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Related Experiment Video

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Tickling, a Technique for Inducing Positive Affect When Handling Rats

Tickling, a Technique for Inducing Positive Affect When Handling Rats

Published on: May 8, 2018

Laughing, grooming, and pub science.

Robert R Provine¹

¹Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland 21250, USA. provine@umbc.edu

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

|November 22, 2012

Summary

Laughter acts as a social grooming mechanism, increasing group size by threefold. This "grooming-at-a-distance" may explain the evolution of large hominin social groups, unlike other primates.

Area of Science:

Evolutionary anthropology
Primatology
Social cognition

Background:

Social grooming is crucial for maintaining primate group cohesion.
Hominin social group sizes are exceptionally large compared to other primates.
The evolutionary drivers of large social groups remain debated.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of laughter as a social bonding mechanism.
To explore the potential link between laughter and the expansion of social group size in hominins.
To test the hypothesis of 'grooming-at-a-distance' facilitated by laughter.

Main Methods:

Naturalistic observation of social interactions in a pub setting.
Analysis of conversational exchanges and laughter occurrences.

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Quantification of social group size and grooming interactions.

Main Results:

Laughter was observed to significantly increase the size of social grooming groups.
A three-fold increase in group size was associated with laughter-mediated social bonding.
Laughter functions as a scalable form of social grooming.

Conclusions:

Laughter serves as an effective 'grooming-at-a-distance' mechanism.
This mechanism likely played a key role in the evolution of large hominin social networks.
Laughter provides an evolutionary advantage for forming and maintaining larger social groups.