Science1 publisherNot yet confirmed elsewhere2 min readPublished
Smartphone check-ins from 142 people rank laughter the most acceptable nonverbal sound
Participants in a week-long Netherlands smartphone study rated laughter 7.55 of 9 for social acceptability, the highest of 10 nonverbal sounds. Context moved the verdict, with even laughter heavily restricted in formal settings or where one person held power over another.
The Scientist · Science desk
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What happened
- For seven days, 142 participants got three text prompts at random waking hours, each opening a five-minute survey about the previous 30 minutes.
- The study collected 2,670 usable responses documenting 3,821 nonverbal sounds, each rated for acceptability on a 1-to-9 scale.
- Moans, groans and grunts scored above 6, while growls, cries, screams and retches drew the strongest disapproval.
- Sounds were rated more appropriate at home and in bars or parties than at work, at school, or in stores and libraries.
- Screams, near the bottom overall, became more acceptable in high-energy, positive settings.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- contradiction The account ranks sighs among the most accepted sounds yet says they were judged appropriate only when alone. Both fit if most logged sighs happened in solitude, so the overall ranking is a poor guide to how a sound lands in company.
- constraint A survey can only log a sound that was made, so the low workplace and library scores cover sounds that got out and cannot show how often people swallowed one.
- capability Field sampling with logged company and mood lets display-rule researchers test specific drivers in real settings, where earlier work leaned on imagined scenarios sorted into private and public.
Psychologists call the unspoken codes about when to show or hide a feeling display rules [14]. According to phys.org's account of the study's reasoning, vocal sounds suit a field study of those codes because an ordinary person notices a laugh or a groan more easily than a passing facial expression [13]. The paper has a single author and appears in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B [1][2].
For field data, the denominator holds up. The schedule allowed at most 2,982 surveys [16], and about 90% of them came back usable [17]. That works out to about 1.4 logged sounds per usable survey and roughly 27 per person over the week [18][20].
Below laughter, the ranking is crowded. Sighs averaged 6.69 and gasps 6.63 [7], a gap of 0.06 points on a nine-point scale [19]. The phys.org account reports these averages without spreads or effect sizes, so the write-up alone cannot show whether a gap that small is a real difference. The ends of the list are the firmer result: laughter at the top, retches and screams near the bottom [7][8].
Alongside each rating, participants logged where they were, who was around them and the mood [6]. That links each score to a context, but only as an association. A setting with a clear power difference may also differ in mood and audience, and a week of self-reports cannot fully pull those apart. The thing this doesn't tell you is how anyone else in the room reacted. Every score is the participant's own judgment of how acceptable the sound was [6].
The participants were 18 to 53 years old [3]. Children, who pick up display rules as they grow [14], and older adults are outside the sample.
What to watch
- Whether the full paper reports within-person effect sizes for setting and power difference, and whether the 0.06-point gap between sighs and gasps holds up against them.
- A replication with children or adults over 53, the groups the 18-to-53 sample leaves out.
- Ratings from people who heard the sounds, set against the makers' own acceptability scores.