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Part 8 Why do people laugh?

You are going to read an article by a psychologist about laughter. For questions 47 – 56, choose from Psychologist Robert Provine writes about why and when we laugh.
the sections (A – D). The sections may be chosen more than once.
A
Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet. In 1962, what began as an isolated fit of laughter in a group of schoolgirls in Tanzania rapidly rose to
epidemic proportions. Contagious laughter spread from one individual to the next and between
communities. Fluctuating in intensity, the laughter epidemic lasted for around two and a half years and
during this time at least 14 schools were closed and about 1,000 people afflicted. Laughter epidemics, big
Which section and small, are universal. Laughter yoga, an innovation of Madan Kataria of Mumbai, taps into contagious
laughter for his Laughter Yoga clubs. Members gather in public places to engage in laughter exercises to
energise the body and improve health. Kataria realised that only laughter is needed to stimulate laughter –
comments on which person laughs within a verbal exchange? 47 no jokes are necessary. When we hear laughter, we become beasts of the herd, mindlessly laughing in turn,
producing a behavioural chain reaction that sweeps through our group.
uses a comparison with other physical functions to support an idea? 48 B
Laughter is a rich source of information about complex social relationships, if you know where to look.
gives reasons why understanding laughter supplies very useful insights? 49 Learning to ‘read’ laughter is particularly valuable because laughter is involuntary and hard to fake,
providing uncensored, honest accounts of what people really think about each other. It is a decidedly social
signal. The social context of laughter was established by 72 student volunteers in my classes, who recorded
refers to someone who understood the self-perpetuating nature of laughter? 50
their own laughter, its time of occurrence and social circumstance in small notebooks (laugh logbooks)
during a one-week period. The sociality of laughter was striking. My logbook keepers laughed about 30
cites a study that involved watching people without their knowledge? 51 times more when they were around others than when they were alone – laughter almost disappeared among
solitary subjects.
describes laughter having a detrimental effect? 52
C
Further clues about the social context of laughter came from the surreptitious observation of 1,200
criticises other research for failing to consider a key function of laughter? 53 instances of conversational laughter among anonymous people in public places. My colleagues and I noted
the gender of the speaker and audience (listener), whether the speaker or the audience laughed, and what
explains that laughing does not usually take precedence over speaking? 54 was said immediately before laughter occurred. Contrary to expectation, most conversational laughter was
not a response to jokes or humorous stories. Fewer than 20% of pre-laugh comments were remotely joke-
describes people observing themselves? 55
like or humorous. Most laughter followed banal remarks such as ‘Are you sure?’ and ‘It was nice meeting
you too.’ Mutual playfulness, in-group feeling and positive emotional tone – not comedy – mark the social
settings of most naturally occurring laughter. Another counterintuitive discovery was that the average
encourages checking that a proposition is correct? 56 speaker laughs about 46% more often than the audience. This contrasts with the scenario in stand-up
comedy – a type of comedy performance in which a non-laughing speaker presents jokes to a laughing
audience. Comedy performance in general proves an inadequate model for everyday conversational
laughter. Analyses that focus only on audience behaviour (a common approach) are obviously limited
because they neglect the social nature of the laughing relationship.

D
Amazingly, we somehow navigate society, laughing at just the right times, while not consciously knowing
what we are doing. In our sample of 1,200 laughter episodes, the speaker and the audience seldom
interrupted the phrase structure of speech with a ha-ha. Thus, a speaker may say ‘You are wearing that?
Ha-ha,’ but rarely ‘You are wearing… ha-ha… that?’ The occurrence of laughter during pauses, at the end
of phrases, and before and after statements and questions suggests that a neurologically based process
governs the placement of laughter. Speech is dominant over laughter because it has priority access to the
single vocalisation channel, and laughter does not violate the integrity of phrase structure. Laughter in
speech is similar to punctuation in written communication. If punctuation of speech by laughter seems
unlikely, consider that breathing and coughing also punctuate speech. Better yet, why not test my theory of
punctuation by examining the placement of laughter in conversation around you, focusing on the placement
of ha-ha laughs. It's a good thing that these competing actions are neurologically orchestrated. How
complicated would our lives be if we had to plan when to breathe, talk and laugh.