Relational Psychology (BONDING VIA LAUGHING) with Sara Algoe and Laura Kurtz

Basement card games. Fireside reminiscing. Being forced to learn a dance. Does acting like a cornball matter? Will bits save your life? Yes. I got myself to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to talk with research psychologists Dr. Sara Algoe and Dr. Laura Kurtz, who also run the research collective, The Love Consortium. They’re the team behind studies proving that laughing does predict and enhance lasting social support and lead to longer, better lives. We chat sneaky studies, in person vs. remote hangouts, which came first: the giggle or the oxytocin, which “novel and arousing” activities strengthen relationships, the immersive bonding of a slumber party with people you trust, words vs. actions, laughter amid conflict, and how connecting with old friends can keep you out of the hospital unless you decide to try amateur rodeo night at the fair.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey, this is a special bonus episode of Ologies and it's brought to you by Verbo. And we wanted to go into the psychology of laughing and bonding. Why is laughing together one of the fastest ways humans bond? What's going on psychologically? Does anyone study this? Of course, someone does. And of course, when I was on the East Coast two weeks ago, I dropped into their office and I sat down and I hung out with them in person. And it was hard not to laugh through the entire thing. Because this is just one of those studies that's cute, but it's also incredibly important for like human survival. And I love that we got to record this together because a lot of those moments happen when we're relaxed and we're just spending time together, especially when you're traveling or you're just sharing a space.

• 0:42Alie Ward?

  And Verbo makes it easy to bring your people together so those moments can happen naturally. They work really hard to get everything right before you arrive. And if something goes wrong, Verbo Care and their 24/7 support team are there to help. The people on your trip are full of surprises, not your Verbo. Book your next stay on the Verbo app. Oh, hey, it's that old guy at the diner counter writing in a journal, Ally Ward. And what a heartwarming episode about knee slappers. We talked to two absolutely brilliant and charming psychological scientists who study why people like each other and how that affects their health, why it's good to laugh with friends, and it's neuroscience.

• 1:25Alie Ward?

  So they've done incredible work with research at the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And Dr. Sarah Algoe is a professor, director of the Emotions and Social Interactions in Relationships Laboratory and a founder of the Love Consortium, a community of researchers who all focus on high-quality social connections in their research. She has a cute curly brown bob and was wearing a cobalt blue jumpsuit. She met me downstairs at their office on campus. The other, Dr. Laura Kurtz, has been a researcher, is an independent consultant, and is currently the program manager at the Love Consortium. And they have co-authored several studies specifically on how laughter bonds people,

• 2:09Alie Ward?

  like the 2015 Putting Laughter in Context: Shared Laughter as a Behavioral Indicator of Relationship Well-Being. So it was Labor Day and Dr. Kurtz had on a green gingham skirt and a crisp white button up and a tumble of blonde hair. I was sweaty and, per the usual, on-campus affair, I had been recently lost. And I was relieved to find their air-conditioned building. We sat in their office and gabbed up a storm about sneaky studies, how we're doing socially at the moment, why it matters, which came first, the giggle or the oxytocin? Which activities act like magnets in relationships? The immersive bonding of a slumber party with people you trust?

• 2:53Alie Ward?

  Words versus actions? Laughter amid conflict? And how connecting with old friends can keep you out of the hospital unless you decide to try amateur rodeo night at the fair? With two social scientists who have written the book, or rather, the papers, on laughter and bonding, social psychologist Dr. Sarah Algoe and Dr. Laura Kurtz.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  I'm Sarah Algoe and my pronouns are she/her. Oh, yeah, I'm a professor of psychology and neuroscience.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  I'm Laura Kurtz. My pronouns are she/her and I am the program manager of the Love Consortium.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  The Love Consortium is such a sweet name. And I noticed TLC, did you do that on purpose?

• 3:52Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 3:54Alie Ward?

  So a few weeks ago, I got to sit down in North Carolina with this research duo about the ins and outs of why certain people like to hang out with each other. And yes, this is a job. It's an important one.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  So in October, we're having a virtual love conference, like an all-day conference on the science of love, which we're so excited about.

• 4:15Alie Ward?

  Someone studies this. I think this is, this is why making this show always blows my mind is like a lot of people walking around like don't realize that there are people in an office somewhere who like go to work really jazzed to figure out how like love works.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's really rewarding.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  And it's, and it's fun.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, one challenging thing about it is that actually people have all kinds of their own ideas about how love works. And so on the one hand, it's really exciting to be talking about something that's so relatable, like shared laughter as part of like how people connect with each other. But it also can really bring contention into the field of love research.

• 4:57Alie Ward?

  I can understand that.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Because researchers are human too. And so they might be working with their own idea of what love is because partly because they're human and partly because they, and so for us, one of the things that we really emphasize in the sharing of data and like collaborating through data is that the only thing that will solve these debates about what laypeople think love is or what researchers think love is, is data and evidence. And so we know how to collect the evidence. Like that's like, we do that all day, every day, dozens and dozens of researchers collect this kind of data.

• 5:33Alie Ward?

