演講嘉賓：Sophie Scott
語言：英文
演講簡介：你知道嗎，當你與別人在一起時，發笑的幾率是自己獨處時的30倍？在這個快節奏、動感十足，并且爆笑的科學話題里，認知神經科學家蘇菲·斯科特分享了這一研究，以及其他關于「笑」的驚人事實。

Did you know that you're 30 times more likely to laugh if you're with somebody else than if you're alone? Cognitive neuroscientist Sophie Scott shares this and other surprising facts about laughter in this fast-paced, action-packed and, yes, hilarious dash through the science of cracking up.

00:12

Hi. I'm going to talk to you today about laughter, and I just want to start by thinking about the first time I can ever remember noticing laughter. This is when I was a little girl. I would've been about six. And I came across my parents doing something unusual, where they were laughing. They were laughing very, very hard. They were lying on the floor laughing. They were screaming with laughter. I did not know what they were laughing at, but I wanted in. I wanted to be part of that, and I kind of sat around at the edge going, "Hoo hoo!" (Laughter) Now, incidentally, what they were laughing at was a song which people used to sing, which was based around signs in toilets on trains telling you what you could and could not do in toilets on trains. And the thing you have to remember about the English is, of course, we do have an immensely sophisticated sense of humor. (Laughter)

01:04

At the time, though, I didn't understand anything of that. I just cared about the laughter, and actually, as a neuroscientist, I've come to care about it again. And it is a really weird thing to do. What I'm going to do now is just play some examples of real human beings laughing, and I want you think about the sound people make and how odd that can be, and in fact how primitive laughter is as a sound. It's much more like an animal call than it is like speech. So here we've got some laughter for you. The first one is pretty joyful.

01:31

(Audio: Laughing)

01:47

Now this next guy, I need him to breathe. There's a point in there where I'm just, like, you've got to get some air in there, mate, because he just sounds like he's breathing out.

01:56

(Audio: Laughing)

02:05

This hasn't been edited; this is him.

02:08

(Audio: Laughing) (Laughter)

02:14

And finally we have -- this is a human female laughing. And laughter can take us to some pretty odd places in terms of making noises. (Audio: Laughing) She actually says, "Oh my God, what is that?" in French. We're all kind of with her. I have no idea.

02:47

Now, to understand laughter, you have to look at a part of the body that psychologists and neuroscientists don't normally spend much time looking at, which is the ribcage, and it doesn't seem terribly exciting, but actually you're all using your ribcage all the time. What you're all doing at the moment with your ribcage, and don't stop doing it, is breathing. So you use the intercostal muscles, the muscles between your ribs, to bring air in and out of your lungs just by expanding and contracting your ribcage, and if I was to put a strap around the outside of your chest called a breath belt, and just look at that movement, you see a rather gentle sinusoidal movement, so that's breathing. You're all doing it. Don't stop. As soon as you start talking, you start using your breathing completely differently. So what I'm doing now is you see something much more like this.In talking, you use very fine movements of the ribcage to squeeze the air out -- and in fact, we're the only animals that can do this. It's why we can talk at all.

03:37

Now, both talking and breathing has a mortal enemy, and that enemy is laughter, because what happens when you laugh is those same muscles start to contract very regularly, and you get this very marked sort of zig-zagging, and that's just squeezing the air out of you. It literally is that basic a way of making a sound. You could be stamping on somebody, it's having the same effect. You're just squeezing air out, and each of those contractions -- Ha! -- gives you a sound. And as the contractions run together, you can get these spasms, and that's when you start getting these -- (Wheezing) -- things happening. I'm brilliant at this. (Laughter)

