Responsiveness to Humor: Its Dependency upon a Companion's Humorous Smiling and Laughter

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Abstract
This experiment was designed to demonstrate that there are social aspects to “humorous laughter,” and to examine whether a child's humorous laughter, smiling, and judgments of funniness are differentially facilitated by a companion's humorous smiling and laughter. Independent groups of seven- and eight-year-old children (a total of 45 boys and 45 girls) listened to humorous material with nine-year-old confederate-companions who were trained to respond to prerecorded on-line directions. The humorous material was presented through headphones, as were the directions which were varied systematically and related to laughter and smiling behavior. Subjects and companions were of the same sex. Amount of companions' laughter, amount of smiling, and sex of subject/companion pairs were varied in a 3 × 3 × 2 design. Increases in the companions' laughter led to enhanced laughter, smiling, and ratings of funniness in subjects, who also expected companions to rate the material as more funny. Increases in the companions' smiling resulted in increased smiling from subjects.

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