A shared universe › Blog › Why we laugh more in company · Español
We laugh more in company because laughter, rather than a response to humour, is a signal between people: it says “I’m at ease with you”. In a classic study, people laughed more than thirty times as often when they were with others as when nobody was there. And laughing together seems to help people feel closer.
We think we laugh at funny things. The neuroscientist Robert Provine, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, wanted to check, and went out to listen to how people really laugh: in shopping centres, in restaurants, in bars.
What he found was surprising. In his 1993 study, more than 99% of laughs came in the pauses, at the end of a phrase, without interrupting anyone. And the person laughing most was the one speaking, not the one listening. As a 2018 article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology sums up, most of what was said just before a laugh was not funny at all: ordinary remarks, along the lines of “well, see you around”.
A few years earlier, Provine and Kenneth Fischer had asked a group of university students to keep a diary for a week of when they laughed, smiled or talked, and who they were with. In that 1989 paper they found that laughing was more than thirty times more likely in company than with nobody around, and smiling more than six times.
The figure is best taken for what it is: the striking result of a small study with students. The underlying idea, on the other hand, has been seen many times since.
Provine’s conclusion was that laughter has little to do with humour and a lot to do with bonding. It is a signal between people: it says “I’m at ease with you”, “we belong to the same group”. That is why it is catching, and why it is so hard to laugh with nobody there.
Later research points the same way. In 2014, Scott and colleagues reviewed what was known and described laughter as a social emotion: it appears mostly when we are with others and is linked to affection, to agreeing and to calming things down. They also told apart two kinds of laughter: the kind that escapes us without meaning to, and the kind we use on purpose to go along with a conversation. Both do their job.
In 2012, Dunbar and colleagues ran six experiments, some watching videos in the laboratory and others at live comedy shows. After laughing, people put up with a small physical discomfort better than in the control conditions. The authors suggest that laughing in a group releases endorphins, and that this could help to build bonds between people.
Laughing with others brings people closer and eases the tension of a difficult conversation. It does not cure anything, but it changes the atmosphere, and sometimes that is enough to make a bad day bearable. If you are interested in why pleasant emotions count, even brief ones, we explain it in what positive emotions are for.
Laughter cannot be forced, but you can open some doors to it:
Telling good news opens the way to laughter too. Why joy grows when it is shared is in sharing good news.
In A shared universe you can light a star with “What I’m grateful for” for that moment when someone made you laugh just when you needed it most. There is no need to give names: it is enough to say in a few lines what happened. Other people will see it shine for seven days and can keep it company, perhaps remembering a similar laugh of their own.