ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
The naturalistic approach to laughter in humans and other animals: towards a unified theory.
Review 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 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 34 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
- Action units of facial expressions in emotional contagion.iScience · 2026Article
- Laughter regulation in solitary and social contexts varies across emotion regulation strategies.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Laughter as a Subject and a Tool for Interdisciplinary Investigations in Philosophy and Neuroscience.The European journal of neuroscience · 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
- Neural processing of laughter in depression.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Shaping behaviors through social experience and their proposed sensitivity to stress.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Review
- Tickling induces a unique type of spontaneous laughter.Biology letters · 2024Article
- 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
- The web of laughter: frontal and limbic projections of the anterior cingulate cortex revealed by cortico-cortical evoked potential from sites eliciting laughter.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This opinion piece aims to tackle the biological, psychological, neural and cultural underpinnings of laughter from a naturalistic and evolutionary perspective. A naturalistic account of laughter requires the revaluation of two dogmas of a longstanding philosophical tradition, that is, the quintessential link between laughter and humour, and the uniquely human nature of this behaviour. In the spirit of Provine's and Panksepp's seminal studies, who firstly argued against the anti-naturalistic dogmas, here we review compelling evidence that (i) laughter is first and foremost a social behaviour aimed at regulating social relationships, easing social tensions and establishing social bonds, and that (ii) homologue and homoplasic behaviours of laughter exist in primates and rodents, who also share with humans the same underpinning neural circuitry. We make a case for the hypothesis that the contagiousness of laughter and its pervasive social infectiousness in everyday social interactions is mediated by a specific mirror mechanism. Finally, we argue that a naturalistic account of laughter should not be intended as an outright rejection of classic theories; rather, in the last part of the piece we argue that our perspective is potentially able to integrate previous viewpoints-including classic philosophical theories-ultimately providing a unified evolutionary explanation of laughter. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience'.
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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.