"When it comes to bonding our relationships through the endorphin mechanism, we do have a bit of a problem. We live in super-large social groups where not everyone is as familiar with each other as they are in small monkey and ape groups. At one level, our solution to this problem has been to invent conversation. But conversation on its own is very dull stuff and hardly the basis for an intimate relationship. What we seem to have done is to use laughter to bridge the gap, because laughter turns out to be a very good releaser of endorphins. Laughter seems to produce a more generalised effect that applies rather more equally to everyone who happens to be in the conversation at the time, whereas physical contact is very much a one-on-one thing. Laughter allows us to trigger an endorphin effect in a less risky way."
Robin Dunbar
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