04:13

Now, in terms of the science of laughter, there isn't very much, but it does turn out that pretty much everything we think we know about laughter is wrong. So it's not at all unusual, for example, to hear people to sayhumans are the only animals that laugh. Nietzsche thought that humans are the only animals that laugh. In fact, you find laughter throughout the mammals. It's been well-described and well-observed in primates, but you also see it in rats, and wherever you find it -- humans, primates, rats -- you find it associated with things like tickling. That's the same for humans. You find it associated with play, and all mammals play. And wherever you find it, it's associated with interactions. So Robert Provine, who has done a lot of work on this, has pointed out that you are 30 times more likely to laugh if you are with somebody else than if you're on your own, and where you find most laughter is in social interactions like conversation. So if you ask human beings, "When do you laugh?" they'll talk about comedy and they'll talk about humor and they'll talk about jokes. If you look at when they laugh, they're laughing with their friends. And when we laugh with people, we're hardly ever actually laughing at jokes. You are laughing to show people that you understand them, that you agree with them, that you're part of the same group as them. You're laughing to show that you like them. You might even love them. You're doing all that at the same time as talking to them, and the laughter is doing a lot of that emotional work for you. Something that Robert Provine has pointed out, as you can see here, and the reason why we were laughing when we heard those funny laughs at the start, and why I was laughing when I found my parents laughing, is that it's an enormously behaviorally contagious effect. You can catch laughter from somebody else, and you are more likely to catch laughter off somebody else if you know them. So it's still modulated by this social context. You have to put humor to one side and think about the social meaning of laughter because that's where its origins lie.

06:05

Now, something I've got very interested in is different kinds of laughter, and we have some neurobiological evidence about how human beings vocalize that suggests there might be two kinds of laughs that we have.So it seems possible that the neurobiology for helpless, involuntary laughter, like my parents lying on the floor screaming about a silly song, might have a different basis to it than some of that more polite social laughter that you encounter, which isn't horrible laughter, but it's behavior somebody is doing as part of their communicative act to you, part of their interaction with you; they are choosing to do this. In our evolution, we have developed two different ways of vocalizing. Involuntary vocalizations are part of an older system than the more voluntary vocalizations like the speech I'm doing now. So we might imagine that laughter might actually have two different roots.

06:52

So I've been looking at this in more detail. To do this, we've had to make recordings of people laughing, and we've had to do whatever it takes to make people laugh, and we got those same people to produce more posed, social laughter. So imagine your friend told a joke, and you're laughing because you like your friend,but not really because the joke's all that. So I'm going to play you a couple of those. I want you to tell me if you think this laughter is real laughter, or if you think it's posed. So is this involuntary laughter or more voluntary laughter?

07:19

(Audio: Laughing)

07:24

What does that sound like to you? Audience: Posed. Sophie Scott: Posed? Posed. How about this one?

07:29

(Audio: Laughing)

07:34

(Laughter)

07:35

I'm the best.

07:37

(Laughter) (Applause)

07:39

Not really. No, that was helpless laughter, and in fact, to record that, all they had to do was record mewatching one of my friends listening to something I knew she wanted to laugh at, and I just started doing this.

07:52

What you find is that people are good at telling the difference between real and posed laughter. They seem to be different things to us. Interestingly, you see something quite similar with chimpanzees. Chimpanzees laugh differently if they're being tickled than if they're playing with each other, and we might be seeing something like that here, involuntary laughter, tickling laughter, being different from social laughter. They're acoustically very different. The real laughs are longer. They're higher in pitch. When you start laughing hard, you start squeezing air out from your lungs under much higher pressures than you could ever produce voluntarily. For example, I could never pitch my voice that high to sing. Also, you start to get these sort of contractions and weird whistling sounds, all of which mean that real laughter is extremely easy, or feels extremely easy to spot.

08:34

In contrast, posed laughter, we might think it sounds a bit fake. Actually, it's not, it's actually an important social cue. We use it a lot, we're choosing to laugh in a lot of situations, and it seems to be its own thing. So, for example, you find nasality in posed laughter, that kind of "ha ha ha ha ha" sound that you never get, you could not do, if you were laughing involuntarily. So they do seem to be genuinely these two different sorts of things.