  You know, my dad always used to say when, when someone would piss him off, he said, it really fries my legs. And I don't know where he got that, but we still say it. But it must, I mean, not to come out with like a dick question off the bat, but it must really fry your legs that there's so much money invested in like DOD research. And then when it comes to like research on how human beings connect and actually love each other, which is something that we all encounter every day and literally will keep us alive. It's probably like, oh, well, we'll, we'll get to that or that's just, it is what it is. But do you ever have to make the case?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Oh, all the time.

• 6:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  All the time. I remember I, and even personally to myself, I would have these moments in grad school when I would be pilot testing GIFs to see which GIFs made people laugh. Right? And that can feel so fluffy or frivolous, especially when you have other students in the same department studying really heavy things like bias and discrimination. And there are these times and I'm like, oh, well, like, it's just laughter. What, what does that mean? But really, the research has shown, and there's a really great meta-analysis by Julianne Holt-Lunstedt that shows that the effect of social disconnection is as strong on our mortality risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  So if we can invest more time and resources into identifying how we can make our relationships stronger, how we can feel more connected to other people can have really important implications for our health and well-being.

• 7:05Alie Ward?

  And this is coming from this landmark 2010 academic paper, Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-Analytic Review. And it was lead authored by Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstedt, who found that across 148 studies of over 300,000 participants, you have a 50% greater likelihood of surviving the next seven years compared to those with insufficient social relationships. So your odds, 50% greater you're going to be alive if you have good pals in a community. So crunching all the data revealed that the effect of that social support, especially what they called multi-dimensional social integration-like community, is comparable with quitting smoking, straight up.

• 7:50Alie Ward?

  And it exceeds many well-known risk factors, they say, for mortality, like, quote, obesity, physical inactivity, et cetera. And this result remained consistent across age and sex and initial health status, their cause of death, and the follow-up period. It was all consistent despite those factors. So why is this? A bunch of papers show that social support leads to better immune functioning and to better immune-mediated inflammatory responses. So how are we all doing in that department? We're doing bad. And this study was done before COVID. So the paper says that current evidence indicates that the quantity and/or quality

• 8:33Alie Ward?

  of social relationships in our industrialized societies, that quality is decreasing. It sucks. Despite increases in technology and globalization that would presumably foster social connections, people are coming increasingly more socially isolated. I know people who have left their spouses because they fell in love with ChatGPT. Things are wild right now, people. So what are we supposed to do about all this? We have to pay attention. The study says that physicians and health professionals and educators and public media, hey, have to take risk factors like smoking and diet and exercise seriously. We all have to do that seriously.

• 9:17Alie Ward?

  But the data presented here make a compelling case for social relationship factors to be added to that list. So doctors, if you're listening, it is recommended that medical evaluations and screenings should include variables like social well-being. Like ask, how are you feeling? You feeling lonely? How's your community? And the doctor should note changes as they would like a change in, in weight or cholesterol. Because connecting with others, like real, actual, living, human being species regularly is really important. So even if you just like sit in the back of a book club and don't say anything, being there is good for you. Knowing your neighbor's name means community.

• 9:59Alie Ward?

  You can reach out to a friend and have a catch-up session on the phone a few times a month. It all matters. When you talk about love, how broadly do you describe that? Because I know that you've looked at intimate partner relationships, but also group dynamics. How is love even defined?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Thank you for asking that question. You're welcome. The easiest way to talk about it is that it's a feeling of affection and care and concern for another person. That's the simplest way of defining it. But the complications come up when you think about the fact that we can have like a more enduring, long-term sentiment of love towards someone. Like, people regularly think about a romantic partner and like, do you love them or not? That background feeling that you have for the person, or for a child, or for your friend, or whatever. But we also know that there's tons of evidence that people feel bursts of love for all kinds

• 10:59Speaker 01

  of people, even for strangers, actually. We have new data that people might feel bursts of love for strangers and show, they definitely show their love to strangers. And so the bursts of love is another level of analysis that I would say. And then, lots of people actually think that love shows up only in actions. What's that saying that people used to have, like, pictures or it didn't happen?

• 11:24Alie Ward?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So like, there's all kinds of philosophers who have long thought that like, a requirement of love is actually, if you're not showing it, then it's not love.

• 11:35Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, this goes way back. And Bell Hooks talks about love as action, for example.

• 11:40Alie Ward?

  And this is from Dr. Bell Hooks' 1999 book, All About Love: New Visions, in which the late author and philosopher writes, "Love is an action, a participatory emotion. This is why it is useful to see love as a practice," she writes. She continues, "The path to love is not arduous or hidden, but we must choose to take the first step." So, yes, love is an action, they find.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  And we recently collected data from participants, and we said, "What is love?" And they just filled out a couple of sentences. And some of our participants, a reliable number of them, they only described actions, like supporting other people and so forth. So, it's complicated.

