Laughter: A Scientific Investigation [Hardcover]

Robert R. Provine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 2000

The first comprehensive, scientific--and often humorous--look at one of our most common yet complex and puzzling behaviors, by the recognized expert in the field

Guffaws in a crowded bar, giggles that punctuate lovers' murmurs, a blaring TV laugh track--the sounds of laughter are a fundamental part of life's texture. Science has largely overlooked this basic component of our humanity, but in Laughter neurobiologist Robert Provine takes a long-anticipated and wide-ranging look at this intriguing and surprising topic.

Based on a decade of work in the field, Provine reveals that laughter is mostly a tool in social relationships rather than a simple response to humor; that women laugh more at men than vice versa; that speakers tend to laugh more than their audiences; that tickling rather than being a reflex is actually a form of communication. Drawing upon the latest evidence, much of it presented here for the first time, Provine's analysis of laughter includes such diverse topics as the sonic analysis of laughter, how laughter has been musically notated in opera scores, a 1962 laughing epidemic that immobilized an entire African community, and the genuine health benefits of laughing.

Laughter is the rare science book that is both a groundbreaking study and wonderfully entertaining exploration of the human animal.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Is it really the best medicine? Neurobiologist Robert R. Provine discovered that no scientist had ever looked into the weird, uncontrollable, and very human phenomenon of laughter, so he started off on his own. Laughter: A Scientific Investigation is his warm and--of course--funny report on how and why we giggle and snort with such regularity. Basing his views on field research conducted in a broad array of social situations (laughter being notoriously difficult to evoke in the laboratory), Provine posits that we use it as a universal, preverbal means of communication. Though animal research is controversial, it suggests that apes establish and maintain relationships using laughlike behavior, so it could be the missing link between animal communication and true language. He also explores instances in which we seem to laugh our way into and out of social situations, and includes a list of tips for keeping the laughs flowing. The irony of the scientific community not taking laughter seriously isn't lost on Provine, and he takes every opportunity to remind his fellows that even the seemingly most trivial matters can hide the most profound truths. If that isn't funny, what is? --Rob Lightner

