On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Ken Steele went:
http://tinyurl.com/34ltfg
An article on laughter from the NY Times.
Yes--that article says pretty much what I expected. In graduate
school in 1991, I wrote a paper (for a class) on the ethology of
laughter. One of my sources was:
Lockard JS, Fahrenbruch CE, Smith JL, and Morgan CJ. Smiling and
laughter: Different phyletic origins? Bull Psychonom Soc 10(3):
183-186, 1977.
I summarized it, in part, as follows:
"141 adult human dyads were covertly observed in four types of social
situations--goal-oriented activities (for instance, buying a plane
ticket), work breaks, chance encounters, and leisure episodes.
Smiling was coded into four intensities (in increasing order, S1
through S4); the same was done for laughter (L1 through L4), with each
intensity carefully defined. [...] Lockard does mention a uniquely
human development: faking it. That probably corresponds to the lowest
intensity of laughter, the only one seen in goal-directed situations.
Lockard suggests that this is a learned, ritualized blend of smiling
and laughter, seen especially in highly affiliative and submissive
interactions (as with one's employer). Such laughter sounds forced,
as if it were a deliberate auditory accenting of a submissive smile."
--David Epstein
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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