Clap, Clap, Clap Your Hands

a little bit of applause. Let's really soak it in. I feel better already. Yeah. I knew they loved this. I knew it. Um. You know, we are, of course talking about clapping today, applause, about what it all means in our universe and what it can tell us about the laws governing the ways that we operate in the world. Yeah. For instance, the big one, of course is when do you clap? When do you not clap? When is it appropriate?

When is it unseemly? When do you not want the clap? Clapping? Clapping? Uh? Okay, And of course there's a rich tradition of clapping in childhood and happiness, right, because if you're happy and you know what, you will clap your hands. That's what the song says to do. And who we have to doubt it, Yeah, exactly. And clapping really is one of those things that it is just a rudimentary percussive instrument, right, You can use it,

you can start your songs. It's like used a lot in folk music, right, Yeah, I mean it's the it's the instrument of our bodies. Yeah, it's right up there with like hand boning hamdbone hambone where you man exactly. I don't know really the rest of that song. I don't think anybody wants me to sing the rest of that song. But you can also use clapping as as even like a signal to turn electronic devices on and off. Right, Clap on, clap off. Right. So, and there's just satisfaction

to a good clap. Have you ever noticed that? Yeah? Yeah, like a like a good just a rich clap where you really kind of cut your hands a bit and you get that solid sound. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good, meaty connection between your hands and it sort of comes to symbolize something really important to you, right, Like that performance was so enriching and beautiful that I must somehow

express myself. My wife often gets onto me, for um, when we're at events where there's clapping, Like, generally what I'll do is I love to clap, and I will I will applaud an artist or or even you know, a movie if it's if it's really had an effect on me. But but my hands get a little tired doing it. I mean, it's not that it's like wearing me out and I'm just you know, you know, out of breath or anything. But like after you know, pin and claps, you know, you get kind of a stingy

sensation because I'm really committing on my early claps. So if the audience continues to applaud, I'll often go to a silent clap where I look like I'm clapping, but I'm not really making any noise because at that point, you feel like it's obligatory clapping. Yeah, So I continue to keep up appearances, but I'm not really going to contribute to the volume of of applause. And uh, and my wife thinks that's kind of silly or something. All Right, We're gonna touch back on that in a moment um.

I wanted to point out that Jay Fisher, he's a classics professor Yale University, he dates the custom to at least the third century BC. He said, you see it at the end of a lot of place by plaud Us and Terrence, where they have this word plaudit, which is an imperative meaning applause or clap, So we see it there. Um. We also know that it was popular in ancient room, where it joined finger clicks and waving handkerchiefs and expression of appreciation, so they would do clicks

with their fingers. I thought that was just a be nick thing that I did not realize that that had its origins in ancient room. And uh Bruno h Rep has a paper all about clapping, the sound of two hands clapping and exploratory study, and he found I thought this was fascinating. There is no gender difference when it comes to ladies and gents clapping, like sound volume or

how much they do it exactly both. So he wanted to explore this idea because he thought, well, hand size is a clear sexual dimorphism, right, so his hands are big and meaty, and growths in women's hands are slight and beautiful, right, and couldn't possibly produce sounds sure exactly or the daintiest stuff, right, But he found that there was no there was no different spoints. Whoever. I thought that was just kind of funny too to find out about.

But anyway, if you ever want to know everything in the world about clapping, you should definitely check out reps paper the sound of two hands clapping. So we've all been in an environment obviously where applause is taking place. If you haven't, then then we have some questions about your life. But for the most part, everyone knows that those would generally happen. So it's like a couple of people start applauding, then the applause builds, and then a

curious thing begins to happen. I mean, you don't think about it as being curious at the time, because it happens all the time, but a little synchronicity leaches its way into the applause. And we know that this is really important in social constructs, right, because we've talked about the social contract that we all unwittingly sign because we want to be cooperative, we want to be a community.

