Gaby
Laughter is far more complex, diverse, and socially meaningful than many people realize.
A team of researchers at the University of Baltimore has found that friendly laughter and lovers’ laughter sound distinctly different.
When colleagues start a workplace romance, they usually try to keep it under wraps — avoiding eye contact and skipping lunches together. What they don’t realize is that their laughter can give them away. Professor Sally Farley, who led the study, says coworkers need only a few seconds of listening to their laughter to suspect a relationship.
The research consisted of three experiments. The team asked volunteers to listen to audio recordings of men and women talking on the phone — first with a friend, then with a romantic partner. The participants in those conversations had been in relationships for less than a year, meaning they were in the early stages, according to the Daily Mail.
In the first experiment, volunteers could easily tell friend laughter from romantic laughter. The second experiment identified the specific vocal characteristics that signal the type of relationship. The third experiment replicated the findings with participants from India, Mexico, Poland, and Portugal.
Farley says all three phases showed people can tell the difference between those two kinds of close relationships in just one or two seconds of laughter.
What the Researchers Discovered
The study found that laughter between friends typically sounds louder and “more pleasant” than laughter between newly formed lovers, and that romantic laughter tended to be more “feminine, childlike, and submissive.”
The team explains the results with the theory of “vulnerable love,” which says people in the early stages of romance feel uncertain about the relationship’s future. That uncertainty, Farley says, shows up in their laughter.
She adds that laughter with friends doesn’t carry the “emotional volatility and passionate desire” that comes with early romantic love. As a result, friend laughter sounds more relaxed and less submissive than laughter between new lovers.
In a report in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, the team wrote, “People seem less pleasant when they laugh with their romantic partner than when they laugh with a friend.”
The research highlights the role laughter plays in social life. Farley now plans to study the laughter of married couples in long-term relationships and suspects that it may more closely resemble the laughter of friends.
