ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
Laughter and its role in the evolution of human social bonding.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Shared breath of joy enhances empathy through breathing synchronization.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Laughter in the making: social bonding and coordination in dance practices.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Humour uncovers the wide landscape of life : From laughter to freedom.EMBO reports · 2025Article
- 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
- Why friendship and loneliness affect our health.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- In sync through laughter? An fNIRS hyperscanning study on neural synchrony and social connection.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Love songs and serenades: a theoretical review of music and romantic relationships.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The origins and function of musical performance.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- "It doesn't feel like exercise": a realist process evaluation of factors that support long-term attendance at dance classes designed for healthy ageing.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Laughter and its role in the evolution of human social bonding.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The naturalistic approach to laughter in humans and other animals: towards a unified theory.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 4 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In anthropoid primates, social grooming is the principal mechanism (mediated by the central nervous system endorphin system) that underpins social bonding. However, the time available for social grooming is limited, and this imposes an upper limit on the size of group that can be bonded in this way. I suggest that, when hominins needed to increase the size of their groups beyond the limit that could be bonded by grooming, they co-opted laughter (a modified version of the play vocalization found widely among the catarrhine primates) as a form of chorusing to fill the gap. I show, first, that human laughter both upregulates the brain's endorphin system and increases the sense of bonding between those who laugh together. I then use a reverse engineering approach to model group sizes and grooming time requirements for fossil hominin species to search for pinch points where a phase shift in bonding mechanisms might have occurred. The results suggest that the most likely time for the origin of human-like laughter is the appearance of the genus
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