Bachorowski, her Vanderbilt colleague Moria Smoski and Michael J. Owren of Cornell University have tested how men and women respond to and use laughter. They have discovered that the quality of a laugh can make someone more or less attractive. More interesting, other people in the room affect how much, and in what form, someone laughs.
Women laugh more wildly around male strangers, but men laugh most with their buddies.
And these differences, the researchers suggest, make evolutionary sense. Snorters and grunters, especially women, were also not high on anybody's list. But the woman with the singsong laugh, well, she could have a date every night. Such women were rated as even friendlier and sexier than men with the same kind of laugh. To get at exactly how laughing influences a social situation, the investigators then asked the subjects, alone or paired with a friend or with a stranger, to watch film clips.