In this video speech, Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist, tells us about the reason why we laugh.
To understand laughter, you have to look at the ribcage, and what we all don't stop doing is breathing.
Humans are not the only animals that laugh. In fact, you find laughter throughout the mammals, associated with play. Robert Provine, who has done a lot of work on this, has pointed out that we are 30 times more likely to laugh if we are with somebody else than if we're on our own, and where we find most laughter is in social interactions. The origins of laughter lie in the social context.
There are two types of laughter: the real one and the posed one.
Everybody, young and old, finds the real laughs more contagious than the posed laughs, but as you get older, it becomes less contagious.
When we laugh with people, lets us access a really ancient evolutionary system that mammals have evolved to make and maintain social bonds, and to regulate emotions, to make ourselves feel better.
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