Humour, Tickle, and the Darwin-Hecker Hypothesis

Abstract

Darwin (1872) and Hecker (1873) suggested that laughter induced by tickle and by humour share common underlying mechanisms. Seventy-two undergraduate students participated in a study designed to explore the relationship between the two phenomena. Subjects were tickled before and after viewing comedy and control videotapes. Subjects exhibiting more pronounced laughter to comedy also laughed more vigorously to tickle, extending and validating self-report findings of Fridlund and Loftis (1990). However, there was no evidence that comedy-induced laughter increased subsequent laughter to tickle nor that ticklish laughter increased laughter to comedy. We suggest that humour and tickle may be related only in that they share a final threshold for elicitation of their common behavioural response (smiling and laughter).