Laughter influences social bonding but not prosocial generosity to friends and strangers

Humans deploy a number of specific behaviours for forming social bonds, one of which is laughter. However, two questions have not yet been investigated with respect to laughter: (1) Does laughter increase the sense of bonding to those with whom we laugh? and (2) Does laughter facilitate prosocial ge...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-08, Vol.16 (8), p.e0256229-e0256229
Main Authors: Dunbar, R I M, Frangou, Anna, Grainger, Felix, Pearce, Eiluned
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Altruism
Behavior
Biology and Life Sciences
Bonding
Cooperation
Empathy
Endorphins
Evaluation
Experimental psychology
Experiments
Female
Friends - psychology
Games, Experimental
Gender
Helping Behavior
Humans
Hypotheses
Influence
Interpersonal relations
Laughter
Laughter - psychology
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Models, Psychological
Pain
Psychology
Random variables
Social aspects
Social bonds
Social Sciences
Variance analysis
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Summary:Humans deploy a number of specific behaviours for forming social bonds, one of which is laughter. However, two questions have not yet been investigated with respect to laughter: (1) Does laughter increase the sense of bonding to those with whom we laugh? and (2) Does laughter facilitate prosocial generosity? Using changes in pain threshold as a proxy for endorphin upregulation in the brain and a standard economic game (the Dictator Game) as an assay of prosociality, we show that laughter does trigger the endorphin system and, through that, seems to enhance social bonding, but it does not reliably influence donations to others. This suggests that social bonding and prosociality may operate via different mechanisms, or on different time scales, and relate to different functional objectives.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0256229