Professor Greg Bryant in the News! NPR All Things Considered…

NPR – Hear it in Rio, Kathmandu or Timbuktu — it doesn’t matter. A hearty, belly laugh means the same thing on every continent: joy.But when we laugh with someone else, our chuckles may divulge more than we realize.Scientists have found that people around the world can tell whether folks are friends or strangers by listening to them laughing together. And the ability transcends culture and language.The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a simple experiment. Psychologist Gregory Bryant recorded pairs of college students having conversations. Some were friends. Some hardly knew each other. He then isolated out just the parts in which the two people were laughing. Each cut was only about one second long.Click here to read the full article.