Science News - August 1, 2009

In a recent study, Platt created different scenarios to simulate teasing and bullying situations where laughter frequently occurs. The results, published in the June Psychology Science Quarterly, found that gelotophobes had problems discriminating between the two.

“Teasing is ambiguous at best,” she says. “It’s play, and it’s quite sophisticated, and some people aren’t going to get that.”

While teasing is about group cohesion and being included, ridicule and bullying are about social exclusion, Platt says.

“Teasing would be dying your hair a lighter color and having your friends call you a dumb blonde,” she explains. “They know that you’re not dumb. They have a trust element in the relationship. The people in the group are saying, ‘ We’re so close we can have fun with some element.’ ”

If someone misinterprets playful banter at work or school and then overreacts,

it could make everything worse, she adds. “Then they would be reacting inappropriately, and that could make them the target of ridicule if they weren’t before.”

Platt is now developing a program based on the “mental toughness” coaching techniques that sports psychologists use to help athletes succeed and take control of situations. Once in place, the program may be used to help gelotophobes better deal with laughter.

“Avoiding laughter situations is only going to make them feel worse, so we want to set up challenges to help them recognize the appropriate cues and take control of their fear,” she says.

To provide a more complete picture of how people deal with laughter, Ruch and his colleagues have recently expanded their studies to describe two other humor-related concepts: The joy of being laughed at — or gelotophilia — and the joy of laugh-

Knowing that gelotophobes can’t hear the difference between good-natured and malicious laughter on recorded sound tracks, the University of Zurich’s Willibald Ruch and his colleagues are looking to see if gelotophobes also have problems reading facial expressions. Drawing from the work of psychologist Paul Ekman, who while at the University of California, San Francisco, designed a coding Missed cues?

system to read and interpret subtle emotional cues from the face, Ruch and his colleagues have developed a series of photos showing wide toothy grins, warm genuine smiles and phony smiles to see how well gelotophobes can read such facial cues. Ruch expects the study to reveal more about how gelotophobes may misinterpret the intentions of humor.

Phony smile
Lips retracted at corners only s
Eyes not involved s
Not indicative of genuine joy s

Duchenne smile

Lips fully retracted and closed s

Mouth and eyes involved s (orbicularis oculi muscles raise cheeks and form crow’s feet)

Indicates genuine joy s

ing at others, or katagelasticism.

“Humor and mockery are part of a complex interaction — namely, someone does something wrong and gets laughed at,” Ruch says. “But there’s also someone who laughs, and likely a bystander who maybe doesn’t do the ridiculing but approves of it. If we want to understand the phenomenon of gelotophobia in a broader sense, we need to study these different roles.”

While recent studies provide a basis for understanding gelotophobia, scientists say the research is still in its infancy.

Some scientists are now investigating how gelotophobia relates to other types of social anxiety and phobias. Others are initiating work to peer inside the brains of gelotophobes using functional MRI to see if those who fear being laughed at show neural activity more typical for “fear” rather than laughter or enjoyment.

Still others are studying the relationships of gelotophobes to see how their fears play out with friends and families or change with age.

Platt says preliminary data with young adults suggest that people might be more susceptible to being laughed at during puberty. To better understand how, and when, such fears take hold in children, she is working to complete a version of the GELOPH that can be administered to children as young as 3 to 5 years old. The studies may help teachers and administrators sort out accusations of bullying and teasing. Other researchers are studying whether gelotophobia runs in families by checking to see if gelotophobic parents have gelotophobic children.

Ruch says that recognizing that humor is not necessarily contagious is especially important for teachers and others who work with groups of people. “We need to know why is it that something so human, which brings enjoyment to most everyone, is actually experienced so negatively by a few.” 