ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2012
Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 221 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of Laughter Therapy on Improving Negative Emotions Associated with Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Oncology · 2024Pooled it
- A systematic review on the effects of group singing on persistent pain in people with long-term health conditions.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2020Pooled it
- Assessing the effect of Loving-Kindness Meditation on pain and social well-being using a randomized controlled trial design.PloS one · 2026Trial
- Effects of laughter therapy on quality of life in patients with cancer: An open-label, randomized controlled trial.PloS one · 2019Trial
- Trial
- Laughter's influence on the intimacy of self-disclosure.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2015Trial
- Clowning in care: long-term effectiveness of clown visits on residents' affect, resilience, sleep quality and functionality.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- The impact of social support on pain intensity in older adults with chronic pain: the serial mediating roles of positive and negative affect and pain catastrophizing.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- Detecting social cues conveyed by laughter and associations with callous-unemotional traits in early childhood.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2026Article
- Relaxed vigilance: humor as a regulatory capacity in care systems.Frontiers in sociology · 2026Article
- Why friendship and loneliness affect our health.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Social Determinants and Consequences of Pain: Toward Multilevel, Intersectional, and Life Course Perspectives.The journal of pain · 2024Review
- Sex Differences in Pain Sensitivity in a Dutch Cohort: Cross-Sectional and Web-Based Multidimensional Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Autistic adults perceive and experience laughter differently to non-autistic adults.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Mapping the differential impact of spontaneous and conversational laughter on brain and mind: an fMRI study in autism.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Evolution of laughter from play.Communicative & integrative biology · 2024Article
- Investigating form and content of emotional and non-emotional laughing.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Only empathy-related traits, not being mimicked or endorphin release, influence social closeness and prosocial behavior.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Tendency to laugh is a stable trait: findings from a round-robin conversation study.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Laughter, play faces and mimicry in animals: evolution and social functions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
9 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although laughter forms an important part of human non-verbal communication, it has received rather less attention than it deserves in both the experimental and the observational literatures. Relaxed social (Duchenne) laughter is associated with feelings of wellbeing and heightened affect, a proximate explanation for which might be the release of endorphins. We tested this hypothesis in a series of six experimental studies in both the laboratory (watching videos) and naturalistic contexts (watching stage performances), using change in pain threshold as an assay for endorphin release. The results show that pain thresholds are significantly higher after laughter than in the control condition. This pain-tolerance effect is due to laughter itself and not simply due to a change in positive affect. We suggest that laughter, through an endorphin-mediated opiate effect, may play a crucial role in social bonding.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.