Susan M. Weinschenk's Blog, page 5

100 More Things #151: DEVICES WITH ALERTS LOWER COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE

There’s a lot of research about how talking or texting on a cell phone is distracting and leads to lower performance on cognitive (thinking) tasks, but research by Bill Thornton (2014) shows that people don’t even have to be using the cell phone for it to have an effect. Just having the cell phone nearby can lower performance on cognitive tasks. It’s likely that the mere presence of the cell phone distracts people enough that they don’t concentrate as well.

Pavlovian Conditioned Responses

In the early 1900s, Ivan Pavlov was studying digestion in dogs. He fed them meat and measured the amount of saliva they produced. He was surprised to discover that the dogs started salivating as soon as they saw the meat, and before they started eating it. But the bigger surprise was that, before too long, the dogs would salivate when they heard the boots of the caretaker coming to feed them, or when they heard the sound of a bell over the door when the caretaker walked into the building. Pavlov posited that the dogs had learned a conditioned response (salivating) to the stimulus of the footsteps or bell.

People also easily learn conditioned responses—their response to buzzing, blinking, chirping, flashing, and now, with wearables, nudging, is to look at or reach for the device. Part of the human brain is always on “alert” for the stimulus, which likely takes just enough brain power away from other tasks for performance to suffer, even if only a little bit.

People easily develop automatic, conditioned responses to auditory and visual cues, especially if those cues are short and unpredictable. And smartphones provide endless unpredictable, short, auditory and visual cues. You don’t know when you’ll get a text or call, so it’s unpredictable. When you do get a text or a call or your phone rings, chirps, or buzzes, or a message shows on the screen, there’s an auditory and visual cue. And the messages are short—all features that prompt a conditioned and automatic response.

Takeaways

When you want your target audience to feel connected to your brand or product, point out anything that you share in common with them.When you’re designing in a team, make sure to point out things that the team members have in common, even if they seem small and superficial.When you’re designing in a team, monitor your language. Use words that imply that people are working together (“we”, “team”, “together”).

100 More Things #150: WHEN PEOPLE FEEL CONNECTED, THEY WORK HARDER

Gregory Walton is a professor at Stanford who has studied the important effects of belonging on behavior. In one of his experiments, Walton (2012) found that when college students believed they shared a birthday with another student, they were more motivated to complete a task with that student and performed better on the task than if they were not told about any connection. He found the same effect with 4 and 5-year-olds.

In another experiment with Walton, David Cwir (2011) had people who were part of the experiment jog in place in pairs, raising their heart rate. Participants who felt they were socially connected to their running partner (for example, were told they had the same birthday) had an increase in their heart rate as the other person’s heart rate increased from jogging. They also rated the other person as being more connected to them than people who were not told they had the same birthday.

Cwir and Walton concluded that it’s easy for people to take on the goals, motivations, emotions, and even physical reactions of people whom they feel even minimally connected to.

The Social Facilitation Effect

When people think they’re working together, they work better and longer, and enjoy it more. Research on the “social facilitation effect” goes all the way back to 1920. Floyd Allport (1920) conducted a series of experiments with male college students. In some situations, students worked on word association or writing tasks in a room alone; in other situations, they worked in a group, although all the work was done individually. Allport controlled carefully for things like light and noise.

Here’s what he found:

People working in a group came up with ideas faster (from 66 percent to up to 93 percent faster) than people working alone.People working in a group came up with more ideas than people working alone.Most individuals did better in the group settings, but a few people who were, in Allport’s words, “nervous and excitable,” showed no difference or a slight decrease when they were with the group.

Priyanka Carr and Gregory Walton (2014) did a more recent series of experiments where they implied that people were working together, when actually everyone was working alone.

In the psychologically together group, participants were told that the study investigated how people work on puzzles together and that they and the other participants would each work on a puzzle called the “map puzzle.”

Participants in this together group were told that, after working on the puzzle for several minutes, they would either be asked to write a tip for another person working on the puzzle, or they would receive a tip from another participant also working on the map puzzle. The experimenter explained the puzzle, told the participant to take as much or as little time as they wanted on the puzzle, and then left the room.

A few minutes later the experimenter came back and gave the participant a tip that said, “Here’s a tip one of the other participants here today wrote for you to help you as you work on the puzzle.” The tip was actually from the experimenter, but was presented as though it was from another participant. It had a “To” line with the participant’s first name, and a “From” line with the supposed first name of another participant.

