The surprising reasons why we tickle one another

The Washington Post:

When filmmaker David Farrier came across an ad from Jane O’Brien Mediacalling for young male fitness models to be restrained and tickled on camera, he felt compelled to find out what on Earth was behind that casting call. Pushing past the production company’s vitriolic resistance to “association with a homosexual journalist,” he created and recently premiered the Sundance documentary “Tickled,” which sheds light on the sport of “competitive endurance tickling.”

…

The dominant image of tickling in many of our minds involves children teasing their friends or extorting their siblings. Since this reflects many of our childhood memories, tickling can seem inherently sadistic. But according to University of Maryland neuroscientist Robert Provine, author of Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond, most people experience tickling positively when it’s consensual. “If you look at children, if you tickle them, they run away, but they typically come back,” he observes.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post