• 12:22Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  I'm reading every piece of evidence that's ever been collected from psychologists on love, and I'm like, "This study actually doesn't show us what we need to know. Okay, let's keep, keep pushing things forward," basically.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  After all, we are exploring the unknown.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  But it's also, like, to your point, I really do feel passionately that, yeah, why isn't the government funding this research? We know, this has been something that, like, Harry Harlow, in 1955, he was the president, or 58, President of the American Psychological Association, and he stood up there at his presidential address, and he said, "Love is at the center of everything, and I have no idea why you guys aren't studying love. We can do this scientifically." And still, to this day, the conceptual landscape around love from psychologists is like, super varied. So, like Harlow, I believe, "We can do this.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  We have the scientific tools to do it." One of the reasons that I'm passionate about this is really, I think if we can marshal our resources together, we can be the people who say, like, "Okay, world, governments, like, no, no, it's love. Love is the thing at the center of everything, and we don't need to pretend that it's something else." I think a lot of researchers, for a long time, actually shied away from using the word "love" in their, in their research in the last, actually after the 1970s.

• 13:58Alie Ward?

  Wait, so what happened in the 1970s? I was thinking, was it the LSD trials? Was it disco cocaine? No. What happened was, these two doctors, Dr. Ellen Burschide and Dr. Elaine Hatfield, and in this paper that I found, published by researchers from Stony Brook and Yale in 2013, in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science, they recount that in the last several decades, the field of relationship science has become this thriving sub-discipline of psychology. And this is because of these two pioneers, Doctors Ellen Burschide and Elaine Hatfield, who identified that relationship science was crucial, and that you could use empirical data to study it.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Burschide were actually studying initial attraction between people, and they were talking about love. They wrote a book called Interpersonal Attraction, I have here, in 1969. And they had some research that was funded by the NIH, I think, I think it was NIH. And there was a Senator, William Proxmire, who developed a thing called the Golden Fleece Award, and he made fun of them for studying love. He said, "You can't study love."

• 15:11Alie Ward?

  What?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  "I don't want to know. Love is too abstract. You can't do it." And he laughed at them, and he tried to take away their funding.

• 15:20Alie Ward?

  I hate him.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Well, that happened. So that, so since then, I think people have tried to, they still study, you know, but they try to make it sound like really serious and important. "We're going to study how people fight."

• 15:34Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  And it's true, like, that's important also. But they, I think that people really shied away from saying that they were studying love, even though they were studying processes in loving relationships. So, yeah, I think that really caused a lot of damage.

• 15:48Alie Ward?

  Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because bonding as human beings, it really drives so many parts of our lives, whether or not we feel lonely, whether or not we feel connected to people. And your, your papers on laughter, obviously, really got me. And Dr. Kurtz was the lead author, co-authored by Dr. Algoe, on the 2015 Journal of Personal Relationships paper, Putting Laughter in Context: Shared Laughter as a Behavioral Indicator of Relationship Well-Being, which opens with a quote from Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran, which reads, "And in the sweetness of friendship,

• 16:29Alie Ward?

  let there be laughter," and sharing of pleasures, which is so sweet. And I also like that it's like little things. It can be just small hangs. But the paper establishes that shared laughter is a useful, objective marker of relationship well-being. It's like undeniable, you're laughing both together, that is a good metric. And then, their 2019 paper, The Weight and Way of Shared Laughter in Diatic Relationships, also was looking at shared laughter, that is laughter happening at the same time. Why does laughter bond us? Is it a signifier of intelligence? Is it, if someone laughs at my jokes, that makes me feel good, and then, then I love them for that? Like, where is the back and forth?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Well, I'll take it away.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  When we first started studying laughter, there was surprisingly little research on laughter within the context of relationships. There was a body of work on humor, which is sort of, you know, laughter's cousin, right? But it's not one in the same. So, for instance, we can laugh at something that we don't necessarily find humorous, and then also not all humor attempts would elicit laughter, right? Like, I can appreciate the humor in something without actually laughing. And so, we were really curious to see, what does the behavior of laughter itself do for relationships? And we, you know, we've, we've studied this in a number of ways. The first, we brought in couples to the lab, and just coded their spontaneous laughter.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  So, we weren't manipulating anything, we were just saying, "Let's see how this conversation goes." They were talking about how they first met. And from those video-recorded interactions, we coded moments of laughter, and we coded down to, you know, the millisecond. When did one person laugh? When did the other person laugh? And from those two codings, we were able to get individual laughter, as a solo laughter, as well as those specific overlapping moments where both people were laughing at the same time. Because we do know, from the past research, that laughter is inherently contagious. It's most likely to happen in the presence of another person. And so, what we found, in fact, is that those couples who did laugh more spontaneously

• 18:44Speaker 02

  in the lab together during this five-minute interaction, were the ones that reported feeling closer to their partners, they reported feeling more support from their partners. And this is above and beyond all of the other laughter in the conversation.

• 18:59Alie Ward?

  And they say that that's not so much "you make me laugh," or "I make you laugh," that makes us happy. It's the moments when you're both laughing. And if you want to get nerdy about love, which is why we're here, there's this study that gives its respondents a choice of Venn diagrams, with one circle labeled "other," and the second circle labeled "self," and they show progressively more overlap in those two circles. And they've given this to participants, and they're asked to think of how close they feel to another person or group. If they had to pick one of those circles. And then that helps establish a metric for this perceived connectedness.

• 19:42Alie Ward?

