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Laughter: A Scientific Investigation

Do men and women laugh at the same things?Is laughter contagious?Has anyone ever really died laughing?Is laughing good for your health?Drawing upon ten years of research into this most common-yet complex and often puzzling-human phenomenon, Dr. Robert Provine, the world's leading scientific expert on laughter, investigates such aspects of his subject as its evolution, its role in social relationships, its contagiousness, its neural mechanisms, and its health benefits. This is an erudite, wide-ranging, witty, and long-overdue exploration of a frequently surprising subject.

Paperback: 272 pages

Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (December 1, 2001)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0141002255

ISBN-13: 978-0141002255

Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches

Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #361,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #35 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Theories of Humor #304 in Books > Science & Math > Experiments, Instruments & Measurement > Methodology & Statistics #871 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Neuropsychology

Don't expect to get lots of laughs by just reading _Laughter: A Scientific Investigation_ (Viking) by Robert R. Provine. It's not merely that Provine is covering a serious subject. He is as good as his word: his book is a scientific investigation, and he is neuroscientist by profession who has done original research on laughter published in such non-newsstand rags as _Ethology_ and _Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society_. And it's not that Provine is an unentertaining, dour writer; he has a light touch, and good explicative skills, he is happy to share a joke, and his stories about some of the ways he has done experiments are funny. For instance, we can share his bemusement over his initial explorations of why people laugh; he got a group into a clinic and played them funny tapes. He failed to get anything but a few chuckles. It was his first demonstration that laughter was a social behavior, not a laboratory one. He went on to study people in social situations.Similarly, the reason you can't expect to laugh much from reading Provine's book is found in the book itself. Laughter is not something you can most reliably expect to do alone reading a book; it is something we do as a social behavior. Its "sociality," the ratio of social to solitary performance of the act, is very high. Provine had his undergraduate students keep logs of their behavior, including laughing, and found that we are thirty times more likely to laugh when with someone else. Another study showed that eye contact between two companions increases the likelihood of laughter. Laughter has a nonlinguistic role of holding people together.

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