From Scientific American

One morning the principal's voice sounded over the intercom of my high school with the shocking announcement that a popular French teacher had just died in front of his class. Everyone fell silent. While the principal went on to explain that it had been a heart attack, I couldn't keep myself from a laughing fit. To this day, I feel embarrassed. What is it about laughter that makes it unstoppable even if triggered by circumstances that aren't amusing? Extreme bouts of laughter are positively worrisome, marked by loss of motor control, shedding of tears, gasping for air, even the wetting of pants while rolling on the floor! What a weird trick has been played on our linguistic species to express itself with such stupid "ha ha ha" sounds. Why don't we leave it at a cool "that was funny"? These questions are old, going back to philosophers who have puzzled over why one of humanity's finest achievements--its sense of humor--is expressed in such an animal-like fashion. There can be no doubt that laughter is an inborn characteristic. It is a universal human expression that we share with our closest animal relatives, the apes. This was already known to Charles Darwin and confirmed by a Dutch ethologist, Jan van Hooff, who set out to elucidate under which circumstances apes utter their hoarse, puffing laughing sounds. He concluded that laughter is associated with a playful attitude in both humans and apes, even though play is considerably more physical (such as tickling and wrestling) in apes. Laughter: A Scientific Investigation builds on this work in that it assumes animal origins of laughter and follows van Hooff's distinction between the laugh and the smile. The two expressions are often mentioned in the same breath because they tend to grade into each other, yet they derive from quite different primate displays, with the smile expressing affection and appeasement rather than playfulness. Robert R. Provine has set himself the task of cracking the laugh code, as he calls it, rather than tackling the much more complex issue of humor. The two may appear inseparable, but one of the revelations of this book is that the stand-up comedy model of laughter as a response to jokes is mistaken. The large majority of laughs measured by Provine and his students in the shopping malls and on the sidewalks of the human natural habitat occurred after statements that were far from humorous. In spontaneous social contacts, people burst into laughter at unfunny comments such as "I see your point" and "Put those cigarettes away" far more often than at funny ones, such as "He tried to blow his nose, but he missed." This shows that humor is not the issue: social relationships probably are. Laughter is a loud display that much of the time seems to signal mutual liking and well-being. Some of its uses are unique to our species, such as the guffaws of bonding. When a group of people laugh, sometimes at the expense of outsiders, they broadcast solidarity and togetherness not unlike a howling pack of wolves. According to Vanderbilt University psychologist Jo-Anne Bachorowski [see "More Than the Best Medicine," News and Analysis, Scientific American, August], the unifying function of laughter is particularly clear among men. Provine expands on this theme with the observation that women laugh more in response to men's remarks than the reverse. The asymmetry between the sexes starts early in life, between boys and girls, and seems to be cross-cultural. The man as laugh-getter also turned up in an analysis of personal ads, in which Provine found that women generally sought partners with a sense of humor, which male advertisers claimed to have in great measure. Provine's well-written, often amusing and always fascinating exposé presents laughter in all its complexity and with all its contradictions. He does not try to sell us a one-issue explanation the way so many have tried before, such as that humor is a celebration of the detection of incongruity (Schopenhauer), an expression of derision (Hobbes), a safety valve for pent-up energy (Freud), and so on. Provine notes the armchair background of these high-flung notions and makes no secret that even after all his research he still finds laughter a baffling behavior that can be both hostile (as in ethnic jokes) and congenial and both a response to subtle humor and triggered by something as banal as a laughing box or a Tickle Me Elmo doll. The amazing contagiousness of laughter even works across species. Below my Office window at the Yerkes primate center, I often hear chimpanzees laugh when they tickle one another (they have the same tickling spots as we do: under their armpits and on their bellies), and I cannot suppress a chuckle in response. Tickle matches must be the original context of laughter, and the fact that tickling oneself is notoriously ineffective attests to its social significance. Tickling and laughter are essentially play patterns, with the latter having achieved a considerably expanded meaning in our species. The book reads like a first exploration of a behavior so common that it has been overlooked by science. As Provine notes, it may not be good for one's reputation to study jokes and laughter. In his eagerness to claim this new field for himself, however, the author neglects to mention people who went before him or who are currently tackling the same domain. For example, the pioneering work of van Hooff is buried in a footnote, even though it addressed some of the same points 25 years earlier. Toward the book's end, the author discusses neural disorders associated with laughter and laughing epidemics as well as the opposite: the healing power of laughter exploited by some churches and therapists. It is obvious that his research not only opens new avenues into human social life but also carries mental health implications. My own reaction to the death of a teacher was only a mild case of laughter under odd circumstances compared with the clinical, sometimes fatal cases reviewed here. The fact that we can lose control over this expression, that it may become mirthless, tragic, eerie, sly or sardonic, shows how close comedy can get to tragedy. We like to see ourselves as fully rational beings, but much of this dissolves when someone yanks our laughing muscle.

FRANS B. M. DE WAAL, author of Chimpanzee Politics and Good Natured, is director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta and professor of psychology at Emory University.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 258 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1 edition (October 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670893757
• ISBN-13: 978-0670893751
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,055,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Laughing Matter, January 5, 2001

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (Hardcover)

Don't expect to get lots of laughs by just reading _Laughter: A Scientific Investigation_ (Viking) by Robert R. Provine. It's not merely that Provine is covering a serious subject. He is as good as his word: his book is a scientific investigation, and he is neuroscientist by profession who has done original research on laughter published in such non-newsstand rags as _Ethology_ and _Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society_. And it's not that Provine is an unentertaining, dour writer; he has a light touch, and good explicative skills, he is happy to share a joke, and his stories about some of the ways he has done experiments are funny. For instance, we can share his bemusement over his initial explorations of why people laugh; he got a group into a clinic and played them funny tapes. He failed to get anything but a few chuckles. It was his first demonstration that laughter was a social behavior, not a laboratory one. He went on to study people in social situations.