  So think of it kind of like, like watching the sun and the moon eclipse. Like, how much of an eclipse is it? That's how close you are. And yeah, it's called the inclusion of other in the self. And shared laughter represents more overlap on those circles. Kind of like a mind meld, Laura and Sarah say. And in a minute, we're going to talk about this bonkers study that just floored me. It's so funny, but first, let's give some money away. And this week, it's going to support research for the Love Consortium. So one thing we talked about is how underfunded relational psychology is, yet how vital it is to feel connected to others. So we can treat each other fairly, maybe not drop bombs on each other in my dream scenario.

• 20:27Alie Ward?

  So a sizable donation is being made to the Love Consortium to fund this ongoing research. And they are, of course, a digitally connected community of researchers. They're engaged in the advanced scientific study of high-quality social connections. And thank you to Verbo, who agreed to be the sole sponsor of this bonus episode. So it can be brought to you with limited ads. Just a huge thanks to Verbo for making this entire episode possible and prompting it. I loved, loved brainstorming some ologies for a series with them. And what's been really interesting about this series and also doing more interviews in person, which I just spent a couple of weeks, again, like traveling and collecting a bunch of interviews in person, is how quickly it breaks down barriers and makes people feel more comfortable with each other.

• 21:12Alie Ward?

  Whether that's me meeting up with an ologist in their office, or in the field, or in their lab, or honestly, seeing my cousins I haven't seen in forever, or hanging out with a high school friend, or one of my besties. And Verbo is designed for that kind of experience, giving you a place to gather and to spend time together, whether it's late-night conversations, or inside jokes, or just being in the same space and having coffee in the morning together. And they also help remove the stress of planning by getting things right ahead of time and offering support if anything goes wrong through Verbo Care and 24/7 human support, which is amazing. So you can focus on just enjoying the moment. And you can check out the Verbo app for your next trip.

• 21:57Alie Ward?

  I have. Okay, thank you again for that. And again, because this is a shorter bonus episode, we didn't have time for Patreon questions. We're trying to get through it. And let's get back to that study I mentioned a minute ago. This methodology, just mischief.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And we have more recent data that shows from people who reported on the first time they met new students on campus, basically, people that thought they might want to get to know better. And turns out, the amount that they said that they shared laughter with that person in that interaction actually forecasted whether they saw the person again, whether they said at the end of the semester that they still had relationships. It was a super-strong predictor. So there's something about the signal, at least about the signal value, that like, oh, this person sees the world the way that I do. They might be a good relationship partner. Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was just gonna add to that. I mean, the fact that we have data from, you know, long-lasting romantic couples, but also brand-new friends, or strangers even in the lab, points to the fact that it doesn't necessarily have to be a shared joke. But even in the context of strangers, we see that brief moments of shared laughter signal, oh, you see the world in the same way I do. We're on the same wavelength, and that in turn then makes me more likely to like you, want to get to know you better. And then, as Sarah just said, actually executing on that behavior over time.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  That's true. Actually, that's one of the things that I really like about that study, if I may. I, so Laura did this really amazing study where she actually brought strangers into the lab. And they weren't even talking. All they were doing was watching these GIFs at the same time. But she manipulated the way the GIFs were presented so that sometimes the participant thought that they were laughing at most of the same GIFs as the other person. And sometimes, watching the same GIFs, they thought they were laughing at different GIFs than the, than the other person. And then sometimes just watching like a pleasant thing with the other person.

• 24:00Alie Ward?

  Did you have piped-in laughter? Like, were they separated? Were you piped in laughter?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  There was actually only one participant. So the other participant was actually a pre-recorded actor, a competitor. So yeah, we had these actors come in and they laughed at specific times and we recorded them. So, you know, they're really just watching a video recording, but.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the other person was on the video, obviously?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yes, laughing. And, and they watched the series of GIFs. And for the shared laughter condition, the actor was timed to laugh at all of the, the GIFs that were most likely to actually elicit laughter from the participant.

• 24:34Alie Ward?

  So these participants are thinking they're being observed doing like this totally different task. But as the program loads, they're just like waiting, hanging out. And there were some funny GIFs or little movies playing. And they can see each other live. They can see the other participant on their screen. They're just thinking it's, it's just kind of like a Zoom. But it's totally pre-recorded and predetermined how much that actor is going to be laughing. And it worked. I mean, sitcoms with live studio audiences, they knew what they were doing.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  And the, the people in the shared laughter conditions were the ones that said, you know what, I think we were on the same wavelength during that interaction, even though we didn't even talk to each other. We have more in common. And in turn, they were excited to actually get the opportunity to meet them, which then we had to unfortunately say, just kidding.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Sneaky.

• 25:24Alie Ward?

  So how do we apply this?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  I would recommend doing something where you can let your guard down and be silly. Yeah, that's the best way to create the conditions for shared laughter. You know, I think about, my children play a silly game, a silly board game. The girls always elicits laughter. And it doesn't require us to be interpreting like the humor in anything. It's just purely, we're all together being silly together, and laughter naturally arises.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's really cool evidence. Our Erin had this really nice task way back in the 90s, where they were, they randomly assigned couples to do what they call novel and arousing activities. Which sounds more arousing than it was.

• 26:09Alie Ward?

