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.
Highlights
Human societies are characterised by high levels of prosociality, both in the sense of acting generously towards others and in the sense of cooperating with others on some communal task
It is the endorphin system that provides the psychopharmacological underpinnings for social bonding [19,20,21,22,23,24] in a way that creates stable groups out of dyadic ‘friendships’ [25,26,27]
These bonded relationships are what allow primates to cooperate with, and behave altruistically towards, each other. This reflects a crucial contrast in the way the oxytocin and endorphin systems function: the one is endogenous while the other acts exogenously (I can influence your β-endorphin levels directly and so make you be more prosocial towards me)
Summary
Human societies are characterised by high levels of prosociality, both in the sense of acting generously (altruistically) towards others and in the sense of cooperating with others on some communal task Such behaviour is often viewed as being a generalised predisposition, with a prominent role for oxytocin [1,2,3,4,5,6]. It is the endorphin system that provides the psychopharmacological underpinnings for social bonding [19,20,21,22,23,24] in a way that creates stable groups out of dyadic ‘friendships’ [25,26,27] These bonded relationships are what allow primates to cooperate with, and behave altruistically towards, each other. Endorphins have a serum half-life that is measured in hours [28], whereas that for oxytocin is measured in minutes [29,30,31,32], with half-life in the CNS being longer but proportionately similar [28, 33]
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