ArticleFrontiers in psychology2021
The Complexity and Phylogenetic Continuity of Laughter and Smiles in Hominids.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- The development of play face mimicry: comparative insights from human infants, adults and orangutans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Towards the complexity of laugh communication in great apes: exact facial replications in laugh faces of orangutans and chimpanzees.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Functional and Morphological Differences in the Play Face and Full Play Face in Lowland Gorillas, a Hominid Species: Implications for the Evolutionary Roots of Smile and Laugh Face.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Neurobiology and Anatomy of Facial Expressions in Great Apes: Application of the AnimalFACS and Its Possible Association with the Animal's Affective State.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- Orangutans and chimpanzees produce morphologically varied laugh facesin response to the age and sex of their social partners.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Nuancing 'Emotional' Social Play: Does Play Behaviour Always Underlie a Positive Emotional State?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- Perceptual integration of bodily and facial emotion cues in chimpanzees and humans.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Article
- Object use in communication of semi-wild chimpanzees.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Robert Provine: the critical human importance of laughter, connections and contagion.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Laughter, play faces and mimicry in animals: evolution and social functions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- The different shades of laughter: when do we laugh and when do we mimic other's laughter?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Visual communication in social play of a hierarchical carnivore species: the case of wild spotted hyenas.Current zoology · 2022Article
- Revisiting Darwin's comparisons between human and non-human primate facial signals.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Just Seconds of Laughter Reveals Relationship Status: Laughter with Friends Sounds More Authentic and Less Vulnerable than Laughter with Romantic Partners.Journal of nonverbal behavior · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Laughter and smiles are often, but not always, associated with positive affect. These expressions of humans help to promote social relationships as well as the development of cognitive and socio-emotional skills and they may have a positive impact on health and well-being, hereby covering a selection of fitness-relevant benefits. Both laughter and smiles of positive affect also occur early in human development and across cultures, suggesting deep roots in human biology. The present work provides an evolutionary reconstruction of the evolution of human laughter and smiles of positive affect in form and function, based on the principle of maximum parsimony. According to the Complexity and Continuity Hypothesis, human laughter and smiles of positive affect must have evolved within the context of play from ancestral species. Furthermore, ancestral ape laughter and their open-mouth faces must already have been complex in form and function and changed over time via categorically different phylogenetic pathways to become characteristic, effective, and pervasive behaviors of everyday social interactions in humans.
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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.