PNAS:共同发笑与友谊状态
美国加州大学洛杉矶分校一项研究提示，一个群体中的个体的同时发笑可能是关系质量的一种跨文化的指标。发笑是一种普遍存在的行为，通常意味着积极的情绪和合作的意图。尽管发笑常常在社会群体的个体中间同时出现，同时发笑的交流功能尚未得到充分理解。Gregory Bryant及其同事研究了一个群体内共同发笑向群体外的人表明友谊状态的可能性。这组作者从说美国英语的朋友对或者近来认识的陌生人对的24个谈话录音中提取了48个共同发笑的短音频片段。来自全世界24个社会的总共966名受试者听了每一个片段并且判断这种共同发笑究竟是发生在朋友还是发生在陌生人之间。总的正确判断率是61%，每一种文化的判断的最高准确率出现在判断女性朋友对。被判定为出现在朋友之间的同时发笑的片段的特征是声调增加和响度不规则，以及短的呼叫持续时间——这是与说话者觉醒程度高以及自发的、真实的情绪有关声学特征。这组作者说，这些发现表明了发笑这种在系统发生史上古老的行为如何可能促进了合作的进化。
原文链接：
Detecting affiliation in colaughter across 24 societies
原文摘要：
Laughter is a nonverbal vocal expression that often communicates positive affect and cooperative intent in humans. Temporally coincident laughter occurring within groups is a potentially rich cue of affiliation to overhearers. We examined listeners’ judgments of affiliation based on brief, decontextualized instances of colaughter between either established friends or recently acquainted strangers. In a sample of 966 participants from 24 societies, people reliably distinguished friends from strangers with an accuracy of 53–67%. Acoustic analyses of the individual laughter segments revealed that, across cultures, listeners’ judgments were consistently predicted by voicing dynamics, suggesting perceptual sensitivity to emotionally triggered spontaneous production. Colaughter affords rapid and accurate appraisals of affiliation that transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and may constitute a universal means of signaling cooperative relationshiPS.
作者：Gregory A. Bryant
