Thumbs, Toes, and Tears

by Chip Walter

  Chimpanzees, however, don’t chop their pants into short little pieces. They are longer and deliver one pant per breath. They do this because, like most four-legged creatures (remember, they mostly knuckle-walk), the pattern of their breathing is constrained by the rhythm of their walking. One step, one breath.15 Chimps don’t have the same precise control over the lungs and the muscles that control their breathing that we do. Their breathing and play-panting are related to their four-leggedness.

  Provine says we have been able to commandeer these breathing muscles because upright walking released us from the one-step, one-breath formula.16 If he is right, this means that speech has left its signature on the sounds and rhythms of our laughter; even though they have very separate origins. We sound the way we do when we laugh, partly because we evolved the ability to speak.17 And not only that, we speak and laugh the way we do because our big toes enabled us to stand upright and learn to breathe differently in the first place.

  …

  The facial expressions that go along with our laughter are another matter, although these also trace their origins back to play and primal forms of communication. Not that the path to these origins is even slightly straightforward.

  When chimps are truly threatened or angry and ready to attack, they pull back their lips and completely bare their teeth. They scream and hoot and generally make as much of a ruckus as they can. There is no real fore-thought that goes into these snarls, or any of the other antics that accompany them. It is all instinctual and unplanned, genetically driven.

  Jan van Hooff, an ethiologist at the University of Utrecht, likes to make these points when he lectures while showing the images of a documentary film on human and primate behavior produced by Joost de Haas. He stands by the screen that juxtaposes images of chimps battling and cavorting, with film and pictures of humans laughing uproariously. At first glance these images appear to have nothing to do with one another, but in fact they are connected in some very surprising ways.

  For example, when chimps are playing, they tone down the snarling, aggressive way they bare their teeth in an actual attack by dropping their lower lip over their fangs. This, Hooff says, is a signal that they aren’t really angry. When they do this, their mouths also tend to look more like the way ours do when we laugh, which don’t reveal as many teeth as when we snarl or scream at someone.

  Other parts of the face also are involved. Chimps’ eyes grow wider when they play, which is to say they aren’t battle-intense. And their brow is unfurrowed. Both combine with the panting sound to reinforce the message that this is a mock battle, not the real thing. If somehow the characteristic sound of human laughter could replace the sounds of the chimp’s panting, the resemblance between a laughing human and a playing chimp might look pretty similar.18 However, they wouldn’t be exactly the same for one simple reason: We humans, because we have so many more facial muscles than our cousin chimps and gorillas, can be much more expressive and far more subtle in our expressions. Nevertheless, it is possible to see how our “laugh face” evolved from the same expressions that apes use when they play. They, and we, modify the looks on our faces to say “just kidding.”

  The research that Provine and Hooff have done helps explain why we look and sound the way we do when we laugh, but it still doesn’t explain why laughter always surprises us. As it turns out, however, there is a theory for that, too.

  …

  Try for a moment to listen to a laugh as if you had never heard it before. Out of context, it sounds animal-like—a wild call in the jungle or a secret, primal message sent between two members of an inhuman species. There’s a reason for that. Our laughter has far more in common with the screams of an excited chimp than the eloquence of Winston Churchill. That trait makes it both simultaneously simpler and more mysterious than words. With speech, we form thoughts and then more or less purposefully shape words to express those thoughts. But laughter happens the other way around: We laugh as the result of being mentally and emotionally ambushed.19

  This also happens with other primates and their calls, though the calls aren’t related to humor or even play. When chimps forage in a forest, for example, and come across food, they involuntarily call out in a distinctive way to let the others nearby, usually siblings or immediate family, know they have found something good to eat. This is a little evolutionary trick, a way of upping the survival rate among the family members of a foraging group and spreading the wealth. It is also a kind of sound symbol that says “Over here, food!” But unlike language, it is not learned; the calls are inborn, acquired genetically, and they just erupt in the way most dogs bark when they sense danger. It can’t be helped.

  Jane Goodall tells a great story that reveals just how uncontrollable these sorts of calls are.20 While doing her research, she hid a cache of bananas for the Gombe chimps she lived among near an observation area. One day a particular chimp came upon this fabulous windfall and began to make the involuntary food call. But as the call was escaping its throat, the chimp cupped its hands over its mouth and tried to stifle the sound, the way you and I might try to stifle laughing at something funny we see in church or at a funeral. But this didn’t stop the call any more than we can sometimes stop laughing even when it’s inappropriate. So he stood in the forest, involuntarily informing every chimp within earshot of his tremendous good fortune even though he had slapped his hand over his mouth. Aeons of evolution had the upper hand, so to speak, and the word got out.

  Laughter is the same. We never see it coming, and when it does, we have limited ability to stop it. So it seems that when we laugh, we have one foot in the primal world and one in the modern human one, the one that requires sophisticated intelligence.

  The Best Medicine

  Recent studies have shown that laughter can be a powerful healer. When we laugh, the brain and endocrine system release cocktails of pain-killing, euphoria-producing endorphins and enkephalins as well as dopamine, noradrenaline, and adrenaline. All of these not only put a smile on our faces, they actually make us healthier because they contribute to a strong immune system.