In the psychologically separate group, the experimenter told participants that the research investigated how people work on puzzles and that they would work on a puzzle called the “map puzzle.” The instructions implied that the other participants in the study were working on the same puzzle, but no mention was made of working together.

Participants in this separate group were told that, after working on the puzzle for several minutes, they would either be asked to write a tip for or would receive a tip from the experimenter about the puzzle. When they received a tip it said, “Here’s a tip we wrote for you to help you as you work on the puzzle” and it was presented as being from the experimenter. Instead of “To” and “From,” there was a “For” line with the participant’s first name. Otherwise the instructions were the same as for the psychologically together group.

The participants in the together group worked longer on the puzzle, rated the puzzle as being more enjoyable, performed better, and were more likely to choose to work on a related task one to two weeks later than those in the separate group.

Takeaways

When you want your target audience to feel connected to your brand or product, point out anything that you share in common with them.When you’re designing in a team, make sure to point out things that the team members have in common, even if they seem small and superficial.When you’re designing in a team, monitor your language. Use words that imply that people are working together (“we”, “team”, “together”).

100 More Things #149: OXYTOCIN IS THE BONDING CHEMICAL

Singing and theater are favorite hobbies of mine. At various points in my life I have sung in a choir, played in concert bands, played in a marching band, played and sang in jazz ensembles, and acted and sang in musical theater productions. It’s great fun on many levels, but one of things that makes it the most fun is the feeling of camaraderie that comes from making music with others.

I wasn’t surprised, then, to find out that a neurochemical is released in the brain when people engage in synchronous activity with others, for example, singing, playing a musical instrument, chanting, drumming, or dancing. That neurochemical is oxytocin.

The Bonding Chemical

In The Moral Molecule, Paul Zak discusses research showing that when people bond through group activity, oxytocin levels are elevated. This explains why doing group activities bonds the group.
Oxytocin is released by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland. Oxytocin has several effects:

Women release oxytocin during labor. Oxytocin produces the contractions that start the birthing process.Women also release oxytocin when they nurse their babies.Oxytocin reduces inflammation and helps heal wounds. This is one of the reasons why having a strong social network keeps you healthy—the bonding releases oxytocin and the oxytocin reduces inflammation.Oxytocin makes people feel content, calm, and secure. It also decreases anxiety.People are more likely to trust someone after oxytocin is released.

Whenever oxytocin is released, people feel love, tenderness, empathy, and trust. They feel a sense of belonging and connectedness. People who are incapable of releasing oxytocin have a tendency to become sociopathic, psychopathic, or narcissistic.

When you hug someone or stroke a dog, your body releases oxytocin. In fact, research shows that not only does your oxytocin level go up, but so does that of the dog.

Think of oxytocin as the tribal hormone. Some research shows that oxytocin is related to a feeling of connectedness to one’s group or tribe, and suspicion of “others” outside the group or tribe.

Heart rates in sync

In addition to releasing oxytocin, group musical and rhythmic activity has other effects. When people sing together, their breathing and heartbeats sync up. Björn Vickhoff (2013) attached pulse monitors to the ears of choir singers. When the choir began to sing, their heart rates slowed down, probably due to the regularities in breathing that singing requires. The slower heart rates didn’t surprise Vickhoff, but the syncing of the heart rates did.

Synchronous Behavior And Cooperation

Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath (2009) conducted a series of studies to see whether, and how, synchronous behavior affects how people cooperate. They tested combinations of walking in step, not walking in step, singing together, and other movements with groups of participants.

Synchronous activities are actions that people take together, where everyone is doing the same thing at the same time in physical proximity to one another. Dancing, tai chi, yoga, singing, clapping, and chanting in time are all examples of synchronous activity.
The researchers found that people who engaged in synchronous activities were more cooperative in completing subsequent tasks, and more willing to make personal sacrifices to benefit the group.

Wiltermuth and Heath’s research also showed that people don’t have to feel good about the group, or the group activity, in order to be more cooperative. The mere act of doing the synchronous activity seemed to strengthen social attachment among the group members.

Do people need synchronous activity to be happy?

In his article “Hive Psychology, Happiness, and Public Policy,” Jonathan Haidt goes so far as to say that because synchronous activity promotes bonding, it helps the survival of the group. He believes that there’s a certain type of happiness that humans can achieve only by engaging in synchronous activity.

Designing For Synchronous Interactions

As a designer, you probably spend most of your time designing interactions that are asynchronous—not synchronous. If you’re designing a website or software, there’s a high probability that each member of your target audience will be using that application on his own, without singing, drumming, or chanting!

