WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I tended to fall into bouts of uncontrollable laughter. Basically, once I started laughing, I found it very difficult to stop. The problem was particularly acute in contexts where I wasn\u2019t supposed<\/em> to laugh, when the urge to laugh would become utterly overwhelming\u2014to the extent that I quickly acquired the moniker \u201cGiggling Gertie.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the best descriptions I have seen of this phenomenon is the \u201cgiggle loop<\/a>.\u201d This phrase was coined by a character named Jeff in the early 2000s British sitcom Coupling.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBasically, it\u2019s like a feedback loop,\u201d Jeff says. \u201cYou\u2019re somewhere quiet. There\u2019s people. It\u2019s a solemn occasion: a wedding. No! It\u2019s a minute\u2019s silence for someone who\u2019s died. \u2026 Suddenly, out of nowhere, a thought comes into your head: The worst thing I could possibly do during a minute\u2019s silence is laugh. And as soon as you think that you almost do <\/em>laugh\u2014automatic reaction!\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing like getting caught in a giggle loop, where the desire to laugh builds until it bursts out at a disastrous moment. Only then do we often realize that laughter is a rather strange phenomenon. Although we usually think of laughter as a response to something funny, sometimes laughter is no laughing matter!<\/p>\n As an anthropologist specializing in health and medicine, laughter isn\u2019t really in my professional wheelhouse\u2014unless you subscribe to the view that laughter is the best medicine. My interest in the topic is more personal, not just because of my history as a former Giggling Gertie, but because it\u2019s a behavior that is much less straightforward than it seems.<\/p>\n Ideally, laughter is something we share.\u00a0According to anthropologist\u00a0Munro Edmonson, laughter is sociable<\/a>; it ideally invites a similar response. Indeed, it has contagious qualities: When we hear someone laugh, we often laugh, or at least smile, ourselves\u2014an effect consistently shown through<\/a> psychological research. This is how we ended up with canned laughter<\/a> on sitcoms. Studios realized that the sound of laughter made their shows seem funnier to their audiences, while also giving them a degree of control over when people laughed.<\/p>\n But laughter is rather different when you\u2019re the only one doing it. Consider actor Natalie Portman\u2019s awkward chuckles after delivering a bad joke during her speech at the Golden Globe Awards in 2011. The 4-second laugh quickly became the subject of endless looped videos. As the cultural studies scholar Fran McDonald\u00a0shows\u00a0in her analysis<\/a> of the incident, \u201claughter without humor appears to render us mechanical, terrifying, monstrous.\u201d<\/p>\n According to\u00a0the anthropologist Munro Edmonson, the central feature of laughter is aspiration: We release a forceful puff of air as we laugh.<\/p>\n But laughter is also characterized by repetition. In fact, given the extraordinary variability in the sounds people make<\/a> when they laugh, repetition is what makes laughter universally recognizable. This is why writers conventionalize laughter as \u201che-he-he,\u201d \u201cha-ha-ha,\u201d and \u201cho-ho-ho\u201d (well, at least if you\u2019re Santa Claus<\/a>). Notably, this feature isn\u2019t exclusive to English representations. Edmonson observed that laughter<\/a> is represented in Russian as\u00a0xe<\/em>, xe<\/em>, xe<\/em>; in Tzotzil\u2014a Mayan language spoken in Mexico\u2014it\u2019s\u00a0\u2018eh \u2018eh \u2018eh<\/em>.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t fully understand why humans make this sound when we laugh. When 19th-century biologist Charles Darwin set out to explore the biology of feelings in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals<\/em><\/a>, he wrote, \u201cwhy the sounds which man utters when he is pleased have the peculiar reiterated character of laughter we do not know.\u201d However, the response seems to occur well before culture is embedded in our behaviors: Recognizable laughter is evident in babies from 4 months old<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nor is laughter unique to humans. Great apes respond to being tickled<\/a> in much the same way that humans do. Of course, because chimps, bonobos, et cetera have a different vocal apparatus than humans, it sounds<\/a> more like a dog panting or a person having an asthma attack or energetic sex. However,\u00a0these primate sounds have the same \u201cpeculiar, reiterated character\u201d that Darwin highlighted in humans. This is why laughter is characterized by scientists as a cross-species phenomenon.<\/p>\n Yet, while laughter is evident in the play of other primates, it\u2019s unclear whether they have a sense of humor. Recent research provides<\/a> evidence of a capacity for teasing through nonverbal behavior. But, as the evolutionary psychologist Robert Provine noted<\/a>, \u201cthere is no evidence that they respond to apparently humorous behavior, their own or that of others, with laughter.\u201d<\/p>\n Giving\u00a0meaning\u00a0<\/em>to laughter seems to be distinctively human.