08:58

We took it into the scanner to see how brains respond when you hear laughter. And when you do this, this is a really boring experiment. We just played people real and posed laughs. We didn't tell them it was a study on laughter. We put other sounds in there to distract them, and all they're doing is lying listening to sounds. We don't tell them to do anything. Nonetheless, when you hear real laughter and when you hear posed laughter,the brains are responding completely differently, significantly differently. What you see in the regions in blue, which lies in auditory cortex, are the brain areas that respond more to the real laughs, and what seems to be the case, when you hear somebody laughing involuntarily, you hear sounds you would never hear in any other context. It's very unambiguous, and it seems to be associated with greater auditory processing of these novel sounds. In contrast, when you hear somebody laughing in a posed way, what you see are these regions in pink, which are occupying brain areas associated with mentalizing, thinking about what somebody else is thinking. And I think what that means is, even if you're having your brain scanned, which is completely boringand not very interesting, when you hear somebody going, "A ha ha ha ha ha," you're trying to work out why they're laughing. Laughter is always meaningful. You are always trying to understand it in context, even if, as far as you are concerned, at that point in time, it has not necessarily anything to do with you, you still want to know why those people are laughing.

10:13

Now, we've had the opportunity to look at how people hear real and posed laughter across the age range. So this is an online experiment we ran with the Royal Society, and here we just asked people two questions. First of all, they heard some laughs, and they had to say, how real or posed do these laughs sound? The real laughs are shown in red and the posed laughs are shown in blue. What you see is there is a rapid onset. As you get older, you get better and better at spotting real laughter. So six-year-olds are at chance, they can't really hear the difference. By the time you are older, you get better, but interestingly, you do not hit peak performance in this dataset until you are in your late 30s and early 40s. You don't understand laughter fully by the time you hit puberty. You don't understand laughter fully by the time your brain has matured at the end of your teens. You're learning about laughter throughout your entire early adult life.

11:01

If we turn the question around and now say not, what does the laughter sound like in terms of being real or posed, but we say, how much does this laughter make you want to laugh, how contagious is this laughter to you, we see a different profile. And here, the younger you are, the more you want to join in when you hear laughter. Remember me laughing with my parents when I had no idea what was going on. You really can see this. Now everybody, young and old, finds the real laughs more contagious than the posed laughs, but as you get older, it all becomes less contagious to you. Now, either we're all just becoming really grumpy as we get older, or it may mean that as you understand laughter better, and you are getting better at doing that, you need more than just hearing people laugh to want to laugh. You need the social stuff there.

11:43

So we've got a very interesting behavior about which a lot of our lay assumptions are incorrect, but I'm coming to see that actually there's even more to laughter than it's an important social emotion we should look at, because it turns out people are phenomenally nuanced in terms of how we use laughter. There's a really lovely set of studies coming out from Robert Levenson's lab in California, where he's doing a longitudinal study with couples. He gets married couples, men and women, into the lab, and he gives them stressful conversations to have while he wires them up to a polygraph so he can see them becoming stressed. So you've got the two of them in there, and he'll say to the husband, "Tell me something that your wife does that irritates you." And what you see is immediately -- just run that one through your head briefly, you and your partner -- you can imagine everybody gets a bit more stressed as soon as that starts. You can see physically, people become more stressed. What he finds is that the couples who manage that feeling of stress with laughter, positive emotions like laughter, not only immediately become less stressed, they can see them physically feeling better, they're dealing with this unpleasant situation better together, they are also the couples that report high levels of satisfaction in their relationship and they stay together for longer. So in fact, when you look at close relationships, laughter is a phenomenally useful index of how people are regulating their emotions together. We're not just emitting it at each other to show that we like each other, we're making ourselves feel better together.

13:09

Now, I don't think this is going to be limited to romantic relationships. I think this is probably going to be a characteristic of close emotional relationships such as you might have with friends, which explains my next clip, which is of a YouTube video of some young men in the former East Germany on making a video to promote their heavy metal band, and it's extremely macho, and the mood is very serious, and I want you to notice what happens in terms of laughter when things go wrong and how quickly that happens, and how that changes the mood.

