A great way to get to know someone better is to say something that makes them laugh.

Sharing a few good giggles and chuckles makes people more willing to tell others something personal about themselves, without even necessarily being aware that they are doing so, suggests new research.

Alan Gray of University College London discovered the tidbit in a new study recently published in the journal Human Nature.

According to Gray, the act of verbally opening up to someone is a crucial building block that helps to form new relationships and intensify social bonds.

Such self-disclosure can be of a highly sensitive nature — like sharing one’s religious convictions or personal fears — or a superficial tidbit such as one’s favorite type of food.

To investigate the role and influence of laughter in this disclosure process, Gray and his colleagues gathered 112 students from Oxford University in England, into groups of four.

The students did not know one another. The groups watched a 10-minute video together, without chatting to one another.

The videos differed in the amount of laughter they invoked, and the amount of positive feelings or emotions they elicited.

One featured a stand-up comedy routine by Michael McIntyre, another a straightforward golf instruction video, and the third a pleasant nature excerpt from the “Jungles” episode of the BBC’s “Planet Earth” series.

The levels of laughter and the participants’ emotional state after watching the video was then measured. Each group member also had to write a message to another participant to help them get to know each other better.

The participants who had a good laugh together shared significantly more intimate information than the groups who did not watch the comedy routine.

The findings support the idea that laughter encourages people to make more intimate disclosures to strangers.

想要更好地了解别人，一个好办法就是说些能让他们发笑的事。

新研究显示，一起笑过会让人更乐意告诉别人自己的私事，甚至他们这样做的时候根本没意识到这一点。

英国伦敦大学学院的艾伦•格雷在研究中发现了这一有趣的现象。最近，他的这项研究成果发表在《人类天性》杂志上。

格雷认为，用言语向他人敞开心扉的行为是帮助人们建立新关系，巩固社会关系的重要因素。

此时袒露的信息可能高度敏感 — 好比告诉别人你的宗教信仰或害怕之物 — 也可能只是一个流于表面的趣闻，比如最爱的食物。

为调查笑声在自我表露过程中扮演的角色和产生的影响，格雷和他的同事从英国牛津大学召集了112个学生，并把他们分为四组。

他们彼此不认识。每组坐在一起看一个10分钟的视频，期间并无交谈。

视频引人发笑的频率和传达积极情绪的效力各有不同。

一个视频是迈克尔•麦金太尔的单人喜剧秀，一个是简短的高尔夫教学片，第三个是从《BBC行星地球系列》“丛林”一集里节选的一个令人愉悦的自然片段。

看完视频后，研究人员会测算参与者的情绪状态和笑声等级。每个小组成员还需给另一名参与者写下一条消息，以便更好地相互了解。

比起那些没有观看喜剧的组别，一起欢笑过的参与者们向彼此分享了更多的亲密信息。

这项研究证实，笑声能促使人们对陌生人透露更多隐私。

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

    【趣闻】qùwén tidbit a pleasing or choice bit of news, gossip, etc. 【引发】yǐnfā elicit draw forth, evoke