  Novel and arousing.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  By arousing, they actually meant physiologically arousing, not sexually arousing. But it does come across that way.

• 26:19Alie Ward?

  It's just like, we lined up a bunch of furry handcuffs.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. No, no, no, no. No, that's, that's not what this is.

• 26:25Alie Ward?

  So I cracked into the 2000 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled Couples' Shared Participation in Novel and Arousing Activities and Experienced Relationship Quality, which found that the strongest bonding among people happened after shared recreational activities, all of which, they say, were somewhat active and arousing, such as outdoor activities, active sports, card games, and travel. But I got my ass right to the methodology section to see that in one experiment, they got a bunch of couples. And then for couple A, they randomly assigned them maybe a boring task, like rolling a ball back and forth to each other on a gym mat.

• 27:08Alie Ward?

  While other couples had their ankles and wrists bound together with Velcro. And they had to crawl on their hands and knees, bound together across the room in under a minute to win a piece of candy. Now, in addition, the paper states, couples were required to carry a cylindrical pillow down and back with them without using hands, arms, or teeth. I did not mention if they got to go home with any souvenir Velcro straps. I imagine that was up for negotiation.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  But they had them do these silly things. If you read the study again, it's like, that probably elicited a lot of laughter for these couples. And sure enough, they showed that that brought people closer together.

• 27:46Alie Ward?

  Well, is, does the laughter come from like a breaking of tension? Does it come from a moment of, you know, subconscious potential danger and safety? Are you finding where, either group settings or one-on-one, where those moments are coming from? Or I feel like if you watch a sitcom, a lot of the laughter that comes after season four, five, six, or whatever, like if you were to watch Friends, you'd be like, that's so Chandler, or that's so Monica. These little indicators of like, that's so their personality. And feeling known and feeling predictable in a way that's really endearing. But when it comes to, to group or partner dynamics, what is eliciting the laugh?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Well, there are a few theories about what elicits laughter. And you, you got at one, like this like relief of tension is one. I really like the benign violation hypothesis.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Do you know this?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  That's a good, it's a good theory. The benign violation, it's so serious.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Pete McGraw, if you don't.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Peter McGraw, yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  The idea is that in order to find something funny, to laugh at something, you have to perceive it as a benign violation to your worldview.

• 28:54Alie Ward?

  So great. The fact I don't, I wonder if anyone has a production company named

• 29:00Speaker 01

  The benign violation.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  It would be a great comedy group.

• 29:03Alie Ward?

  It really would.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  But the idea is, you know, we don't laugh at things that are serious.

• 29:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Or predictable, like too predictable, because that's not funny. But we laugh at things when they're unexpected, when they surprise us, and they're not threatening. Right. And laughter is also thought to have evolved from that open mouthed play face that our primate ancestors make while they're playing as a cue that this is a safe situation. It can be interpreted as play. You don't need to feel threatened. And so I think that's why I really like the benign violation.

• 29:41Alie Ward?

  So yeah, a 2010 paper concluded that violations take many forms, ranging from tickling and play fighting to the violations of linguistic norms, conventions, and rules that take place in ponds. So ponds scientifically designated as a benign violation. Now, the authors explained that to test their theory, they ran a bunch of stuff by people. But one of the reactions that they looked at is they, in a laboratory setting, told some non religious people about a church raffling off a Hummer SUV. And when I read that that was part of the experiment, I did laugh out loud, even though I'm, I am completely alone right now, and I still find that notion funny.

• 30:27Alie Ward?

  Well, one of the hardest times I've ever laughed in the last few years is I was folding laundry with my husband and I asked him to throw a pair of socks at my face. And

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 30:40Alie Ward?

  It was

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 30:41Alie Ward?

  The most benign violation. I was like, try to, try to hit me in the head with this. He was like, are you sure? Anyway, I've never laughed so hard. I was like, do another one, do another one. And getting pelted in the face with a pair of balled up socks, it doesn't hurt, but it's funny every time. Are you sure? And I, he's like, I've never seen you. And it was, it's really funny that there must have been like, I'm getting hit in the face.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:06Alie Ward?

  And it's not a rock.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  But it's not going to hurt you.

• 31:08Alie Ward?

  It's about to hurt me.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:10Alie Ward?

  So stupid and I can't recommend it enough. Next time you're folding laundry.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  I'm gonna work on that.

• 31:18Alie Ward?

  What emojis do you use for laughing? How do you feel about lamau, lol? I mean, we're saying I'm dying of laughter when really we might be alone in a room going. So what is the in person versus over a screen? What's the difference?

• 31:36Alie Ward?

  Do we know?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Well, I'm a, I'm a ha, ha, ha person personally.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  I sometimes say hee hee.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, research suggests that the more cues that are available, the more potent the signal. So of course, so being in person will probably have a stronger impact. But we use emojis for a reason, and it's because they still do really important work in communications between people. So I think making sure to express the laughter is, is still really important, even though it's not going to be as potent as actually laughing together in person. But it's a, yeah, just an important way of being responsive. Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  But there is research on, on voiced laughter, right? So the, the participants who, whose laughter was voiced, so audible laughter rather than like, you know, the panting laughs. Those are the ones that elicited positive emotions in the, the observer. And so I, I think the more, like Sarah said, the more information you can get, if you can get the auditory component, that's one step. If you can get the visual lifting, the crinkling of the eyes, the signal genuine laughter as opposed to maybe fake laughter.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the better.

