Gaby
Researchers at the University of Amsterdam set out to study the peculiar laughter that comes from being tickled. It’s not the same as other kinds of laughter. They wanted to find out what makes it different.
In the first phase, the team asked roughly 200 volunteers to listen to recordings of different types of laughter and choose what caused each clip. Options included tickling, laughing at something funny, laughing at someone else’s misfortune, and laughing at a joke. Participants identified tickle-induced laughter about 60 percent of the time.
In the second experiment, researchers analyzed 887 YouTube videos. Participants found that ticklish laughter showed less vocal control than other types of laughter and rated it as more spontaneous, according to the Daily Mail.
What Conclusions Did the Scientists Reach?
The team called tickling an ancient form of play behavior rooted in evolution. In Biology Letters they wrote: “Laughter has deep evolutionary roots: many mammals, including chimpanzees, squirrel monkeys, and dogs, produce sounds similar to laughter during play.”
They added that human laughter is “one of the first complex expressions of social behavior: infants begin to laugh just a few weeks after birth.”
They also said laughter is ubiquitous in human life, but its causes and how it sounds vary widely.
The researchers think participants’ ability to pick out tickle-induced laughter supports the idea that this laughter is distinct both acoustically and perceptually. They suggest the heightened excitement during tickling implies it’s an “automatic response” to a stimulus.
In the researchers’ view, laughter triggered by tickling may serve as a protective mechanism.
They explained: we laugh when tickled because the part of the brain that prompts laughter in response to light touch—the hypothalamus—signals the body to anticipate potential pain.
Previous studies have suggested that human laughter evolved to diffuse tense situations and help people avoid danger.