But there may be opportunities for synchronous behavior. If you’re creating a video, you could include a well-known song with lyrics that people will be encouraged to sing along with. If you have a choice about how to convey information, you could choose a more synchronous way, for example, have people meet via video conference rather than sending emails or tracking documents in a workflow app.

Takeaways

Look for opportunities to have your target audience do something at the same time. For example, meeting via video conference is better than not meeting at all.Look for opportunities to have your target audience do something synchronous with you and your brand. Even including a catchy song that they can sing along to will produce a small amount of bonding.Look for opportunities to have your design team bond together.

100 More Things #148: SURPRISE, BUT NOT SHOCK, ENCOURAGES SHARING

In his book Contagious, Jonah Berger talks about New York Times online articles that get shared. Articles that had elicited strong emotion, whether positive or negative, were shared the most. Jennifer Aaker talks about emotion and passion as being components of what makes messages go viral in her book The Dragonfly Effect.
In his research, Teixeira found that people can like an online video and yet not share it. He notes that surprise makes it more likely that people will share an online video, but not if the surprise goes too far and becomes shock.

Watching something that is so surprising that it is shocking will sustain attention, but people don’t like to share online videos that are shocking. As examples, Teixeira cites two Bud Light ads. In one ad, people in an office start swearing when they realize that every time someone in the office swears, money is added to a “swear jar.” When the jar is full of money, the office manager buys a case of Bud Light beer for everyone to share. That video is surprising, but not shocking, and people tend to share it with others.

In contrast, another Bud Light ad, using the same cast and the same office environment, shows the office staff donating used clothing for a charity. Every time someone donates an article of clothing, he or she gets a Bud Light beer. In the video there are scenes in the office of people taking off more and more clothing until they are essentially naked (with private parts blacked out in the video). This video is surprising, but it goes beyond surprise to shock. It sustained attention, but was not shared as much as the other video that was surprising without being shocking.

Extroversion, Egocentricity, And Sharing

Teixeira’s research shows that even when a video ad is surprising and not shocking, only a subset of people will share it. Who is the sharing subgroup? Extroverts share more than introverts. And people who are egocentric share more than those who are not.

Teixeira’s hypothesis is that egocentric people share in order to increase their social status. They are sharing to show others how savvy they are.

He suggests that if you want your content to go viral, figure out how to find the egocentric extroverts, for example, people who already share a lot on social media.

Takeaways

When you want your content to go viral, include strong emotional content, especially content that produces positive emotions.When you want your content to go viral, make sure the material is surprising, but not shocking.When you want your content to go viral, target people who are extroverts and/or egocentric. Look for people who are already active on social media.

100 More Things #147: JOY AND SURPRISE GRAB AND HOLD ATTENTION IN VIDEO ADS

Teixeira’s research shows that joy and surprise are the emotions that keep people watching a video ad. Because people don’t like ads and want to skip them, ads that stimulate both joy and surprise early on are the ones that grab and hold attention best.

Teixeira used software that analyzes facial expressions to research the influence of emotions on ad watching. The researchers collected data every 250 milliseconds while people watched video ads. Each participant saw 28 video ads. Fourteen of them had emotional content and 14 were neutral. The neutral ads were interspersed with the emotional ads.

Half of the emotional ads were designed to evoke joy, measured with smiles and laughter, and the other half to evoke surprise, measured with raised eyebrows and an open mouth. The ads varied. Some were for beverages, some for phones, some for financial services, and so on. Some were for well-known brands and others for lesser known brands.

Participants could either watch each ad to the end, “zap” to the next ad, or click on a link that would take them to the ad brand’s web page. (These were one-page mock-up websites that were kept short and simple).

The researchers found the following results:

Both joy and surprise grabbed the attention of the participants, but surprise grabbed attention more than joy, and joy was better than surprise in keeping people viewing longer.The best strategy for grabbing attention was what the researchers called a “peak and stable trajectory”—heighten the emotion and then leave it high.However, the best strategy to retain viewers was a “peak-valley-peak” strategy—heighten emotion, then let it die down, then bring it back up again, and continue alternating (an emotional roller coaster).

Takeaways

To grab attention in a video ad, put something surprising at the beginning of the ad.To retain attention during a video ad, use content that evokes joy.To sustain attention, vary the amount of joy and surprise or any other emotions, so that people are having an emotionally up-and-down experience.

