tickle torture in history

Christine R. Harris is a research scientist at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. Harris received her Ph.D. in psychology from UCSD in 1998.

Her research interests are human emotion and interpersonal relationships. Harris' interest in tickling began as a graduate student when she read Charles Darwin's book "The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animal," particularly the section on tickling and humor. In an effort to find out what else was known about tickle, she discovered that, although ticklish laughter has been pondered since the ancient Greeks, there is almost no empirical work on the topic. The author of several papers a year since 1995, Harris is a pioneer in the field.

Besides tickling, Harris has also studied embarrassment and jealousy.



For links to this scientist's home page and other related infomation please see our resources page.

Harris responds :


2.06.01 Jed asked:
Is it true that in medieval times people were put to death by someone tickling their feet with a feather? "Tickled to death"? What is your take on that?

Harris' response:
Well, there are definitely some suggestions in the literature that this may have happened. For example, in the German novel, Die Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, written in 1683 there is a woodcut depicting such torture. Mercenaries have tied up a farmer, put salt on his feet, and then have a goat lick the salt off. He supposedly laughs to death. Robert Provine's recent book on laughter also lists several other references of tickle torture in ancient times.

Old Article

I posted this once before, but after reading your post I'm gonna repost it because it's related material. It's an old newspaper article I've kept. Enjoy.

It might be 'torture' but we laugh anyway

For most people, tickling is like torture-with a twist. The unpleasantness evokes uncontrollable laughter.

Most people would rather tickle than be tickled. Ticklees typically protest and attempt to escape. Yet, they smile and giggle though the ordeal.

So do people like to be tickled or not? Don't laugh. Tickling is one of science's great riddles.

"Illustrious thinkers have pondered tickle's mysteries for over two millennia," writes psychologist and tickle reasearcher Christine Harris of the University of California, San Diego. Aristotle and Plato, Francis Bacon and Galileo, and even Charles Darwin have speculated about the paradoxes of tickling. For centuries, these and other researchers have attempted to explain why tickling mixes laughter with irritation. But modern reasearch suggests that all the old explanations can't survive serious scrutiny.

Until recently, progress has been limited mostly to establishing a tickling vocabulary. Scientists refer to the phenomenon of tickling simply as "tickle"; to maintain scientific secrecy they divide it into two catagories: knismesis and gargalesis. Civilians are permitted to say "light tickle" and "heavy tickle."

Light tickle (knismesis) is not so mysterious. It's the "moving itch" sensation of a feather caressing the skin, or perhaps a crawling bug. The annoyance caused by light tickle is valuable; it alerts the skin owner to smack a possibly dangerous insect. Evolution would naturally favor individuals who employed such a survival response.

But light tickle doesn't make you laugh. That's a job for heavy tickle (gargalesis), most effective when applied to certain body areas. Underarms, ribs, the waist and the soles of the feet are prime tickle targets.

You have to be careful about whom you tickle, though. "Most people...report that they do not much like being tickled," writes Harris in the current issue of American Scientist.

Such resistance to tickle is understandable. "There is little doubt that prolonged tickle can be extremely unpleasant," Harris writes. There are even reports that medieval torturers occasionally tickled their victims to death-literally.

Nevertheless, some people (especially certain spouses) apparently think tickling is welcomed.

"Many people seem convinced that other people enjoy being tickled," writes Harris. "Even though I hate to be tickled..., I still sometimes find it hard to look into the ticklee's laughing, smiling face and not think, 'he is really enjoying this.'"

So what gives? Maybe the laughter response to tickle is simply learned in childhood, as parents always smile when tickling a helpless baby.

But one scientist and his wife wisely refrained from smiling at thei baby while tickling, and by age seven monthes the baby laughed when tickled, anyway.

Other theories suggest that the laughter is a response to a fun interpersonal interaction. But Harris and collaborators have tested this idea by telling blindfolded subjects their feet were being tickled by a machine. (Actually, it was just a human hiding under a table.) The subjects laughed just as much when they thought a machine was doing the tickling. And it didn't matter if the experimenter was in the room or not.

One of the few clues to the laughter tickle connection is that tickle laughter is not the same as the laugh-response to comedy. By showing students funny film clips, Harris demonstarted the phenomenon (well-known to comedians) that an amusing "warm-up" period induces a greater response to humor. But not to tickling. "We concluded that tickling does not lead to the same internal state of amusement as does comedy," Harris wrote.

Still, that doesn't explain why the tickle-laughter response eveolved in humans. It's easier to explain another tickle mystery-why can't you elict laughter by tickling yourself. Laughter, as Aristotle pointed out, is often associated with surprise. But your brain knows ahead of time exactly how your fingers are going to tickle yourself. Brain scans reveal different paterns of nerve activity between self-tickling and other-tickling (although in those experiments, the tickling was light, because vigorous motion and laughter messes up the brain scan.)

Harris suggests that the tickle response may have evolved as a sort of practice for protecting vulnerable areas of the body. But to develope skill at evasive manoeuvres, it would be helpful for a friend or relative to assault such sensitive zones. In preverbal times, smiling and laughter would encourage your colleagues to provide such a practice session.

Of course, Harris acknowledges, it may be impossible to prove such an explanation. And some taxpayers may wonder whether it's worth a lot of research funding to try.

Wonder if this form of pnishment is being used today

A nice thought.

If it is I want to become a guared at a womens prison in that country, state or province.

I say we write to our government making tickled for life the new death row (is that how you spell it?)

Shouldn't Replace Death Row but...

If we were to use tickling in prison ,it should be Drug dealer, and car theives, shop lifters, and maybe people who abuse there spouses. Rapest, Peds and Muderers shouls get the rope. I would also have perole officer tickle parolee's for 20 minuets a day, every day of there parole.

A few years ago, one of the tickling mags out there (Tickling Times, Tickling Digest, one of those...) had some news articles on tickling. One was about a woman who had written the prison authorites in her state offering her services for getting information from non-cooperative prisoners (ones whoe were convicted but wouldn't tell where they had hidden some stolen money...etc...). The woman went on offering to sexually tease the men, giving them sex if they co-operated, or tickling them until they talked. The prison officials polietly turned her down.

I believe the article was real, but not sure if the woman who was the subject of the article was sincere, joking or crazy. Anyway, there ya go.

Oddjob0226 said:

A few years ago, one of the tickling mags out there (Tickling Times, Tickling Digest, one of those...) had some news articles on tickling. One was about a woman who had written the prison authorites in her state offering her services for getting information from non-cooperative prisoners (ones whoe were convicted but wouldn't tell where they had hidden some stolen money...etc...). The woman went on offering to sexually tease the men, giving them sex if they co-operated, or tickling them until they talked.

Click to expand...

...small steps lead to bigger steps...