D. Huron
OSU, Music
Laugh 'til you cry: On the common origin of laughter and crying
Abstract:
Most laughter is not in response to overt humor (Provine, 2000). Laughter can also arise from exposure to nitrous oxide or be expressed in forms such as nervous laughter or mocking laughter. Building on Ramachandran's (1998) "false alarm" theory, Kottler's (2001) work on crying, and Van Hoof's (1967) work in ethology, I propose an integrated theory of laughter and crying. I suggest that both laughter and weeping arose from a common ancestral behavior (social panting) characterized by vocalized punctuated exhaling. In the case of grief, the pulmonary behavior was subsequently linked to an allergic response in which watery eyes, nasal congestion, pharyngeal constriction, and histamine‐induced facial inflammation distinguished the grief form of vocalized panting from the laughter form. I suggest that laughter and crying derived from a single social signal that bifurcated into two different signals: both are responses to threat that are cognitively appraised as consequential (crying) or inconsequential (laughter).
