Workplace studies find that coworkers often laugh when negotiating potential conflicts: R. L. Coser, “Laughter among Colleagues,” Human Relations 12 (1960): 171–82.
Strangers who laugh while flirting: K. Grammer, “Strangers Meet: Laughter and Nonverbal Signs of Interest in Opposite-Sex Encounters,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 14 (1990): 209–36.
Friends whose laughs join in antiphonal form: Smoski and Bachorowski, “Antiphonal Laughter.”
For couples who divorced on average 13.9 years after they were married: While much has been made of the toxic effects of negative emotions such as contempt and criticism in marriage, Gottman and Levenson and others have begun to look at the benefits of positive emotions, such as mirth and laughter. In their writing about laughter, Gottman and Levenson suggest that problematic discussions in intimate life are like negative affect cascades—feelings of anger and resentment rise and build upon one another. Couples who can exit from these cascades fare much better, and one manner of exiting is laughter. Gottman and Levenson, “Timing of Divorce.”
Hobbes: Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 43.
It is for these reasons that Steve Pinker called: Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).
In his analysis of the development of pretense: A. M. Leslie, “Pretense and Representation: The Origins of ‘Theory of Mind,’” Psychological Review 94, no. 4 (1987): 412–26.
Linguist Paul Drew carefully analyzed the unfolding of family teasing: P. Drew, “Po-Faced Receipts of Teases,” Linguistics 25 (1987): 219–53.
For the past fifteen years: G. A. Bonanno and S. Kaltman, “Toward an Integrative Perspective on Bereavement,” Psychological Bulletin 125 (1999): 760–76.
To test this thesis, George and I undertook a study: G. A. Bonanno and D. Keltner, “Facial Expressions of Emotion and the Course of Conjugal Bereavement,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 106 (1997): 126–37.
We coded participants’ references to several existential themes related to bereavement: G. A. Bonanno and D. Keltner, “The Coherence of Emotion Systems: Comparing ‘On-Line’ Measures of Appraisal and Facial Expressions, and Self-Report,” Cognition and Emotion 18 (2004): 431–44.
TEASE
Not so, reason: The Zahavis make a wonderful case for the role of provocation in animal world. They suggest that, as with humans, nonhuman species often need to assess each other’s commitments, and they do so through provocation. This analysis is very much in keeping with Robert Frank’s analysis of the importance of emotion in motivating commitments, and was central to how members of my lab thought about the functions of teasing in human social life. A. Zahavi and A. Zahavi, The Handicap Principle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Chimpanzees dangle their tails: O. Adang, “Harassment of Mature Female Chimpanzees by Young Males in the Mahale Mountains,” International Journal of Primatology 24 (2003): 503–14.
Adults will play hide the face: Bambi B. Schieffelin, The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Teenage girls and boys resort to hostile nicknames and outlandishly gendered imitations: Barrie Thorne, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993); D. Eder, “The Role of Teasing in Adolescent Peer Group Culture,” Sociological Studies of Child Development 4 (1991): 181–97, and “‘Go Get Ya a French!’: Romantic and Sexual Teasing Among Adolescent Girls,” Gender and Conversational Interaction: Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics, ed. Deborah Tannen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 17–31.
Teasing has long occupied a problematic place in Western culture: For such an analysis, see Keltner et al., “Just Teasing: A Conceptual Analysis and Empirical Review,” Psychological Bulletin 127 (2001): 229–48. The same ambivalence is evident in Western culture’s stances toward two close relatives of teasing, satire and irony. For excellent cultural, historical analyses of satire and irony and their shifting prominence in Western culture, see Duncan Griffin, Satire: A Critical Reintroduction (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1994), and Linda Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge (London: Routledge, 1995).
the most sterling of reputations: Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge, 7.
issued a clarion calclass="underline" Jedidiah Purdy, For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today (New York: Random House, 2000).
On January, 19, 1449, the Scots passed: For an outstanding history of the fool, and the surprising power that fools have enjoyed until recently, see Bernice K. Otto, Fools Are Everywhere (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
The prominence of the jester and fooclass="underline" For an excellent anthropological history of the fool, see Apte, Humor and Laughter.
The scientific study of teasing was hampered by poorly specified definitions: Keltner et al., “Just Teasing.”
In terms more felicitous to scientific inquiry: Ibid.
philosopher Paul Grice outlined four principles of communication: H. P. Grice, Logic and Conversation (New York: Academic Press, 1975).
The relevance of Grice’s maxims to teasing, ironically enough: Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
that act is fraught with potential conflict: Brown and Levinson drew heavily upon the brilliant insights of Erving Goffman. Goffman offered a strategic or dramaturgic account of human social life, arguing that many of the rituals and practices of social life are organized to protect our sense of social esteem, or what he called “face.” Goffman is required reading to understand the universal tendencies toward politeness, modesty, and deference. He reveals the profound degree of cooperation in our public life. See The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959), Behavior in Public Places (New York: Free Press, 1966), and Interaction Rituaclass="underline" Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York: Doubleday, 1967).
the mother referred to a young son as “horse mouth”: E Ochs, introduction to Language Socialization across Cultures: Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, vol. 3, ed. B. B. Schieffelin and E. Ochs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1–16.
Exaggeration is core to understanding “playing the dozens”: R. D. Abrahams, “Playing the Dozens,” Journal of American Folklore 75 (1962): 209–20.
“here’s your dog food”: C. A. Straehle, “‘Samuel?’ ‘Yes, dear?’ Teasing and Conversational Rapport,” Gender and Conversational Interaction: Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 210–30.
When we tease, linguist Herb Clark observes, we frame the interaction as one that occurs in a playful, nonserious realm of social exchange: Herbert H. Clark, Using Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Clark has been exploring how language offers the capacity to represent different layers of social reality, and he suggests that in teasing we take on different identities.