We have to get along, we have to have. We have certain norms that we we generally want to to meet, Yeah, and clapping is just another way to communicate. In fact, in Samoa, which is an island in the South Pacific, rhythm dancing, singing, and music are really integral to that culture and so clapping is a is huge part of how they expressed themselves through these stories and they re

enact these different stories by using these sound signals. And I just wanted to play a quick clip of that because I thought it was so cool to be able to hear this community all participating in this act. And of course you should really check out videos of this as well, because any of these ritual uh you know, Simonan performances are always a real treat to watch as well. So you look at something like this and then you begin to wonder, well, is this something that um is

integral to humans? Are we born clappers or we made clappers? And a pediatric physical therapist and research at the University of Hartford, she says that we are We're made and we're not born. She said that I think it's a learned behavior. I've seen babies spontaneously from excitement clasp their hands together, but the motion of clapping is a learned behavior, so the left of their own devices and an unschooled infant might learn to clap, but generally speaking, you're you're

taught to clap before you do. I mean, it's to me, it's kind of a hard question to answer because your motor skills of the baby aren't really up to party clapping. Right. Yeah, I was terrible at when I was young. My family continues to give me a hell over that, but really, yeah, I couldn't like make I would try to clap and I would go like this, you're crossing your your arms if you look it, see you right now, You're trying to clap and I'm missing. Okay, do it. Now, let

me do the quick clapping of hands together. There we go. Okay, you're pretty good. Now, well now I'm all right, yeah, all right. So, um, what does all this have to

do though? With social synchronicity. There's a twelve study from cognitive neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology and researchers found that the body movement synchronization between two participants increases following a short session of cooperative training, and it suggests our ability to synchronized body movements is measurable, is a measurable indicator of social interaction. So in other words, we need this, we need this motion in order for all

of this to say, hey, we're all on the same page. Yeah. I mean you think about any kind of like a physical activity such as you know, like like any time you're your your work or your your church or your you know, whatever kind of group goes out and does some sort of service act, like if you say you're digging a ditch, like you can take people that do not dig ditches, uh normally in their courses of the life.

You can get them out there. And via this kind of synchronicity that we we have built in, we can generally avoid shoveling at each other in the face by accident, because you'll fall into the synchronicity of the chore. But you're right, you're right, so we and and just I'm thinking about rowing canoe to right. So if you you've got two people rowing, but you just generally fall into these rhythms. Yeah, now it made take an hour or two.

And and you're and and if it's if it's a husband and wife in a canoe, your relationship might not last long enough to reach that point of synchronicity, but

stick with it because you'll get there. You know, my husband and I used to can do a lot and when we lived in Roley, North Carolina, and um, I could always sort of tell what take the weather of our relationship on those Sundays when we were doing that, because you know, if you're not in synchronicity, if you're not sort of on the same page, then you start fobble and you're not really rowing very well, and they

can just sort of rudder lists. But um, what I thought was interesting about this study is that the researcher Young Um Young said that the reason why they're studying this is because it could open new vistas to study the brain to brain interface that appears when cooperative relationships exist. So they're looking at this is possibly in an extrapolation of looking at how two brains can create a loose

dynamic system. So of course, you know, my futurest mind goes, this is you know, a way to study this and somehow link up brains. Yeah, I mean, there are a number of really fascinating studies out there right now talking about the possible use of this uh linking two brains

together form for a single task, such as piloting a spaceship. Yeah, and it's and it's fascinating to see something just as elementary as clapp in your hands is being able to study the ways in which our brains changed with this activity. So this is all sort of predicated, this clapping and this social interaction on this idea that has recent come

out that not only are we all meme machines. We take our thoughts and we spread them, as evidenced by the Internet, but something like clapping is a microcosm of the meme and how it spreads. Okay, so if you look at classic about like applause in a in a given environment, say it show yeah. Yeah. In fact, it's looked at as as a sort of virus spreading out

throughout the audience. There's a paper published recently called the Dynamics of Audience Applause and it's in the Journal of Royal Society Interface, and the lead author, Dr Richard Mann from the University of Upsala said, you can get quite different lengths of applause even if you have the same quality of performance. This is purely coming from the dynamics

of the people in the crowd. So in other words, it's not like how great the performance was, it's how the meme of the applause is spreading throughout that audience. I imagine performance artists that are listening to this program, be they a musician or a wrestler or what happen you UM, or an actor, they can probably tell you, oh, well, that's obviously the case because because if you go out there and let's say you're your solo is just as excellent on this night as it was the night before.