• 32:57Alie Ward?

  Are we receiving fewer cues from each other these days from being in person less?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:04Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 33:05Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 33:07Alie Ward?

  Yeah, that's what I figured.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, my colleagues and I in this department and in the love consortium have really been, have really talked, tried to beat the drum about this, that it's, it's the in person connections. And yeah, Barbara Fredrickson, who's a friend and collaborator here, has talked about this a lot as well. But it's really the in person connection that it just gives us the most signals. We have the most opportunity for really understanding each other. And, you know, like, picture sitting in a Zoom meeting, right? Even if you have a meeting with five people, you just can't pick up those like, side cues

• 33:52Speaker 01

  that might make you giggle during a regular meeting, but like, you have no idea if that person is looking at you and they're making that face or not, right? And so even just in a regular old work meeting, it seems like it's more efficient to do the group meeting by Zoom, but you, you really miss out on those opportunities to see like, oh yeah, my colleague and I actually see this in the same way. We're both having the same, like, this is bizarre to be sitting here while this is happening. Those are cues that you can pick up on in person.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And without requiring like the back channel chats.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Right. The texting on the side, or the, like, that people are gonna catch you doing, or you might accidentally like respond to everybody in the Zoom meeting or whatever.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Ignore that.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  So always seeing people in person, I think, is gonna be what much more efficient in that way, and just a better opportunity to connect with people.

• 34:46Alie Ward?

  But, you know, I'm wondering to, how our propensity to laugh changes when we're under stress? Like, I feel like it's maybe not, not stressful in the world. People feel very overworked. You know, climate news is not great. It's many wars happening. You know, I feel like I've noticed friends who I really bonded with in our youth, we are, I feel like we're laughing less. And I'm wondering, like, how are, how do we get ourselves back to a place where we can feel silly when everything feels very heavy? You know?

• 35:32Alie Ward?

  You're like, fund us, let's figure it out.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:36Alie Ward?

  I'm like, great question.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Every time I say fund us. NIH.

• 35:39Alie Ward?

  NIH. Yeah, yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  And philanthropic organizations. So I, I don't know the answer to the question, but I do know that it's critical. Many people these days feel like they're carrying a really heavy burden of everything that's happening in the world. And they, things do feel really heavy and serious. But what we know about resilience is there is absolutely no way that we're gonna get through it unless we have moments of positivity in our days. There's just not. The strongest predictor of health and resilience is social connection. The strongest ways that we know about how to build social connection is through positive experiences

• 36:27Speaker 01

  with other people. So it seems frivolous, it might seem frivolous.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  But it's not.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Like, that's actually the only way that we're all gonna get through this together is by remembering that it's other people and our warm feelings and connection with them. That's the best predictor of whether we're gonna make it through at all. And what we know from, from the studies of love that we do is that love feels good to experience, that it's really these moments of positivity between people that accelerate the connection between people. It's really important to have people in our lives who will be there during really hard times. All of that serious stuff is also true. But even the study of conflict, like how people, how couples have conflict with one another, actually, one

• 37:18Speaker 01

  of the really strong predictors of the longevity of that marriage is whether they're laughing during the conflict. I mean, it's the moments of positivity that give relief. I think if people think about it that way, like, it might help them justify that, you know, if I'm gonna keep up the fight, the good fight, then I have to have these moments in my life. And in the same way that some people justify taking time off work to exercise because they have to be physically fit to be able to, you know, continue. Think of it that way. Like, it's really the most essential ingredient to being able to live a long and healthy life, and also to be able to keep up the fight and not burn out, is actually by having these really wonderful relationships in our lives and moments of connection between

• 38:03Speaker 01

  people.

• 38:04Alie Ward?

  I do feel like also when you see someone in person, when you hang out with, with friends in person, you don't have the opportunity to do that kind of staccato back and forth where it's like, bad, good, bad, good. But, you know, while we've been sitting here, I haven't picked up my phone once, which is great. But I wonder, two of those, if, you know, making time to hang out instead of being like, oh, I've gotta, I've gotta stay home and read the news and I gotta, you know, make sure I send my emails and da, da, da, da. I wonder if making time to hang out in person to gives your brain a break from switching, task switching a lot? Or how does it, how, neuroscientists, help me out. How does the brain, how does it make those little wiry connections?

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's funny, you say making time. It reminds me of Lana Catalino's work on prioritizing positivity. So there's, you know, the research on happiness. It's like, if you're, if you're trying to be happier, the worst thing you can do is to actively try to be happier.

• 39:02Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Because then you're just monitoring how you're not feeling happy.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  You can get obsessed with it.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  You can get obsessed.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  In the same way that people get obsessed with exercise or like, losing weight or something like that.

• 39:11Alie Ward?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  And it seems like Lana's work says that, you know, the, the best way is to actually schedule time to do the things that naturally bring you happiness. And so I think the same would be true for creating social connections and making time to actually see your friends in person, to create room for some shared laughter.