13:41

He's cold. He's about to get wet. He's got swimming trunks on, got a towel. Ice. What might possibly happen? Video starts. Serious mood. And his friends are already laughing. They are already laughing, hard.He's not laughing yet. (Laughter) He's starting to go now. And now they're all off. (Laughter) They're on the floor. (Laughter)

14:55

The thing I really like about that is it's all very serious until he jumps onto the ice, and as soon as he doesn't go through the ice, but also there isn't blood and bone everywhere, his friends start laughing. And imagine if that had played him out with him standing there going, "No seriously, Heinrich, I think this is broken," we wouldn't enjoy watching that. That would be stressful. Or if he was running around with a visibly broken leg laughing, and his friends are going, "Heinrich, I think we need to go to the hospital now," that also wouldn't be funny. The fact that the laughter works, it gets him from a painful, embarrassing, difficult situation, into a funny situation, into what we're actually enjoying there, and I think that's a really interesting use, and it's actually happening all the time.

15:35

For example, I can remember something like this happening at my father's funeral. We weren't jumping around on the ice in our underpants. We're not Canadian. (Laughter) (Applause) These events are always difficult, I had a relative who was being a bit difficult, my mum was not in a good place, and I can remember finding myself just before the whole thing started telling this story about something that happened in a 1970s sitcom, and I just thought at the time, I don't know why I'm doing this, and what I realized I was doing was I was coming up with something from somewhere I could use to make her laugh together with me. It was a very basic reaction to find some reason we can do this. We can laugh together. We're going to get through this.We're going to be okay.

16:18

And in fact, all of us are doing this all the time. You do it so often, you don't even notice it. Everybody underestimates how often they laugh, and you're doing something, when you laugh with people, that's actually letting you access a really ancient evolutionary system that mammals have evolved to make and maintain social bonds, and clearly to regulate emotions, to make ourselves feel better. It's not something specific to humans -- it's a really ancient behavior which really helps us regulate how we feel and makes us feel better.

16:48

In other words, when it comes to laughter, you and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals. (Laughter)

16:53

Thank you.

16:56

Thank you. (Applause)

00:12

大家好，今天我要跟大家講講「笑」。 我想從我記憶里第一次 意識到「笑」這個概念開始講起。 那是在我還是個小女孩的時候。 我應該是6歲左右。 我見到父母在做一些不尋常的事， 那是他們正在笑。 他們笑得特別、特別夸張。 他們笑得躺到了地上。 他們笑得尖叫了起來。 我不知道他們在笑什么，但我想要加入。 我想成為他們中的一個， 然后我就圍坐在邊上 跟著那樣，“唬唬！”（笑聲） 順帶一提，他們笑的是 一首人們常唱的歌， 那是根據火車上 廁所里的標語寫成的歌 旨在告訴你，在火車上的廁所里 哪些事能做，哪些不能做。 當然，你必須記得英國人 擁有的那種高深莫測的幽默感。 （笑聲）

01:04

當時，盡管，我對這種幽默感完全無法理解。 我只是關注于笑聲， 然后實際上，作為一名神經學家， 我現在要回去研究它了。 這真是一件奇怪的事。 現在，我會播放一些真人發笑的片段， 大家來聽聽那些人的聲音， 想想它們有多奇怪， 以及笑聲實際上是一個種多么原始的聲音。 與其說它是一種語言， 還不如說是一種動物式的叫喚。 所以現在我們來聽一些笑聲。 第一個很好玩。