But it's a different crowd, it's a different town, and sometimes the crowd is just not going to have that dynamic. They're not gonna eat it up and uh and there's maybe a lot more to that than just you know, it being a sleepy small town versus a big city. This is why you have to plant clappers in the audience. If you if you wanted to have a big, resounding, robust applause, you know, five minute plus, you would have to have people who would be sporadically spread out UM.

And the reason is because the researchers found that that that behavior, that tapering off of volume happens because people begin to not participate and then that non pretipation sort of give license um or that that lack of volume to those other people that say, okay, so I'm much anymore just sort of like how you said, like after ten claps, you're kind of like kind of done here. Yeah. Yeah,

And it was interesting too. Then in this study that they point out that it doesn't take that many people starting the applause or stopping it to to affect the overall volume. Yeah, something a couple of people, right, So you have a couple of people start it. Let's say you have people engage in it, two people drop off, and then boom, your applause begins to to go on

the downward curve fare. It can be uh like the one of the more like to two examples of this come to mind, like if if you ever been to something where you did not like the performance, say like it seems like I've encountered this before. If it's you're going to something where they're various performers, uh and and maybe you're not really there to see if it see the one that you just perform um and uh, and

you're there's something in me that I'll be stubborn. I'll be like, well, I'm not going to applot that that was horrible, but then everyone else is applotting, and it's and it takes a real to it's a real test of will to not fall in and clap like I generally up at least doing my silent clap, just so I don't look like a jerk, right, And you feel kind of like a jerk on the inside, right because it's the silent or you feel like I will not give you that volume. I'll look like it, but I'm

not giving it to you. And another thing that comes to mind is, um, if you've ever been to a play and you don't realize that it's family night, so it's the family members and friends of the performing I went to, uh, we went to a play years ago and it was the same case. The performance itself was um, you know, heartfelt that the performers were really into it, they were really believed in their product, but it was very rough around the edges and and ultimately just kind

of weird and boring. The music was great, but at the end of it was there was a standing ovation from everyone around us, and and I kind of felt like I was going insane for a second because I was like, why is everyone loving this so much? Did we see the same play? Uh? You know? That? Is it? Is there some sort of weird generational divide here? And I begin to one, is this what it feels like to have like some sort of dementia where the world is responding in a certain way to stimuli and you

are not having the same response. But it's it turns out it's just all of those people given the standing. Oh they were there because their friends or and or

family were involved in the production. I love that. I love that You're like this is this is a possible alternate reality that you're experiencing and could be like dementia because again, again it comes down to the pressure, the social pressure of the applause, where if the applause is that strong for something, it's like, if there's something wrong with me that they're not fitting in with this? Why

am I not having the same response? Another awkward kind of applause moment, I think is office applause because you're in a meeting someone does something great. Of course you want to acknowledge it, but then you feel like you can't not acknowledgement that you know, could you could? You? I guess you could not just sit there and fold your arms. We don't do that here though. We're pretty unsupported bunch for the most part. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, every once a while, like once every two years, so

there's a cloppicking going on. Let's take a quick break and when we get back we will talk about how clapping in neurons are related. Wow, that was an inspired performance there. That that that was pretty awesome. Oh yeah, we had that person come in to do that. Yeah, ye, share was great. Ah. Well, um, if you're just joining us, uh.

And I'm not sure how you're doing that since someone listened to the first half of this podcast for you, but we are talking about applause, we're talking about clapping, and we're talking about all the stuff that you really going going on under the surface, both the psychologically, uh, socially and uh and indeed from a neuroscientific standpoint. Yeah, And I wanted to mention that that um, that study

about clapping. It was from a team of mathematicians and biologists from Sweden and Germany, and one of the things they graphed were the times at which people started stop clapping, and they found that that graph had a sick mortal curve like graphs of people getting infected and then recovering from a disease. So I thought that was interesting. Again,