<\/p>\n While some laughter is deliberate, much of it is outside conscious control\u2014an attribute that goes a long way toward explaining the widespread Euro-American ambivalence toward the act. According to the literary scholar Sebastian Coxon, a growing anxiety about mirth<\/a> is evident in the European historical record from the late Middle Ages. For example, the 16th-century Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, better known for advising children to \u201creplace farts with coughs,\u201d also warned against \u201cloud laughter and immoderate mirth.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, Erasmus singled out the \u201cneighing sound that some people make when they laugh\u201d for particular opprobrium\u2014an impulse evident in the contemporary tendency to compare unrestrained laughter with the cries of animals: \u201chowling\u201d with laughter, \u201chooting\u201d in delight, \u201csnorting\u201d with amusement, and so on. Indeed, while the term \u201cguffaw\u201d might not be borrowed from animal noises, it certainly sounds like it could be.<\/p>\n These characterizations reveal an attempt to draw laughter into the realm of taste and civility\u2014categories that are strongly tied to gender and class strictures. For instance, in an 1860 etiquette guide titled\u00a0The Ladies\u2019 Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness: A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0readers are counseled to moderate their laughter during a dinner party so that it\u2019s neither too loud nor too soft: \u201cTo laugh in a suppressed way, has the appearance of laughing at those around you, and a loud, boisterous laugh is always unlady-like.\u201d<\/p>\n Social judgments abound not just in relation to how<\/em> we laugh but what<\/em> we laugh at\u2014as an early 19th-century artwork attests. \u201cLaughter,\u201d etched by British artist and social commentator Thomas Rowlandson, depicts a man laughing at his cat adorned in a bonnet and cloak. The caption reads:<\/p>\n \u201cLaughter is one of the most pleasing of the Passions and is with difficulty accounted for, as risibility is frequently excited from the most simple causes\u2014as is the case with the Countryman and his Cat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The implication is that \u201cunsophisticated\u201d countrymen lack \u201cclass\u201d and are therefore easily amused. (For the record, I am equally unsophisticated, because I will never not find cats pictured with human props funny.)<\/p>\n Still, despite the association between humor and taste, it\u2019s often physical comedy that gets the most laughs. It\u2019s not a coincidence that the first truly global hit comedy was The Gods Must Be Crazy<\/em><\/a>, whose sublime \u201cTati-like slapstick routines<\/a>\u201d drew audiences from New York and Caracas to Tokyo and Lagos, despite being widely condemned by film reviewers as apartheid propaganda.<\/p>\n Indeed, screenwriters\u00a0have long predicted<\/a><\/u>\u00a0that physical humor will become increasingly prominent in Hollywood comedies because it \u201ctranscends dialogue and even most cultural differences,\u201d and movies must increasingly appeal to a global market to produce reliable returns. (As far as I can tell, the future of Hollywood films is basically Marvel movies and slapstick comedies.)<\/p>\n This also helps explain the success of shows like America\u2019s Funniest Home Videos<\/em><\/a> and Total Wipeout<\/em><\/a>, which largely fall into the genre of comical mishaps. \u201cThis is unbelievably stupid,\u201d I used to declare whenever my husband watched the latter, where contestants completed ridiculous obstacle courses in the hopes of winning 10,000 pounds, and audiences tuned in to see them<\/a>\u00a0repeatedly being hit by objects, falling off objects, and falling onto objects. But I would laugh despite myself, because I simply couldn\u2019t help it<\/em>.<\/p>\n As McDonald observes<\/a>, laughter disrupts the notion of a stable, coherent self\u2014reflected in terms like \u201ccracking up\u201d and \u201cbursting.\u201d Moreover, unrestrained laughter doesn\u2019t just signify a lack of personal control; it can be politically dangerous as well. The literary historian Joseph Butwin writes of \u201cseditious laughter<\/a>\u201d as a weapon of the oppressed that can serve to destabilize hierarchies and power relations.<\/p>\n In the end, it\u2019s clear that laughter is a deeply curious thing. It\u2019s simultaneously the most social of human expressions and the one most\u00a0disruptive\u00a0<\/em>of social edifices and rules. Shared, sanctioned laughter might bring us together, but unsanctioned laughter shows the cracks, revealing that we\u2019re not quite who we think.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Editors\u2019 note: This essay was adapted from \u201cThe Sheer Strangeness of Laughter,\u201d published on the author\u2019s <\/em>Silent but Deadly Substack<\/em><\/a> on October 23, 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n The post The Strange Power of Laughter<\/a> appeared first on SAPIENS<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.sapiens.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/01\/02-Hogarth-The-Laughing-Audience-910x1024.jpg\")
WHAT\u2019S SO FUNNY? <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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LAUGHTER AND \u201cCIVILITY\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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LAUGH AND THE WORLD LAUGHS WITH YOU?<\/strong><\/h2>\n