• 39:30Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  And bonding to actually occur.

• 39:32Alie Ward?

  So for proof, you can see the 2020 paper, "The Psychometric Properties of the Prioritizing Positivity Scale." It's in the Journal of Personality Assessment, which reads me for absolute filth with a sentence, "Correlational research suggests that people who obsess about their happiness tend to feel fewer positive emotions and more depressive symptoms. These results suggest that the pursuit of happiness backfires."

• 40:00Alie Ward?

  However, it salvages the vibe by saying, when planning their schedules, people who prioritize positivity may end their weekdays going for a run or playing with their toddler. Others may cook a new recipe or spend time on their side business or hobbies. And it says, "The exact behaviors or choices may differ drastically from one person to the next." It's like, literally says, "Some people relish cooking," which is such a benign violation. Or as others abhor it. But the thread that connects these behaviors together is this tendency to seek out happiness in daily life. So it says, "Rather than trying to coerce moment-to-moment

• 40:44Alie Ward?

  experience into something extremely pleasant, right now, you have to be really happy. A better way is just involving some scheduled time to do things that naturally spark your happiness." So you don't have to be in a good mood to do a hobby or go for a walk or see a movie with a friend or go for a weekend trip with a fam. Like, love is action. Happiness is as happiness does. Is there, do you each remember a time when you've laughed the hardest?

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Anytime I think about shared laughter, I think about my childhood sleepovers. You know, so not a, not a specific memory, but just being with my friends, coordinating ridiculous dances to Spice Girls and playing silly board games and, you know, prank calling boys we had crushes on. Like, that's, that's the stuff that you leave the sleepover and your abs hurt because you were laughing so hard all night long. And that, I mean, it's, it's so rare to get that now, I feel like, as an adult. But, but that magnitude of just deep belly laughter that really bonds people.

• 41:57Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:58Alie Ward?

  It's the best.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:00Alie Ward?

  What about you? The hardest you've laughed, do you remember?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Oh, it's always with another person. I'm remembering one that I, where I was laughing at something and other people weren't laughing at the thing in particular, but like, I just couldn't stop laughing and they were laughing with me. That this was like, and it was one of those situations.

• 42:20Alie Ward?

  Yeah, that'd be it. I think too, maybe that is why, why people who are neurodivergent or do have, have particular niche interests or something, why it is so much easier to bond because you're, the social norms that you're reacting to, you're reacting to similar social norms, you know? And I don't know, I think that's an, it's interesting. If you feel like an outsider, but there's someone there with you being an outsider, it becomes such a relief. You know what I mean?

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:46Alie Ward?

  But if there were one thing that you wish people knew about laughter and connection, like, what is something that you wish you could like scream from the rooftops?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 43:01Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  I, I mean, we, we talked earlier about the importance of social connection and health. And, you know, there was the, the live, laugh, love signs from, what, 15 years ago? They're so cheesy and, you know, people make fun of them a lot. But really, I mean, I guess perhaps the more accurate version of that would be laugh, love, live. Like, that's the pathway.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Moments of shared laughter predict these really high-quality relationships, which over time can actually help you live longer.

• 43:36Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's so real. All you gotta do to do a makeover in your house is just change the order of the sign.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 43:42Alie Ward?

  And then you're ready for 2026, 2027.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Just break out the cricket.

• 43:46Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Alie Ward?

  What about you? Anything soapbox?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, my soapbox is, don't overlook the, don't overlook it. Make time for it. Let, let there be space in your interactions to just have a little silliness and vulnerability and laugh with other people because I, it takes interactions a long way.

• 44:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:10Alie Ward?

  Um, hardest part about the job?

• 44:15Alie Ward?

  Deep sigh.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  I mean, one thing is genuinely figuring out how to connect our work with people in a way that helps them to understand the value of it. It does sound really fluffy to be studying laughter. It's not. It's like an essential part of life and living and how we relate to one another. And so, so having people in the world probably take us seriously is something that we, is one of the hardest parts of the job, I think. And which means that what we do and what our colleagues in the Love Consortium do is we really double down

• 44:59Speaker 01

  on really rigorous methods. We have these like studies where we have literally like watching people laugh and the start time and the stop time of every single laugh that happens in this video-recorded conversations. And it's so that we can show people, no, we can do this scientifically. And when we do, it really shows these important consequences for people's relationships. And hopefully, we'll find out more about their health opportunities.

• 45:30Alie Ward?

  And just to loop it all around, this 2022 German study in biological psychology was titled, "Finding Humor and Hormones: Oxytocin Promotes Laughing and Smiling." Reminds us that oxytocin, this is a hormone that you make, you, I'm sure you have heard about it. In extreme cases, if something comes out of your body, that's a baby, then there's just a flood of it. You're like, I love this thing. This also happens just with friends and family, people who bond. So oxytocin promotes that. And in this 2022 study, they administered oxytocin to people. They give it to you, then you huff it, like in a lab. And then that led to more laughing among people because people felt more similarities between each other. And we know from Sarah and Laura's research

• 46:15Alie Ward?

  that more shared laughter creates more bonding, especially in a shared space, which creates more oxytocin, which creates more laughter, which creates more social support, which creates more positive emotion and literally like longer life. So it's this circle of more oxytocin creates more laughing, that shared laughing creates more oxytocin. So if more people studied this, the world would be better. So make jokes not war. And study or fund relational psychology.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  What's really powerful about laughter is because we do see it in cultures all around the world and it's the behavior itself. But if we can see the laugh, then we can code it and we can explore its, its links around the world as well.