01:31

（音頻：笑聲）

01:47

然后是下一位朋友，我想他得呼吸一下了。 他的笑很有特點，就像…… 你得來點氧氣，伙計， 因為他聽起來就快斷氣了。

01:56

（音頻：笑聲）

02:05

這聲音是未經編輯的；這就是他。

02:08

（音頻：笑聲） （笑聲）

02:14

最后我們來聽一位 女性人類的笑聲。 笑可以把我們帶入一種非常 奇怪的狀態，就像在制造噪音。 （音頻：笑聲） 她其實是在用法語說： “我的天，那是個啥？” 我們都有點被她感染了。 我也不知道為什么。

02:47

那么，為了理解「笑」， 你必須重新認識 心理學家和神經學家通常 不會花太多時間去關注的部位 那就是胸廓。它看起來不是很厲害， 但實際上，你每時每刻都在使用你的胸廓。 你隨時都在用你的胸廓做的事—— 千萬別停，就是呼吸。 所以你用肋間肌， 也就是你肋骨之間的肌肉 來把空氣吸入和排出肺部。 這是通過胸廓的舒張和收縮來完成的。 而如果我把一條呼吸帶纏在你的胸膛 然后觀察它的運動， 你會看到一個相當溫和的正弦曲線運動， 而那就是呼吸的過程。 你們大家現在都正在做這件事。別停。 在你開始講話的同時， 你也開始用完全不同的方式進行呼吸。 所以我現在正在做的事 有點像這張圖上的曲線。 在講話時，你可以很好地利用胸廓的運動 來把空氣擠出去—— 而實際上，我們是唯一一種 可以做這件事的動物。 這就是我們為什么可以講話的原因。

03:37

然而，無論是說話還是呼吸 都有一個致命的敵人， 那就是「笑」。 因為當你在笑的時候， 剛才那些肌肉全都開始頻繁地收縮， 因此你就會產生這種 非常明顯的鋸齒狀（運動圖線）， 而這個過程只會把空氣排出你的身體。這確實是一個發出聲音的基本方式。 它具有相同的效果。 你只是在把空氣排出去。 而每一次那種收縮——哈！ ——都使你發出了聲音。 所以當這些收縮都在一起發生時， 你就產生了這類痙攣， 這讓你開始做出 （窒息聲） 這樣的反應。 我超擅長這個。（笑聲）

04:13

目前，說到關于「笑」的科學研究， 還不太多， 但從現有的研究看來， 我們之前對「笑」的理解 全部都是錯的。 所以沒什么好奇怪的… 比如，有的人會說 人類是唯一會笑的動物。 ——尼采認為，人類才是唯一會笑的動物。 但實際上，所有的哺乳類動物都會笑。 （笑這個現象）在靈長類動物身上 得到了很好的觀察和描述， 但你也可以在老鼠身上觀察到， 而無論你在哪發現了它—— 人類，靈長類，鼠類—— 你都會發現它們是伴隨著「撓癢」之類的活動。 這在人類身上也適用。 你會發現笑是在玩耍中發生的， 而所有的哺乳類動物都會玩耍。 而無論它在哪里發生， 發生時也總是與互動有關。 所以Robert Provine， 在這方面進行大量研究之后指出 你和別的人在一起的時候， 比你一個人單獨呆著 發笑的概率高出30倍。 而幾乎所有的笑 都發生在社交過程中， 比如與人交談。 所以如果你問人類： “你會在什么時候笑？” 他們會說遇到滑稽的、幽默的事，或是講笑話的時候。 如果你觀察他們發笑的時機， 會發現那都是和朋友在一起的時候。 而當我們一起大笑時，我們 實際上很少是為某個笑話而笑的。 你笑了，可能是為了表達你理解了對方， 你同意他們的觀點， 你跟他們站在同一邊。 你笑了，可能是為了表達你喜歡他們。 甚至可能是愛著他們。 你在與人交談的同時 做著所有的這一切， 而你的笑替你完成了 大量的這種情緒表達工作。 Robert Provine 指出的一些事情， 就像你在這兒看到的， 就是我們發笑的原因。 我們剛才聽到的那些搞笑的笑聲， 以及我在看到父母狂笑的時候，為什么會想笑， 是因為，它其實是一個巨大的 行為上的傳染效應。 你可以從別人那里獲得笑點， 而且這在熟人之間更容易發生。 所以這依然是被社會環境所調控的現象。 你得把「幽默」放到一邊， 而去考慮「笑」的社會意義。 因為這是它的起源所在。

