Laughter used for tawdry purposes

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 23rd, 2005

An article about an “important new study from the forthcoming Quarterly Review of Biology” says that a long time ago (millions of years ago, so don’t even try to imagine when), we developed the ability to not just laugh at funny stuff– a fellow sub-human slipping on a banana peel, maybe– but we “evolved the capacity for willful control over facial motor systems.”

In other words, we got so far along in the laughter department, we mastered the art of the fake laugh. We figured out that we could muster the occasional fake laugh for such handy dandy purposes as “strategically punctuating conversation, and conveying feelings or ideas such as embarrassment and derision.” Say the eggheads:

Humans can now voluntarily access the laughter program and utilize it for their own ends, including smoothing conversational interaction, appeasing others, inducing favorable stances in them, or downright laughing at people that are not liked.

From this is derived such obnoxious phenomena as the nervous giggle, the maniacal laugh of the comic book villain and the derisive laugh of that kid on The Simpsons!

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