Emotional Mirroring Promotes Social Bonding and Social Habits*: An Insight from Laughter

In the first part of the chapter, I review evidence showing that the same centers controlling laughter are also involved in generating the affective aspect accompanying laughter, in line with pragmatists’ theories of emotion. Subsequently, I discuss new data showing that these centers can be activated by the passive observation of others’ laughter, hence a “mirror mechanism” for laughter. Inspired by James’ assumption that “the whole function of thinking is but one step in the production of habits of action”, I argue that this mechanism boosts two distinct sets of “habits of actions”, at different timescales. First, laughter mirroring underpins behavioral phenomena such as facial mimicry and laughter contagion that, in turn, play a crucial social function in boosting social bonding. Second, the consequences of laughter mirroring impact on social customs, traditions, and habits which, in turn, impacts on individual brains and emotions - in line with theories on the social genesis of self, advanced by all classic pragmatists.