The fear of other persons'
laughter (gelotophobia) occurs in the context of several psychiatric
conditions, particularly in the schizophrenia spectrum and social phobia. It
entails severe personal and inter-personal problems including heightened
aggression and possibly violence. Individuals with gelotophobia (n=30; 24 with
social phobia or Cluster A diagnosis) and matched symptom-free controls (n=30)
were drawn from a large screening sample (n=1440).
EEG coherences were recorded
during the confrontation with other people's affect expressions, to investigate
the brain's modulatory control over the emotionally laden perceptual input.
Gelotophobia was associated with more loose functional coupling of prefrontal
and posterior cortex during the processing of expressions of anger and
aggression, thus leaving the individual relatively unprotected from becoming
affected by these social signals.
The brain's response to social signals of
anger/aggression and the accompanied heightened permeability for this kind of
information explains the particular sensitivity to actual or supposed malicious
aspects of laughter (and possibly of other ambiguous social signals) in
individuals with gelotophobia, which represents the core feature of the
condition. Heightened perception of stimuli that could be perceived as offensive,
which is inherent in several psychiatric conditions, may be particularly
evident in the fear of other persons' laughter.
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By:
- 1University of Graz, Department of Psychology, Biological Psychology Unit, Univ.-Platz 2, A-1010 Graz, Austria.
- 2University of Graz, Department of Psychology, Biological Psychology Unit, Univ.-Platz 2, A-1010 Graz, Austria. Electronic address: e.weiss@uni-graz.at.
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