• 46:58Alie Ward?

  Favorite thing about the work? Like, what makes you want to work on holiday? Like, we're both doing.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's really, I feel like it's so intriguing to pay attention to. And I really like being provocative and, and saying, hey, by the way, it's fine to study this positive stuff. Turns out it really matters.

• 47:25Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  And like trying to figure out how to tell people like, hey, this really matters. So for me, the fact that it is so relevant to so many people is actually one of the fun things about it.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Same.

• 47:38Alie Ward?

  This is why we, we get along so well.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:41Alie Ward?

  Um, this has been amazing. I'm so glad I got to sit here in person. Now, now that we've talked about it too, the idea that we were gonna do this over video is like, inconvenable.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  It's way better, right?

• 47:53Alie Ward?

  What was I thinking? Oh, you guys are honestly the best. Please keep up the good work. Like, please be in touch.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  I will.

• 48:01Alie Ward?

  I love you guys.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  This is really nice. This was so nice to see you.

• 48:07Alie Ward?

  Come back anytime. So ask lovely people love-related questions because relational psychology is the thing and laughter is a field of study. Bonding does matter and love is an action. So make time for and plans with the people you love. Even if you're just sitting wordlessly on a bench and just watching some little squirrels be rascals, you don't even have to talk. Thank you again so much to Dr. Sarah Eljo and Dr. Laura Kurtz for meeting up with me on Labor Day in North Carolina and making time for me to ask you so many questions. We will add links to their social media and their Google Scholars and to the Love Consortium, of course.

• 48:49Alie Ward?

  More of the research that we talked about is at alieward.com/ologies/relationalpsychology and we'll link that as well. And we are at ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm Ally Ward on both. Osmologies are shorter, kid-friendly episodes. We have for free in their own feed, wherever you get podcasts. Thank you to patrons of ologies at patreon.com/ologies for supporting since before we ever even launched. Erin Talbert, my giggly BFF since kindergarten, Admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Love you, Ernie. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Callie R. Dwyer does the website. Carving out time always is Noelle Dilworth. The oxytocin that bonds us together is Managing Director Susan Hale.

• 49:32Alie Ward?

  And the Venn diagram circles that collide to put the show together are Jake Chaffee and Lead Editor Mercedes Maitland, as well as a special third spherical object of Jarrett Sleeper of Mindjam Media, who has also been involved in one of the experiments mentioned in the show for over 15 years now. And that is dating and marrying your father. So he is your pod mom. Thank you, Jarrett, for also being a really good editor. Nick Thorburn made the music. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I'll tell you a secret. And last night, Jarrett, I was like, Jarrett, I need a secret. And he was like, well, what about last night? Hmm. And last night was his birthday. We went to one of our favorite restaurants. It's like a seafood restaurant nearby. It's so good. And we were sitting out on the patio.

• 50:17Alie Ward?

  We were having a little dinner with just a couple people and yum, yummy stuff. And then a rat ran by and it wasn't a mouse. It was like a, a rat rat. And it ran in between a couple of ladies' open-toed sandals. And Jarrett just went, rat. Like, didn't think before he said anything. And so then we had to be like, but it's not a big deal. It was fine. Whatever, it's just wildlife. It's like, you know, you're outside, man. The weather's good. And we thought maybe they'd compass some stuff. And they didn't. But we did say that one of the dishes is really great. They make this like really good chicken. And we've been trying to figure out what is in this chicken sauce for at least a few years.

• 51:02Alie Ward?

  We have another friend, Todd, who's a really great cook. He's tried to like lock in, like tried to experiment to make this, this recipe. And we told our server, love this chicken. And the server straight up told us what the recipe was. It was a lot simpler than we thought. Two parts ponzu, three parts good French butter melted. We've been eating this sauce thinking it was just delicious sauce. It's just mostly melted butter and salt water. And it's so good. But I like to think that he told us that because we saw the rat. So it was worth it. Okay, goodbye.

• 51:59Speaker 04

  In reality, I'm actually very fun, relaxed, and easygoing.

• 52:04Alie Ward?

  Thank you again so much to Verbo for sponsoring today's special bonus episode. It would not have been possible without them. And also, the donations to our charities are not possible without them. Sponsoring these special episodes, we're able to really raise the donation amount for that. And I've loved the topic. And again, laughter is really one of the simplest ways we connect. I would not get the interviews with the ologists that I do if we weren't able to find something to laugh about and to understand what is goofy about being a human and what things surprise us and what things bond us together. So I love getting these interviews in person. Traveling to someone or traveling together creates space for that. And Verbo, thank you guys so much. Helps make it easier with a reliable place to stay and support

• 52:49Alie Ward?

  if anything doesn't go as planned. The people on your trip are full of surprises. Not your Verbo. So book your next stay on the Verbo app.