A new study tested laughter with volunteers from 24 different cultures worldwide and found that about 60 percent of the time a mere 1-second audio clip was sufficient for the listener to determine whether the participants were friends or strangers.
It’s the same around the world: how we laugh reveals whether we are with a friend or a stranger. A new study from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) tested their theories with volunteers from 24 different cultures worldwide and found that about 60 percent of the time a mere 1-second audio clip was sufficient for the listener to determine whether the laughter was between friends or strangers.
Study lead Greg Bryant said, “In a highly cooperative species such as ours, it is important for individuals to correctly identify the social alliances of others. If laughter helps people accomplish that, it has likely played a role in social communication leading to cooperative interactions.
The study, which was reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved playing audio clips of laughter to volunteers. The clips, which recordings of college students having conversations, featured some interactions between friends and some between strangers. Bryant then isolated the laughter parts of the recordings in a bite of sound only about 1 second long.
For example, listening to only 1 second of laughter could reveal to a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer that two college girls in California were friends.
Despite the varying cultures and languages of the listeners, about 61 percent of the time they gave the correct answers. Although the findings were only slightly better than guessing, they were consistent across all societies. Psychologist and neuroscientist Robert Provine, of the University of Maryland (not involved in the study) says this is a big deal. “That suggests we’re dealing with a very basic aspect of human nature,” he says.
The PNAS report suggests that people tend to laugh louder and in a more excited and animated manner when with friends than with strangers. The researchers also concluded that the manner of laughter can be used to identify whether someone considers you a friend or not.
Carolyn McGettigan, a neuroscientist from the Royal Holoway University of London, agrees that the study is “really impressive.” She said it suggests that the scale of the study is an achievement that suggests that laughter among friends is a special sound even in the most remote areas on Earth.
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