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Key points
- While it's more commonly expressed in the company of others, there are times when we are inspired to laugh while all alone.
- Like other deeply ingrained vocalizations such as screams, moans, and even crying, laughter evolved when our ancestors were rarely alone.
- Even the memory or the thought of our own and others’ vulnerabilities, shortcomings, or limitations can be enough to set us off.
The "mutual vulnerability theory" I have been promoting in this blog series defines laughter as a vocal affirmation of mutual vulnerability. In the previous posts, in order to account for the tremendous diversity in people’s laugh responses, I addressed the factors influencing whether or not some physical trait or behavior might be considered a “vulnerability.”
Now we’ll look at those variables associated with the “mutual” and “affirmation” parts of the equation. After all, laughter is, at its core, a signal. So, to further our understanding of variation, we’ll need to probe the intricacies of the sender/receiver relationship.
That is assuming, of course, there even is a receiver.
Party of One
In my earliest essays, when I advanced the premise that laughter makes sense only if it evolved as a form of communication, you may have correctly noted that laughter is usually, but not always, expressed in the company of others. Laughter by a single individual, one who is alone and unaware of any other potential receiver, does seem to be at odds with this basic assumption. Most of us, if we saw someone by themselves laughing for no apparent reason, would at the very least raise an eyebrow. However, if we think about it, this sort of behavior is not as nearly as unorthodox as it might first appear.
Many nonverbal forms of communication are so important, so integral to our personal and social well-being, we express them whether or not we’re in another’s presence. When we’re startled, we’ll utter a gasp regardless if when someone is around to hear it. If we’re confused, angry, or pleasantly surprised, we’ll adopt the corresponding facial expressions even when alone. When the hammer we’re swinging makes contact with our thumb instead of the nail, we’ll yelp in pain with or without the company of a sympathetic listener.
These actions are rightly thought of as communication despite the absence of nearby receivers. Throughout our evolutionary history, and for the majority of our lives as individuals, assuming that someone else is around to pick up on our message has generally worked to our advantage. Continuing to express ourselves while alone has apparently cost us very little.
The idea that we effectively converse with ourselves is not an entirely foreign. When alone, people often find themselves humming, whistling, singing, and talking aloud. This kind of expressive behavior may be a means of bringing subconscious feelings into the realm of consciousness, forcing relatively amorphous, tentative emotions into the more malleable and rational workplace of deliberation. We might, for instance, verbalize feelings of anxiety or frustration in order to specify their origins and potential ramifications, to think them through in an active, thoughtful way. Or we might sing a song to make a period of boredom (or a morning shower) less tedious, to render the passage of time more evident to our consciousness.
Laughing while alone may function in these same ways. Exhibiting a vulnerability—playing an instrument for the first time, say, or absentmindedly missing your mouth with a spoonful of soup—can prompt a moment of self-lifting laughter whether or not someone is else nearby. After all, we must surely be able to sympathize with ourselves. We’ll either see it as a vulnerability or we will not. And we can’t help but want our original status level restored. So, if our personality allows for a little self-forgiveness and our mood is relatively good, laughter may come as readily as it would in the company of others.
The same would also apply to self-lowering laughter, which might result from an unforeseen windfall or a series of serendipitous events. If we surprised ourselves with an unusually skillful or lucky performance, we could see ourselves as others would and act upon an inherent desire to communicate that our increased status should be viewed with appropriate skepticism.
Of course, there are other situations that may prompt laughter in a lone individual, but in a sense there is someone else involved—in our memories, for example. Moments that once inspired laughter are not permanently locked away in the past. Recollection allows us to re-experience our own and others’ shortcomings originally displayed minutes, hours, or years in the past with the same feeling of amusement. We can also reinterpret earlier situations, ones we may not have found funny at the time but now, with a little distancing, find absurd enough to initiate our laugh response. Such memories, given sufficient detail, would provoke laughter even while we’re alone.
There are also circumstances in which we witness the effects of another’s vulnerability but in their absence. We can look at a horse whose saddle has been put on backward and laugh at or with someone (we assume a person must have placed it that way) even though they’re nowhere in sight. We would have the sudden urge to communicate even though they are physically distant.
Still, laughter is much more prevalent in social situations (Provine, 2001). As with many things we do, the appropriateness of laughter depends partly on our knowledge of and feelings toward those around us. So, in the next several posts we’ll look at the ways in which those around us can affect our laugh response.
This post was drawn from Chapter 6 of Why We Laugh: A New Understanding.
© John Charles Simon
References
Provine, R. R. (2001). Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. Penguin.
Simon, J. C. (2008). Why We Laugh: A New Understanding. Starbrook Publishing.