06:05

我非常感興趣的一點是， 「笑」有多少個不同的種類， 我們有一些關于人類表達的 神經生物學的證據表明 我們可能只有2種類型的笑。 所以看起來，很有可能， 那種難以抑制的、不由自主的笑， 就像我父母為一首愚蠢的歌 笑得躺在地上尖叫的那種笑， 可能與那種非常溫和的， 你常遇到的那種社交性質的笑 有著神經神物學上的本質區別。 但它依然是人們進行交際時的一種行為表現， 是與人交互的一部分； 是他們選擇的互動方式。 在我們的進化過程中，我們 產生了2種不同的表達方式。 不自主的表達屬于比較古老的一套表達系統， 而自愿性地表達，就像我現在正在做的 這個演講，則屬于新的系統。 所以我們可以想象，「笑」實際上 可能來自于2個完全不同的根源。

06:52

我對這方面做了更細致的研究。 為了做這個，我們必須錄下人們的笑聲， 首先我們得，想盡辦法把人們逗笑，然后我們再讓同樣的人， 去呈現裝腔作勢的、社交性質的笑。 所以假設你的朋友講了個笑話， 你被逗笑了，因為你喜歡你的朋友 但完全不是因為笑話很好笑。 現在我來給你們演示一組這樣的實驗。 我需要你們告訴我這個笑是真的， 還是讓你覺得裝腔作勢。 它們究竟是不由自主的笑 還是故意發出的笑？

07:19

（音頻：笑聲）

07:24

你覺得這聲音怎么樣？ 觀眾：裝腔作勢。 蘇菲·斯科特：裝腔作勢？是的。 那聽聽這個呢？

07:29

（音頻：笑聲）

07:34

（笑聲）

07:35

我說過我很擅長這個。

07:37

（笑聲）（鼓掌）

07:39

我其實不擅長。 這確實是個難以抑制的笑， 而實際上，為了錄下這個， 他們只需要讓我看著自己的朋友 聽一段（我知道她肯定會笑的）錄音， 我立刻就笑成了這樣。

07:52

你會發現人們很擅長區分 真笑和假笑。 對我們來說這是不同的兩件事。 有趣的是，我們發現黑猩猩 在某些方面與人非常相似。 黑猩猩在被撓癢時的笑 和他們玩耍時的笑也是不同的， 這一點和我們很像， 不自主的笑、被撓癢的笑， 與社交性的笑是不同的。 它們從聲音上就有大不同。 真笑聲音更長。音調更高。 如果你笑得很夸張，你就會用更大的壓力將空氣排出體外， 你在主動去做時 制造不出這么大的壓力。 舉個例子，我唱歌時 絕不能將音調提到那么高。 （笑的同時），你就產生了 這一類（鋸齒狀）收縮和怪異的呼嘯聲。 所有的這些都表明， 真笑是極易被識別的， 或者說極易被感受到的。

08:34

相反，裝腔作勢的笑， 想起來可能會有點假。 其實，它不會。 實際上它是一個重要的社會線索。 我們經常使用它， 我們選擇在很多場合里發笑， 而且笑得讓人覺得他真的被逗樂。 比如說，你會發現假笑中的鼻音， 那種“哈哈哈哈哈”的聲音。 那是你從未發出過的聲音， 你在不由自主的笑聲里做不到這樣。 所以這看起來真的是兩件不同的事情。

