Want to know whether a group of individuals are close confidantes or mere acquaintances? Pay attention to their laughter. According to NPR, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that people from around the world can tell how close two humans are by listening to their shared guffaws.
In 2003, Gregory Bryant, a psychologist at University of California, Los Angeles, recorded college students of both sexes talking with each other. Some were friends; others were strangers. Recently, Bryant cut out one-second-long clips of the pairs laughing, and then he and his colleagues played them for 966 volunteers in 24 different societies across the world.
via Mental Floss