100 More Things #146: PEOPLE DON’T LIKE VIDEO ADS

Companies spend a lot of money on video marketing and video advertising, so it’s not surprising that there’s a significant body of research on these subjects. Thales Teixeira from Harvard Business School is one of the people conducting research on video ads.
People are inundated with advertising: TV ads, billboards on the road, ads at the start of YouTube videos. Teixeira’s research (2012) shows that in general, people do not like ads. Even when they like a particular video ad, in general, people don’t like ads.

In the past, people had few choices when it came to ads. When an ad appeared on TV, they could change the station or turn off the TV.
Now it’s sometimes possible to bypass ads. For example, some people may have technology that lets them skip an ad on a recording, or skip an ad on YouTube.

Because people don’t like ads, and because they now can often avoid them, ad designers have to be more savvy. Messaging has to come earlier, and the ads themselves have to grab and hold people’s attention (more on this later in this chapter).

People Don’t Like Brand Logos

In his research, Teixeira notes that people especially dislike seeing a lot of brand logos in ads. The more prominent a brand logo is, the more likely people are to skip the ad. This is true even for brands they like. So some advertisers are doing what’s called “brand pulsing”: placing their brand logo as unobtrusively as possible throughout the ad.

Takeaways

Put the main message at the beginning of the ad, not at the end.Since people don’t like ads, don’t remind them they’re viewing an ad by placing the brand icon or logo prominently at the beginning.Don’t use the logo a lot. Instead, weave the logo subtly and infrequently into the storyline of the ad.

100 More Things #145: EMOTIONS ARE CONTAGIOUS

I recently went to an improv theater performance. I’d had a busy week, and it was fairly late at night. I was tired and not that excited to be there. In fact, I’d been thinking of not going at all.

As the room began to fill up before the performance started, I noticed that almost everyone there seemed happy and excited. There was a buzz in the room. I found myself waking up, and feeling happy and excited too.

Research has long shown that emotions are contagious. James Fowler (2008) wrote about the spread of happiness over 20 years in one community. There were happy and unhappy groups of people in the network. Happiness extended up to three degrees of separation. People who were surrounded by happy people were more likely to become happy in the future. The statistical analysis showed that this was not just because happy people tended to interact with other happy people, but because people were more likely to become happy when they were around happy people. Even physical distance was important: those who had a happy friend within a mile were 25 percent more likely to become happy themselves. Those with a happy next-door neighbor had a 34 percent greater probability of becoming happier.

And it’s not only happiness that’s contagious. A 1985 study by M. J. Howes showed that people without depression who roomed with someone who suffered from even mild depression would themselves become depressed over time.

Mimicry And Emotions

In the Fowler study, the effects of emotional contagion were seen in people who knew each other over time and were in physical proximity. What about the emotional contagion of strangers? Or people in a video?

Amy Cuddy of the Harvard Business School researches how taking certain postures can cause neurochemical changes in the brain. If you’re feeling sad, you frown, hang your head, and contract your body. What you may not realize is that the opposite is also true. Even if you’re not sad, if you frown, hang your head, and contract your body, then your body will release neurochemicals that actually make you feel sad. The same is true for other bodily postures and feelings. For example, opening the body with your arms and legs leads to feeling confident and powerful.

One theory about why emotions are contagious is that people tend to mimic the bodily postures of those around them, or of those they see in a video. This, in turn, makes them start to feel the feelings of the people around them, even strangers or people in a video.

We now know that people are affected by the emotional states of other people even in a matter of seconds. Facial expressions are particularly contagious, even through watching a video.

Takeaways

When you want to make people feel a particular emotion, concentrate not only on an individual, but on the social group.When you want people to feel a certain way (happy, excited, concerned, worried), show them photos or videos of people who are displaying that same emotion in their faces and body posture.

100 More Things #144: CHANGE THE STORY AND YOU WILL CHANGE THE BEHAVIOR

In his book Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, Timothy Wilson describes a large body of impressive research on how stories can cause longterm behavior change. Wilson has people rewrite a self-story. He calls this technique “story-editing.” Story-editing has been used to help people with post-traumatic stress disorder and teens at risk. The technique of story-editing is so simple that it doesn’t seem possible that it could cause such deep and profound change.

When people write a new story that describes who they are, why they behave as they do, and how they relate to others, they will, consciously and unconsciously, start to make decisions and act in ways that are consistent with that story.