  Endorphins are naturally occurring neurochemicals that kill pain and keep all sorts of discomforts at bay. Some scientists, for example, theorize that people who suffer from severe headaches have lowered levels of endorphins in their systems. Endorphins manage to mitigate pain because the amino acids in them attach to receptors in the brain and spinal cord. When they do, they block impulses that send pain messages from various parts of the body to the cerebral cortex. These are precisely the same receptors in the nervous system that respond to morphine.

  Enkephalins have a similar effect. Like endorphins, they block pain. Opium has such a powerful effect on us because its chemical structure is remarkably similar to many enkephalins. Dopamine, on the other hand, is not a painkiller, but your brain can’t function properly without it. Those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease are victims of low dopamine levels. Obviously, having sufficient supplies on hand is a good thing. Finally, noradrenaline is a neurotransmitter that calms us and reduces stress. When enough of it is in the brain, it keeps the mind from going into overdrives of worry and anxiety.

  The black sheep in this family of chemicals that laughter releases is adrenaline, which is not calming, although surges of it temporarily reduce our sense of pain. The classic times it kicks in are when we are in flight-or-fight mode—when we are in a confrontation with the boss, or a drunk at a bar, or facing a hungry lion on the savanna. It is released by the adrenal gland and increases heart rate, relaxes bronchial and intestinal muscles, stimulates the heart, sharpens the mind, and generally prepares the body for action. It seems an odd chemical to release when we are happy, but it may explain why our metabolism kicks into high gear when we are laughing hard. And perhaps it is the part of laughter that represents the threat before we are relieved whether it is peekaboo or a razor-sharp punch line. Maybe it represents the neurochemically dark side of laughter.

  The positive effects of the
neurotransmitters that laughter releases are so powerful that a field of medicine has grown up around it. In the 1980s writer Norman Cousins came down with ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative connective tissue disease so debilitating he could barely raise his fingers. Doctors gave him a one-in-five-hundred chance of complete recovery. Utterly incapacitated, Cousins was reduced to lying in bed watching television. And that, according to his account, was how he found relief. He noticed that his pain subsided and he had an easier time falling asleep after watching Marx Brothers comedies and Candid Camera episodes. At first he did it simply for a reprieve, but eventually he applied humor and laughter as a kind of treatment. And over time he found that laughter actually began to heal him. Eventually he did make a complete recovery.21

  Cousins’ story inspired some scientists to take a harder look at the healing powers of laughter. Today it turns out to be building an impressive track record. Research at the UCLA Medical Center indicates that not only can watching funny videos help children in the hospital better withstand painful medical procedures for cancer and other diseases and injuries, but it actually releases natural killer cells (NKs), a type of lymphocyte that routinely patrols the body for any cells that are infected or aberrant. Like police, they constantly look for trouble, and when they find it, they try to rub it out.

  Obviously if someone is suffering from cancer or otherwise ill, the body will be subjected to more aberrant or infected cells, so anything that increases the effectiveness of NK lymphocytes is good. And this is apparently exactly what happens when we laugh. A study of the young patients at UCLA revealed that laughter not only generated more NK cells, it also made them more active and efficient. Scientists also saw an increase in disease-fighting B cells, immunoglobulin antibodies that fight respiratory infections, and an increase in a substance called Complement 3, which helps antibodies pierce and destroy the dysfunctional cells they attack.22

  In another study, in Osaka, Japan, twenty-one young males were asked to watch a tourist video and then performances featuring Japan’s most popular comedians. Unlike the UCLA study, the team didn’t find an increase in NK cells, but they did find a 27 to 29 percent increase in their activity. In other words, NK lymphocytes didn’t increase in number, but they were patrolling and killing aberrant cells with more vim and vigor than they were before the laughter. Either way, it seems that the writers of Proverbs had it right when they concluded four thousand years ago, “A merry heart does good like a medicine” (Proverbs 17:22).i

  You might think we do most of our laughing when we are sitting in front of the TV or in a movie theater passively watching a comedian or some comic scene. But it’s not true. The vast majority of the laughing we do is when we are simply enjoying one another’s company. In fact, we are thirty times more likely to laugh when we are socializing than when we are alone.23 This is because the purpose of laughter is all about social bonding and communication.

  Another aspect of Robert Provine’s work illustrates this. For more than a decade he and his students have eavesdropped on groups of humans hanging out, talking, and, above all, laughing in malls, bars, and coffee shops. Notepads in hand, they marked whether speakers were male or female, who laughed when, who laughed most, and what was said right before the laughing began. His student teams came across some fascinating human behaviors, especially when it came to men and women.

  Strangely enough, for example, Provine’s research has shown that we laugh more when we are doing the talking than when we are listening—46 percent more often. And that when we are in mixed sexual company, no matter whether we are speakers or listeners, women laugh 127 percent more often than men. But men, when they are talking, laugh about 7 percent less than their female audience does. In other words, when human beings get together and laugh in mixed company, women do the vast majority of the laughing. And when females are talking, both the men and the women who are listening to them laugh less than they would if a man were talking.

