Media release

From: The Royal Society

Perception of group membership from spontaneous and volitional laughter

Listeners can infer group membership from authentic and fake laughter. Dutch and Japanese participants listened to decontextualised laughter clips and judged the authenticity of the laugher and whether the laughing person was from their cultural in-group or an out-group. Listeners were able to accurately infer group membership from authentic and fake of laughter, and in-group laughs were perceived as more positive than out-group laughs by Dutch – but not Japanese – listeners. Laughter is a rich vocal signal that can be used to make a wide range of inferences about others, from their social relationships to their identity, the authors said.