The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter

The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter
Gregory A. Bryant, C. Athena Aktipis
Evolution and Human Behavior (Mar 2014)


Abstract

Laughter is a universally produced vocal signal that plays an important role in human social interaction. Researchers have distinguished between spontaneous and volitional laughter, but no empirical work has explored possible acoustic and perceptual differences. If spontaneous laughter is an honest signal of cooperative intent (e.g., derived from play breathing patterns), then the ability to mimic these sounds volitionally could have shaped perceptual systems to be attuned to aspects of spontaneous laughs that are harder to fake—features associated with phylogenetically older vocal control systems. We extracted spontaneous laughs from conversations between friends and volitional laughs elicited by instruction without other provocation. In three perception experiments we found that, 1) participants could distinguish between spontaneous and volitional laughter, 2) when laugh speed was increased (duration decreased 33% and pitch held constant), all laughs were judged as more “real,” with judgment accuracy increasing for spontaneous laughter and decreasing for volitional laughter, and 3) when the laughs were slowed down (duration increased 260% and pitch altered proportionally), participants could not distinguish spontaneous laughs from nonhuman vocalizations but could identify volitional laughs as human-made. These findings and acoustic data suggest that spontaneous and volitional laughs are produced by different vocal systems, and that spontaneous laughter might share features with nonhuman animal vocalizations that volitional laughter does not.