How good are you at knowing when your partner fakes it?
Maybe you’ve lied about faking it yourself, in order to keep the relationship alive. It’s okay – everyone lies about it every once in a while, right?
But did you know that there are definitive tell-tale signs that indicate whether you’re faking it or not?
It’s all about real vs fake laughter.
Apparently, people can tell a real laugh from a fake laugh about 63% of the time – when the laughs are played side by side and at a normal playback speed. And the kicker is that when the audio was modified and the respondants were asked whether the sound was coming from a human or an animal – they were able to tell 100% of the time when the fake laugh was played that the audio came from a person.
Apparently there are some tell-tale signs that indicate a fake laugh:
- The “breathy” part of a fake laugh is shorter than a real laugh. This is because the laughing person’s windpipe has minimal control over their laughter, causing a more stacatto effect with the “ha ha” portion of the laughing sound. A fake laugh has a much longer, breathy sound in between the “ha ha’s”
Researchers were able to mimic a real laugh by speeding up a fake laugh just a bit.
So keep this in mind – if you want to fake it successfully, you’ve got to keep an eye – and ear – on your breathing. If your breathing sounds just a little bit off, you’ve blown your cover.