Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

the answer is cooperation: Owren and Bachorowski, “The Evolution of Emotional Expression: A ‘Selfish-Gene’ Account of Smiling and Laughter in Early Hominids and Humans, in Emotions: Current Issues and Future Directions, ed. Tracy J. Mayne and George A. Bonanno (New York: Guilford Press, 2001), 151–91.

The first is contagion: Robert Provine details one of my favorite examples of contagious laughter. In a grammar school, girls in one class started laughing, and this outbreak spread throughout the school. Girls laughed for days until the school had to be closed. Notwithstanding the difficulties this contagious laughter produced for the conduct of class, these girls, Bachorowski and Owren argue, are bonding through the contagious delights of laughter.

when we hear others laugh, mirror neurons represent that expressive behavior: N. Osaka et al., “An Emotion-Based Facial Expression Word Activates Laughter Module in the Human Brain: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study,” Neuroscience Letters 340, no. 2 (2003): 127–30.

In my own research with executives: For the past fifteen years, I have videotaped executives from around the world conducting negotiations with other executives, and then coded those videotapes for different emotional displays. As reliable as the handshake to begin the negotiation and dramatic displays of anger and contempt when the tension mounts is the occurrence of laughter in the initial stages. This laughter paves the way for increased trust and more integrative bargaining, where the two parties more effectively understand and act upon their respective interests. M. W. Morris and D. Keltner “How Emotions Work: An Analysis of the Social Functions of Emotional Expression in Negotiations,” Review of Organizational Behavior 22 (2000): 1–50.

Workplace studies find that coworkers often laugh when negotiating potential conflicts: R. L. Coser, “Laughter among Colleagues,” Human Relations 12 (1960): 171–82.

Strangers who laugh while flirting: K. Grammer, “Strangers Meet: Laughter and Nonverbal Signs of Interest in Opposite-Sex Encounters,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 14 (1990): 209–36.

Friends whose laughs join in antiphonal form: Smoski and Bachorowski, “Antiphonal Laughter.”

For couples who divorced on average 13.9 years after they were married: While much has been made of the toxic effects of negative emotions such as contempt and criticism in marriage, Gottman and Levenson and others have begun to look at the benefits of positive emotions, such as mirth and laughter. In their writing about laughter, Gottman and Levenson suggest that problematic discussions in intimate life are like negative affect cascades—feelings of anger and resentment rise and build upon one another. Couples who can exit from these cascades fare much better, and one manner of exiting is laughter. Gottman and Levenson, “Timing of Divorce.”

Hobbes: Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 43.

It is for these reasons that Steve Pinker called: Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).

In his analysis of the development of pretense: A. M. Leslie, “Pretense and Representation: The Origins of ‘Theory of Mind,’” Psychological Review 94, no. 4 (1987): 412–26.

Linguist Paul Drew carefully analyzed the unfolding of family teasing: P. Drew, “Po-Faced Receipts of Teases,” Linguistics 25 (1987): 219–53.

For the past fifteen years: G. A. Bonanno and S. Kaltman, “Toward an Integrative Perspective on Bereavement,” Psychological Bulletin 125 (1999): 760–76.

To test this thesis, George and I undertook a study: G. A. Bonanno and D. Keltner, “Facial Expressions of Emotion and the Course of Conjugal Bereavement,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 106 (1997): 126–37.

We coded participants’ references to several existential themes related to bereavement: G. A. Bonanno and D. Keltner, “The Coherence of Emotion Systems: Comparing ‘On-Line’ Measures of Appraisal and Facial Expressions, and Self-Report,” Cognition and Emotion 18 (2004): 431–44.

TEASE

 

Not so, reason: The Zahavis make a wonderful case for the role of provocation in animal world. They suggest that, as with humans, nonhuman species often need to assess each other’s commitments, and they do so through provocation. This analysis is very much in keeping with Robert Frank’s analysis of the importance of emotion in motivating commitments, and was central to how members of my lab thought about the functions of teasing in human social life. A. Zahavi and A. Zahavi, The Handicap Principle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).