Decoding laughter: the science behind what makes us laugh
Laughter—spontaneous, contagious and universal—has always been a part of the human experience. Yet, have you ever stopped to wonder if all laughter is truly the same? The Different Kinds of Laughter project recently published a paper in Biology Letters answering just that. This project, spearheaded by researchers from the University of Amsterdam in collaboration with Research Software Engineers (RSEs) from the Netherlands eScience Center (Patrick Bos, Florian Huber and Jisk Jakob Attema) delved into this question. Applying machine learning techniques on almost 900 laughs sourced from YouTube, they unveiled the fascinating ways our chuckles, giggles and cackles vary depending on what triggers them.
The project explored whether the sound and characteristics of laughter differ based on its source. From playful laughs elicited by tickling to the snickers we let out at verbal jokes, the team sought to decode the “language” of laughter. The researchers analysed the acoustics—pitch, loudness and duration—of laughter generated in four real-world scenarios: being tickled, watching something funny, witnessing someone else’s misfortune and hearing or telling a verbal joke. Their innovative work revealed something remarkable: laughter produced during tickling is acoustically distinct. It sounds less controlled, more primal and stands apart from other types of laughter. Previous studies have observed tickling-induced laughter-like behaviour in evolutionary cousins. Does this mean that the other types of laughter are a uniquely human trait? A fascinating suggestion!
Central to the success of this project was the important work done by our RSEs. In many projects at the eScience Center, RSEs do most of the programming and other digital work. However, this project was different. The RSEs took the role of technology experts, sharing their skills through regular consulting sessions. They picked appropriate machine learning models and processed the data in an optimal and accurate way.
Lead RSE, Patrick Bos, explained, “The collaboration was a great match: the researchers were responsible for the psychology, statistics and listening experiments, while our role as RSEs, bringing all of the elements together, was super productive.” By combining creativity, scientific rigor and cutting-edge technology, the team behind the Different Kinds of Laughter project decoded the nuances of laughter.
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The eScience Center is a research organization dedicated to applying research software to answer research questions in any scientific domain through project collaborations. It has the largest concentration of dedicated, high-level research software expertise in the Netherlands. The eScience Center also has a Fellowship Programme and makes all of its software and training materials openly available online. For more information about what we offer, visit esciencecenter.nl.