But what if you can’t get someone to stop, think, and write out a new story? Does that mean that you can’t use the powerful effect of stories? Luckily, the answer is no. Even if you can’t get people to sit down and write out a new story, you can provide a story for them, and that’s almost as good.

Wilson explains how he used story-prompting to help college students stay in school, get better grades, and work harder in their courses. He identified first-year college students who were not doing well. These students were in what he calls a “self-defeating cycle.” The students were getting low grades on one or more tests, and had started thinking things like, “I’m in over my head,” or “Maybe I don’t belong at this college,” or “I’m not smart enough.” These thoughts created a new story that resulted in behavior that fit, such as not studying and skipping classes. This, of course, resulted in more low grades, reaffirming the story that the students couldn’t be successful. Wilson contrasts this with students who might also get a poor grade, but instead of believing the “I’m not smart enough” story, they believe a more hopeful story, such as “This course is harder than I thought it would be,” or “I guess my high school work didn’t prepare me well enough for this class,” or “I’m going to have to work harder, study more, maybe get a tutor.” These students’ behavior would lead to more studying and getting more help, and therefore better grades.

Wilson’s question was whether he could prompt a new story for the “self-defeating” students, even without having them explicitly write a new story themselves. Was there anything he could do to help them switch to a story that was more like the students who reacted to the poor grade by working harder?

Wilson had the students participate in an experiment. They thought they were being asked to take a survey of first-year students’ attitudes about college life. Wilson told them that they’d see the results from earlier surveys of older students, so they would know what kind of questions would be on their survey. In actuality, Wilson was showing them the previous survey results in order to prompt them with a new story.

The participants then saw the survey results of these older students that showed that many of the students had problems with grades during their first year, but that their grades improved over time. The participants read statements such as “67 percent said their freshman grades were lower than they had anticipated; 62 percent of the students said their GPA had improved significantly from the first semester of their freshman year to their upper-class years.” (This data was true, from actual earlier surveys.) To make sure that the new “story” was clear, the participants also watched video interviews of four older students who gave the same messages. The students in the videos talked about their majors, their hometowns, and career plans and then talked about their GPAs for the first semester of their first year, the second semester of the first year, and the most recent completed semester. All the students in the video interviews talked about their grades steadily increasing over time.

Altogether, the participants spent 30 minutes hearing from other students who had problems with low grades, but then improved their grades. Wilson didn’t do anything else. He didn’t counsel them, teach them study habits, or give them any other help.

The participants didn’t know that the purpose of the study was to improve their grades. What Wilson hoped was that he had prompted a new story, even if the participants were unaware of it. He hoped to prompt a story such as, “Maybe it’s not hopeless. Maybe I’m like those other students. They tried harder and were able to raise their grades.”

The story-prompting worked. Wilson reports that the participants achieved better grades in the following year than a randomly assigned control group who did not get the story prompting. The participants were also less likely to drop out of college. Imagine: 30 minutes of reading and watching videos about other people’s stories resulted in students working harder, improving their grades, and staying in school.

Let People Discover A New Story

Wilson doesn’t discuss in his book whether there’s a difference between telling people a new story versus letting them “discover” the story on their own. My sense is that the latter is better. The key is that people have to change their own story. If you just give them another story and say, “Here’s the story you have and here’s the story you should have,” it may not have the same impact as letting them discover a new story for themselves and compare it to a story they may not even realize they have. With story-prompting, it’s more effective to tell them a story about someone else and let them draw the parallels. Sometimes less is more!

Takeaways

When you want people to take an action, you first need to understand any current self-story that might prevent them from taking the action.Once you know the current self-story that’s preventing them from taking action, craft a new story and then expose them to it.Use audio, video, or narratives of people telling their stories to effectively influence your target audience to adopt a new story.

100 More Things #143: A PUBLIC COMMITMENT LEADS TO STRONGER SELF-STORIES

When people make a public commitment to a product, service, idea, or brand, their self-story about that product, service, idea, or brand becomes stronger.

For example, let’s say that Maryanne creates custom bow ties for weddings and sells her bow ties on an arts marketplace online. She has a self-story that she is an arts and crafts person, not really a business or marketing person.

But then she watches a short video about the XYZ email marketing service, which claims that when you create an email campaign for potential customers, you can greatly increase your sales. Maryanne wonders if she could increase her sales this way.