  It also turns out that laughter isn’t so much about sidesplitting wit as it is about subtly and unconsciously lubricating the social process. Provine didn’t find people clustered together getting off great Woody Allen–style one-liners or adroitly exchanging witty remarks. In fact, Provine found that only 20 percent of laughter is the result of a good joke or a killer one-liner. Mostly it was just a nonverbal response to friendly conversation—phrases like, “Look, it’s André!” “Are you sure?” and “It was nice meeting you, too.” Context and relationships and delivery were as important to the laughter as the actual things said.

  In fact, in all of the recording and note-taking Provine and his battalions of students did, the funniest laugh lines they came across were, “You don’t have to drink, just buy us drinks,” and “Do you date within your species?” Funny, but not exactly the stuff of Groucho Marx or Noël Coward. But given the context, given the relationships, given the dynamics, and very likely the facial expressions, people laughed and enjoyed one another, and that was what was most impotant. They were connecting and cohering.

  Laughing, says Provine, is about “mutual playfulness, in-group feeling and positive emotional tone.” On this level you might say it sends a crucial message among the gathered humans that they are all, in effect, on the same page, and therefore in good and safe company. Imagine a group of people at a bar, congregating after work with one standing amid them impassive and unlaughing. Not scowling or aggressively contrary, merely impassive. This person would stand out like a roach on a newly frosted wedding cake. Nor would it be long before someone either made an effort to bring that person into the fold, or ask what was wrong. It is strange, even deeply disturbing, not to laugh when in the company of other laughing people.

  The variety of ways we use laughter to communicate turn out to be far more refined than we might have thought, too. Sometimes we laugh because we don’t know what else to do and it simply seems a safe enough response at the time, a mask more than a communication. This is probably the origin of the nervous laugh. Sometimes we laugh out of deference. It is a subtle way of giving the boss the spotlight or saying, “You’re in charge.” Or sometimes it is a way to mask an angry remark: “You look so much better tonight than usual.”

  That women laugh more than men also reveals another subtle aspect of laughter and the messages it sends. It probably doesn’t mean that men are more innately witty than women. Instead it says something about the social evolution of our species. Remember Dunbar’s theory that in mixed company, men talk more than women because they are lekking, the human equivalent of a peacock strutting. This might be another case of men performing for women, spreading their tail feathers and gauging the level of attention they are getting based on the laughter they generate.

  A 1999 Esquire magazine poll revealed that more than anything, women looked for men who made them laugh.24 On the surface it might seem to mean nothing more than a funny guy is a good time, which is true enough. But it also may mean, in the long run, that the laughter two people share is an excellent indicator of their compatibility. After all, to laugh together about something, you, and those laughing with you, must share the same values and see life through the same lens. Or to go back to the basic tenets of Theory of Mind, you are all empathizing with one another at that moment, imagining that the people around you are experiencing something very similar to what you are experiencing. You are of one mind. And that is comforting.

  Two psychologists, Michael J. Owren and Jo-Anne Bachorowski, have theorized that laughter draws us together in strong and subtle ways the primal calls of apes do, not unlike the food-finding hoots that Jane Goodall noticed. They believe that like primate calls, human laughter evolved basically to get the attention of the others around you (something like the way a baby’s crying gets the attention of a parent). Other forms of communication, like words, body language, and facial expressions, only serve to supercharge the effect laughing can have to make us more sexually attractive, dominant, friendly, accessible, wanted, or admired. If this is true
, laughter may be more about influencing the behavior or perceptions of the people we are with than it is about humor. It is a way of saying, “I’m here, and you want to pay close attention to me. And if you are laughing with me, then I must be succeeding.”25

  This only adds another social facet to the mystery of laughter. If we turned the tables and imagined that we were creatures who never evolved to laugh, we might all have ended up autistics, largely incapable of calibrating our state of mind with the others around us. Autistic children have a hard time laughing appropriately because laughter requires that people engage emotionally. That’s because laughter and the ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes go hand-in-hand.

  Put another way, we bond with those we laugh with, and we laugh most with those we feel most comfortable around. We share our biggest belly laughs with our closest friends. Laughing together says that we are aligned, all part of the same clan, members of the troop. When we laugh together it is among the few times that we don’t have to apply heaps of mental energy to imagining what those around us are feeling and thinking. For the moment at least it is not necessary to figure out what is on everyone else’s mind because we already know; we find the same thing funny. It is almost as if, when we are gathered in social clusters, laughter has become a way to check in on those around us to see if they are thinking what we are thinking. It is a nudge that says, “You get that, right? I can trust you.”

  The effect is cumulative, too. The more we laugh in the company of particular persons, the more we trust them and the more they trust us. Whether you are twelve years old or ninety, laughter draws us together in ways that words can’t begin to. We can tell someone we like that person a million times, but those words don’t cement relationships with anything like the power of long evenings genuinely laughing with one another. As emotional glues go, it is extraordinarily strong. And that, when seen through the long lens of evolution, is an enormous relief.