Journal article
Laughter influences social bonding but not prosocial generosity to friends and strangers
- Abstract:
- Humans deploy a number of specific behaviours for forming social bonds, one of which is laughter. However, two questions have not yet been investigated with respect to laughter: (1) Does laughter increase the sense of bonding to those with whom we laugh? and (2) Does laughter facilitate prosocial generosity? Using changes in pain threshold as a proxy for endorphin upregulation in the brain and a standard economic game (the Dictator Game) as an assay of prosociality, we show that laughter does trigger the endorphin system and, through that, seems to enhance social bonding, but it does not reliably influence donations to others. This suggests that social bonding and prosociality may operate via different mechanisms, or on different time scales, and relate to different functional objectives.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 1.2MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0256229
Authors
- Publisher:
- Public Library of Science
- Journal:
- PLOS ONE More from this journal
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 8
- Article number:
- e0256229
- Publication date:
- 2021-08-13
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-08-03
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1932-6203
- Pmid:
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34388212
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1191752
- Local pid:
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pubs:1191752
- Deposit date:
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2022-01-06
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Dunbar et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © 2021 Dunbar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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