08:58

我們使用掃描儀來觀察了 大腦在你聽到笑聲時的反應。 進行這種掃描，是一個非常無聊的實驗過程。 我們只需要播放別人的真笑和假笑。 我們沒有說這是個關于笑的研究。 我們還會播放一些別的聲音來轉移注意， 而他們只需要躺著，聽那些聲音。 我們沒叫他們做任何事。 然而，他們在聽到真笑和假笑時， 大腦里的反應是完全不同的， 顯著的不同。 你看到的藍色區域里，是聽覺皮層， 這是大腦內對真笑做出更多反應的區域， 并且看起來似乎… 當你聽到有人不由自主地發笑時， 你會聽到你在別的環境中從未聽過的聲音。 這一點是毫不含糊的， 看起來這種新奇的聲音是與大量的 聽覺過程有關的。 相反，當人們聽到假笑時， 你會看到這個粉色的區域， 也就是大腦內與心理有關的部分， 用來思考別人在想什么。 而我覺得這代表了， 你用大腦掃描來做研究， 即使研究過程枯燥無謂 一點都不有趣， 當你聽到有人笑得， “啊哈哈哈哈哈” 你仍然會試著去找出他們笑的原因。 笑總是有原因的。 你總是試圖去理解它在當前環境下的意義， 哪怕，你已經清楚地知道， 在進行實驗的時候， 它們跟你沒有任何的關系， 你仍然想要知道 為什么那些人會笑。

10:13

然后，我們又有機會研究不同年齡階段的人對 真笑和假笑有些什么反應。 這是我們與皇家學會共同進行的一個在線實驗， 實驗里我們只問人們兩個問題。 首先，他們會聽一些笑聲， 然后他們得回答：這些笑聲 聽起來有多真實或者多假？ 真笑用紅色表示， 假笑用藍色表示。 你可以看到一個陡峭的開端。 隨著年齡的增長， 人們越來越擅長識別真笑。 六歲的孩子只能猜測真笑和假笑， 他們不能真的聽出兩種笑的不同。 年紀越大，越擅長。但有趣的一點是，從這些數據中， 直到三四十歲，你都找不到一個高峰點。 你不會因為度過了青春期就完全理解笑聲。 你也不會因為頭腦的成熟而完全理解笑聲 即使你的青年時期已經結束。 你對笑聲的學習，貫穿了 整個成年人生的前半部分。

11:01

如果我們把問題反過來， 不再關心笑聲聽起來 像真笑還是假笑，而是去問 聽到這些「笑」， 你被多大程度地感染， 多想跟著一起笑， 我們就會發現另一番結果。 就是這樣，人越年輕， 越容易跟著笑聲笑起來。 別忘了我小時候在不清楚發生了什么 的時候，就已經跟著父母笑起來了。 這確實是符合現實的。 那么現在，所有人，無論老幼， 都覺得真笑比假笑更有感染力， 但隨著年齡的增長，它們 都變得不那么有感染力了。 要么是我們的脾氣隨著自身衰老變壞了， 或者，隨著你對笑的理解加深， 你就越來越擅長做這個， 你不再單純因為聽到別人笑 就想跟著笑了。 你去要一些社會性的東西去激發它。

11:43

因此我們獲得了一些很有趣的現象 表明之前的很多假設都是不正確的， 但我逐漸發現「笑」還有更多含義， 不止是一種重要的社交情緒。 因為人們在使用「笑」時，有著 不同尋常的細微差別。 加利福尼亞的 Robert Levenson 實驗室 做了一系列非常可愛的研究， 是關于情侶的縱向研究。 他把已婚夫婦雙方 請到實驗室來， 他會和他們談論一些很有壓力的話題， 并用測謊儀監測，看他們受壓的程度。 于是你會看到兩個人來到實驗室里， 他對丈夫說： “告訴我一些你的妻子激怒你的例子。” 你會看到結果是瞬時的—— 只需要讓這個念頭在你頭腦中 簡單閃過一下，你和你的伴侶—— 你可以想象到，隨著實驗的開始 每個人都感受到了壓力。 你可以看到，人們 從生理上感到了更大壓力。 而他發現了一個現象， 情侶們會通過「笑」來 控制這種受壓的感覺， 通過「笑」這樣的樂觀情緒， 不僅是在笑的瞬間降低了壓力， 可以發現他們從生理上感覺到了放松， 他們一起搞定了這個令人不快的狀況， 被試者正是那些 在夫妻關系中擁有更高滿意度的情侶 而且這樣的情侶在一起待的更久。 所以實際上，當你研究親密關系時， 笑是一條關于人們如何 共同調節他們的情緒 的非常有用的線索。 我們不止是相互發出笑聲 來表現對彼此的喜愛， 我們還在用笑來 讓雙方感覺舒服。

