If you tickle me, I’ll punch you

How many times have you uttered the phrase “tickle me and you will die”? Okay, maybe you are not as violent as I am but there have definitely been times where you threatened or raised your voice to a person who was either going to or already was tickling you. But of course, just like me, you have never meant it. In fact you may have even just said it to keep up appearances because in fact you liked having someone tickle you. But why? Tickling literally makes you feel like you’re about to die, and then you start flailing all over the place and accidentally kicking someone in the chin, and basically it just becomes a mess. So why do you like it?

Robert R. Provine, author of “Laughter:A Scientific Investigation” and a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, suggests that tickling serves no other purpose than as a mechanism for social bonding. In other words tickling is a means of bonding two people closer together. He backs up this assumption by explaining the observations he explored in his book; namely that laughter, specifically in response to tickling, begins after the first few months of life and serves as one of the first forms of communication between child and parent. As such, in this sense, tickling is seen as almost a means of positive reinforcement for the parent, who will continue to tickle their child as long as he or she is laughing. Furthermore, in being tickled the child is also learning to trust and have fun with his or her parent. Thus tickling, it would seem, is a means of bonding.

But what does it say that all the usual tickle spots, i.e. the neck, stomach, ribs, are also known for how vulnerable they are. In fact, in 1984 Donald Black, a psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, noted that a reason that most children participate in things such as tickle fights could be to subconsciously learn to protect these vulnerable parts of their bodies during combat.

So what do you think? Is tickling a means of bonding or an exercise in survival? Does it say anything that as you age being ticklish and tickling seem to die off? Is tickling only for the young for a particular reason? Food for thought.

-Cassey

SOURCES

http://www.bitrebels.com/lifestyle/science-why-are-we-ticklish-what-does-it-mean/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickling

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-12/fyi-what-evolutionary-purpose-tickling

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/01/the_odd_body_tickling/