Scholar of laughter, yawns and hiccups
Scientist delved into ‘curious’ human behaviour
Robert Provine, a neuroscientist who brought scientific rigour to the study of laughter, yawns, hiccups and other universal human behaviours that had previously gone largely unexplored, died Oct. 17 in Baltimore. He was 76.
The cause was complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said his wife, Helen Weems. Provine had spent four decades as a psychology professor at the University of Maryland before retiring in 2013. He continued to teach there as a professor emeritus.
Provine embodied the spirit of the popular scientist who takes his or her pursuits out of the laboratory and into the public square.
He was the author of two books for popular audiences, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (2000) and Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond (2012).
His research encompassed developmental and behavioural psychology, neuroscience and theories of evolution.
He was drawn to the study of laughter in part because he had grown lonely in the laboratory, where he devoted the early years of his career to the study of nerve cells.
“I was getting tired of putting electrodes in nerve cells in a windowless room for six or eight hour days,” he told the Boston Globe in 2012. “But I was also interested in examining human behaviours using the same kind of rigorous procedures.”
Those procedures, at first, included inviting study participants to sit in a lab and watch episodes of Saturday Night Live or bits by comedians Rodney Dangerfield, George Carlin and Joan Rivers. The setting proved unconducive to laughter, so Provine and his colleagues set out on an “urban safari” to observe people laughing in malls and on the street.
They observed 1,200 examples of laughter. At the acoustic lab at the National Zoo in Washington, he used equipment designed to analyze bird calls to study recordings of laughter.
Provine’s book Curious Behavior examined other behaviours humans (and many animals) have in common, including crying, tearing up, sneezing and belching.
Robert Raymond Provine was born in Tulsa, Okla., on May 11, 1943. His first marriage, to Helene “Vivi” Vona, ended in divorce. Survivors include Helen Weems, his wife of 23 years; two children from his first marriage; and three grandchildren.