13:09

然而，我并不認為這種現象 是僅限于戀愛關系中的。 我想它很可能是所有親密情感關系的特性， 就像你和朋友之間的狀態， 這解釋了我的下一個要播放的內容， 那是一個 YouTube 視頻， 關于幾個前東德的年輕人 在制作視頻，來宣傳 他們的重金屬樂隊， 它非常硬漢， 氣氛非常嚴肅， 我想讓大家注意： 當事情出錯的時候，「笑」起到了什么作用， 它發生的有多快， 以及它怎樣改變了氣氛。

13:41

他很冷。他本來會被弄濕。 他穿著游泳褲， 還有一條毛巾。 冰。 可能會發生什么？ 視頻開始錄了。 嚴肅的氛圍。 他的朋友已經開始笑了。 他們已經在笑了，笑得很夸張。 他還沒開始笑。 （笑聲） 他也開始這么做了。他們全都倒了。 （笑聲） 他們笑到了地上。 （笑聲）

14:55

我喜歡這個視頻的一點是 它原本全都是非常嚴肅的， 直到他跳到了冰上， 而冰沒有應聲而破， 但是當然，他也沒有傷得頭破血流， 所以他的朋友們開始笑了。 想象一下，如果他是站在那里說， “說真的，Heinrich，我覺得這里摔壞了，” 我們不會覺得這個視頻很有趣。 那會讓人很壓抑。 或者，他一邊笑一邊拖著流血的腿四處跑，然后他的朋友說： “Heinrich，我想我們得立即去醫院了，” 那樣也不會讓人覺得好笑。 事實就是，「笑」起作用了， 笑把他的一個痛苦、尷尬、難辦的處境， 變成了一個有趣的狀況， 變成了讓我們都很開心的狀況， 而我想這真是「笑」的一個很有趣的用處， 它實際上每時每刻都在發生。

15:35

舉個例子，我還記得類似的一件發生在 我父親葬禮上的事情。 當時我們不是 穿著內褲在往冰上跳。 我們不是加拿大人。 （笑聲）（掌聲） 這類（葬禮）活動總是困難的， 我有個親戚遇到了點麻煩事、 我母親又站錯了地方， 我還記得我在一切開始之前，正在 講一個發生在20世紀70年代 情景喜劇里的故事， 那時我想，在這個時候， 我不知道我干嘛要講這個， 然后我意識到我是在 我是在努力從哪想點什么有用的出來 讓她和我一起笑一笑。 這是為了找點理由來笑的 一個非常基本的反應。 我們可以一起笑一笑。 我們能渡過這一段。 我們會好起來的。

16:18

實際上，我們每個人 每天都在做這樣的事。 你做得太多以至于都忽略了它的存在。 每個人都低估了自己笑得有多頻繁， 并且，當你和別人一起笑時， 你做的那些事情， 真的讓你進入到了古老的進化系統中 那是所有哺乳動物演化來 制造和維持社會紐帶的系統， 它還能明顯地調節情緒， 讓我們感到好受一些。 這不是人類特有的—— 這真的是一種古老的行為 「笑」確實幫著我們調節自身的感受， 并讓我們感到好受一些。

16:48

換句話說，在「笑」這一點上， 你和我，親愛的，都只是哺乳動物。

16:53

謝謝。

16:56

謝謝各位。（掌聲）