The XYZ company offers a free 30-day trial, so she decides to try it out. That’s a slight shift in Maryanne’s self-story. She can’t really say that she’s not a business or marketing person if she uses an email marketing service. Maybe she’s an arts and crafts person who is also savvy about marketing. If she signs up for the trial and doesn’t tell anyone, then the shift in her self-story might stay very small.
But what if she not only signs up for the free trial, but she clicks the “Share” button and shares on her Facebook page that she has signed up for the XYZ email marketing service. That’s a form of a public commitment. Unconsciously this will shift her self-story more. The public commitment about the action makes the effect of the action on her self-story stronger than if there were no public commitment.
Taking an action that no one else knows about results in less commitment and will lead to less long-term self-story change than an action that others see.

Surveys, Reviews, And Testimonials

If people have made any commitment at all to your organization, company, product, or service, you can strengthen the commitment and the self-story they have about being committed customers by asking them to make a more public show of support.

As an example, let’s say that you work for a hotel chain. When customers stay at the hotel, you send them an email with a link to an online survey about their stay. This survey is a form of public commitment. If they rate your hotel well, then they’ve made a public commitment that they are a supporter. Be sure to ask how likely they’d be to stay at your hotel again. A survey can be a way for you to get data and feedback about your products and services, but it’s also a way to get people to publicly commit. Even if you’re the only one who sees the survey result, when people fill out the survey form they will feel that they have made a public commitment, and this will strengthen their self-story that they are a fan of your brand.

You can even send a survey to people who are not yet your customers. If you ask them about their perceptions of your organization, products, or services, and they give positive responses, then they’ve just committed publicly and will be more open to dealing with you in the future.

The more public people’s commitment, the more it will strengthen their self-story— and the more it will affect their current and future behavior. Completing an anonymous survey is better than no commitment at all, but giving a testimonial or recommendation, or writing a review that’s posted online, is an even stronger show of commitment.

When people give a recommendation, testimonial, or write a review, they’re strengthening a self-story that says, “I am a person who believes in this product,” or “I am a person who donates to this organization,” or “I am a person who buys from this company.”

Reviews act on others as a form of social validation, but they also act on the self as a form of commitment. If people write a positive review, they’ll want to stay consistent, and that means they’ll take more action to interact with the site, the company, the organization. If you want to build commitment to your brand, your company, or a product, then make sure you give your audience the opportunity to write a review.

Don’t pay people to commit

If you pay people to write a review, testimonial, or respond to a survey, it won’t change their self-story. Instead of a self-story of “I am someone who believes in this product,” it will be “I’m someone who says I believe in order to get a reward.” Rewards (extrinsic motivation) interfere with self-story change (intrinsic motivation).
A reward may get people to take one action, but it won’t strengthen their self-story and it won’t lead to future action without more reward.

Takeaways

Ask people to fill out surveys or write reviews and testimonials. These forms of public commitment will strengthen their self-stories about your brand, product, or service.Don’t pay or reward people for making public commitments. Extrinsic motivation (rewards) interferes with intrinsic motivation and will weaken the self-story.

Research on laughter

Since laughter seems to be in the news (some politicians in the US are complaining that Kamala Harris, running for President, has a weird laugh and laughs too much) I thought I would re-visit the research on laughter that I posted several years ago in this blog:

Research on Laughter — Considering how universal laughter is and how much of it we do, there is, relatively, not a lot of research on laughter. One of the main researchers is Robert Provine from University of Maryland. Here is a summary of some of the research he has done… some of these findings may surprise you:

Laughter is universal: All humans in all cultures laughLaughter is unconscious: You can’t actually laugh on command — it will be fake laughter if you try to.Laughter is for social communication: We rarely laugh when we are alone. We laugh 30 times more often when we are with others.Laughter is contagious: We will smile and then start laughing as we hear others laughLaughter appears early in babies: at about 4 months oldLaughter is not about humor: Provine studied over 2,000 cases of naturally occurring laughter and most of it did not happen as a result of “humor” such as telling jokes. Most laughter followed statements such as “Hey John, where ya been?” or “Here comes Mary”, or “How did you do on the test?” Laughter after these types of statements bond people together socially. Only 20% of laughter is from jokes.We rarely laugh in the middle of a sentence. It is usually at the end.Other primate and mammals laugh. There are videos of rats laughing while being tickled.Speaking of tickling, laughing seems to have “evolved” from tickling.Most laughing occurs by the person who is speaking, not the person who is listening. The person who is speaking laughs twice as much.Women laugh more than twice as much as men.Laughter denotes social status. The higher up on the hierarchy you are in a group, the less you will laugh.

Personally, I enjoy a good laugh.