The direction of priming did not reverse, contrary to hypothesis. Interestingly, the OPE was observed for IADS only prior to the mood manipulation, providing some evidence for laughter-specific effects in emotion priming. These findings question the N400 as a marker of emotion priming and contribute to the understanding of neurocognitive stages of laughter perception. More generally, they add to the growing literature on the neurophysiology of emotion and emotion representation

Movement, Laughter and Breath with Intergenerational Women: A Community Engagement Project about Connections

This Community Engagement Project was created to explore how movement, laughter and breath can create connection for intergenerational women. A community event was facilitated at a suburban YWCA as an observational tool and for information gathering. Arts based research was conducted and evidence of non-verbal movements were recorded through observation, video recordings, and reflections from the participants in the session. In addition, published peer reviewed articles that explore these elements of expression were utilized as an alternative lens. Recent current events that are affecting women worldwide, such as the #metoo and Time\u27s Up movements, offered the backdrop for this project. The participants for this project were women ages 18 to 75 who signed up for a movement and laughter yoga program at a suburban YWCA. The workshop was conducted in a two-hour period with an opportunity for questions and reflections. These women were taken through mindfulness and guided imagery meditation, dance and movement exercises that included mirroring, Bartenieff/Laban Fundamentals, and Laughter Yoga. The results of this community-based project showed evidence of the nonverbal connections, movement, breath, and laughter can facilitate with this population