Sophie Scott

Absolutely involuntary.

And there's nothing social about that at all.

That was just an emotion.

I was just being driven off because I don't know quite where this is going, but something's happening.

Laughter doesn't work that way.

Laughter, you do find that people laugh when they're on their own, but it's much, much less likely.

It's primarily happening in these social interactions.

Yeah.

And it's happening in a highly communicative way as well as a sort of basic emotional expression way.

So people will use laughter to show that they know and they're affiliated with the people that they're talking to.

And also it's worth taking seriously because it works.

We will use laughter for lots of different reasons, but a really important reason why humans will use laughter is to reduce stress.

And it's very effective at that as long as everybody joins in.

If you share laughter together, you will feel better together.

You can actually use it to negotiate a better mood together, which makes it a very important emotion.

So if you want people to laugh, what do you do?

It's interesting because there's no one thing that everybody finds funny.

And that's like a truism for humor.

There is no one joke everybody finds funny.

There's no one comedian everybody finds funny.