Similarly, the reason you can't expect to laugh much from reading Provine's book is found in the book itself. Laughter is not something you can most reliably expect to do alone reading a book; it is something we do as a social behavior. Its "sociality," the ratio of social to solitary performance of the act, is very high. Provine had his undergraduate students keep logs of their behavior, including laughing, and found that we are thirty times more likely to laugh when with someone else. Another study showed that eye contact between two companions increases the likelihood of laughter. Laughter has a nonlinguistic role of holding people together.

Provine writes about many other curious studies, about the illnesses that can impair or propagate laughter, about the neurological explorations of the under-researched universal behavior of tickling, about the physiology of laughter and speech, about laugh epidemics that can paralyze schools, and about the Pentecostals that get "drunk in the Spirit" with laugh sessions. Wide-ranging and entertaining, _Laughter_ provides us with interesting studies on something we take for granted, and gives insight on just how hard doing such studies can be because of the commonness of the phenomenon involved. Provine wisely does not concentrate on wit, humor, or the meaning of things that influence us to laugh. It's laughter itself that is the subject, and given the nature of the theme, one comes away with even more admiration for the subtlety, cleverness, and capacity of the human mind.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Breath of Fresh Air, October 19, 2000

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (Hardcover)

I have been reading, writing, and teaching about humor and laughter for over a decade, and this is one of the best books I have seen. The title is an accurate prediction of the book's content: The approach blends the skepticism, humility, and freedom from biases that are the defining traits of the true scientist. Provine pursues laughter in its larger context of our history as a species rather than the usual context of the history of Western Thought. He is seeking what laughter actually is and does, not what the army of laughter promotors desire it to be and do. This is, in some ways, a book of questions - the right questions - that will generate productive research. Because Provine follows laughter everywhere it leads, the resulting presentation is wide ranging, taking the reader into a variety of fields that are rarely if ever addressed in the same volume. Although some of these fields (e.g., opera and brain disorders) are highly specialized and esoteric, Provine defines terms and provides background in a way that permits readers to accompany him into unfamiliar territory. This book belongs in the reference library of everyone whose vocation or avocation touches the study of laughter. I would also recommend this book for any thoughtful reader in pursuit of fresh insights. Although some parts may not be of interest to everyone, there is plenty of material about those accessible and universally-appealing topics of sex, power, and the gender wars.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Widely Appealing/Useful Laughter Insight, December 30, 2000

By 

Prof David T Wright (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (Hardcover)

Despite not digging deeply into De Bono's lateral thinking/humor etc texts (?perhaps a style thing), I am very glad to have read the seemingly similar-topic 'Laughter' by Provine. It's not overstating to say that this book is probably relevant to all who deal with people (i.e. everyone)- addressing as it does conversations, relationships, family, mental & physical health, tickling fights (!), evolution, group dynamics, marketing and consumerism in the media and religion, and coaching performance.

The well referenced, very well written and approachable chapters span: introduction; philosophy and history; natural history; sound lab and opera; chimpanzee paleohumorology; ticklish relationships; contagious laughter and the brain; abnormal clinical laughter; health; and ten tips (find a friend, more is merrier, interpersonal contact, casual atmosphere, laugh-ready attitude, exploit contagious laughter, humorous materials, remove inhibitions, stage events, and tickle).

There are interesting clues about laughter and courtship (in 3745 lonely hearts adverts), and well as social/sexual rank in organizations and behavior in "laughter episodes"; as well as many other useful scientific, and sometimes counter-intuitive findings over a decade of `laughter research'.

Strengths include: the depth of fascinating historical, neuroscience, experimental, and contextual information; the superb approachable writing style; the fact that keenest intellects have theoretically grasped at defining the significance of laughter (from the ancient Greeks onwards); and the absolute relevance to almost all for this seemingly-peripheral neglected area of research work.

Certainly one of the best-written, supported, rigorous, entertaining and useful books that this reviewer has come across- and more useful that many `pop psychology' texts for understanding about the human condition, as well as laughter itself.