this idea that it's a social contagion. Wow, that it virally affects you, then you're you're in the throes of it for a little bit, and then gradually you recover. It's like, all right, I'm not clapping anymore. I think I'm fine. I'm fine. Yeah, I've recovered from this. Yeah. Um. I also thought it was interesting that your neurons they actually act like a clapping audience. And it turns out that your brain that's ability to adapt to circumstances in

this rapid fire progression of neurons. Um it is all related to that. Because let's say you detect an object, let's say like a baseball hurtling towards your head um you have to size up the dimensions of it and its relationship to your body, and then in a split second, you're sort of switching between all this sensorial data and you're making a decision whether or not to move your head away from the ball or catch it. And there is an associate professor in the Wallace h Culture Department

of Biomedical Engineering his name is Garrett Stanley. He says, there's a switching of the circuit to a different function. The same neurons do two things and switch quickly in a matter of seconds or milliseconds. Though a change in the synchronization across neurons occurs. And he says, if you think of the neurons firing like members of an audience with their clapping hands, then the sound up clapping becomes

louder when they all clapped together. So it kind of makes sense that you have that immediacy like move your head or catch that ball. It's sort of like that the crescendo of the clapping of the neurons saying come on,

give attention to this. Now. Another cool study that that we found one from a researcher at Ben Garon University of the Negev and I conducted the first study of hand clapping songs and it revealed a distinct link between these activities and the development of important skills and children, any young adults, including university students, which was really fascinating because they're they're studying, uh, obviously their social ramifications for

clapping games. You get kids clapping together. We've talked about this too. With music. You know, people come together in song and you're essentially firing up your neurons in in unison, you're sharing in this activity, uh, this viral activity, if you will, and uh, and it strengthens the bonds between you. So obviously if you're playing uh patty Cake, patty Cake Baker's Man, Yeah, you know that kind of thing, then

it's there's a lot of social activity. You're you're clapp you're moving to in unison, there's actual physical touch involved. It's uh. So it's a no brainer in that regard that it would help socially, but as it turns out, there's also there's also an impact on learning as well. Yeah. One of the reasons why they wanted to look at this with kids elementary ages that they found that they really like to engage in clapping activities and clapping songs at age six, but then they drop off at age ten.

And so what they figured out is that those kids when they engage them and say, like boards sanctioned educational music, like one group just in song and another group um with hand clappings songs, they found that those kids, over like a ten week period, they were able to catch up in their cognitive abilities those clapping kids as opposed to the non clapping kids. So it points to this idea that kids may gravitate to it naturally because it's

integral to motor and cognitive training at those ages. And then they also found that it's good for adults as well. And part of this they point out as of course nostalgia. If you if you played these games when you're younger, then there's a warming effect to play them now. But but in this questionnaires that they sent out, they found that the adult students who took part in clapping games,

they became more focused and less tense. Um, So the next time you're feeling of its stressed, Uh, maybe you just need to have some patty Cake in your life. Mandatory patty cake time. So you're sitting at your desk, you're working on something, you're under deadline, you're totally stressed out, Start clapping, yeah, or hand boning or some sort of

you know, just hitting the thighs or something that might work. Um. I was trying to think of a bunch of clapping songs when I read this, and the only ones that came to mind were patty Cake, some church songs, but I can't remember any of them, but I know there are church songs that have clapping in them, and then of course we will rock you, but that's more of But certainly you get a whole you know, auditorium doing

that at once. Then it's pretty spectacular. I was going to say, because you were synchronizing your entire body to this, your brain and all of your limbs, and feeling like you are now invested in something completely outside of yourself. But she kind of gives you that big, warm, fuzzy feeling towards humanity, or at least towards queen exactly exactly, well, should we slow clap ourselves out of this episode? I guess. So you have the slow clap we didn't really get into,

but that, of course is the sarcastic clap. And the thing about that the slow clap, though, of course, is that sometimes you see the see a scene in a movie where the slow clap is like that, the first individual to clap is that person who stands up and just like the really heartfelt clapping slow that builds to everyone else applauding. So well, I think those are in in the films that it's like Mr Holland's opus. Yes, you know, it's sort of like emotionally charged, like here's

the grand moment that's been realized. Yeah, whereas the other slow cap is kind of like the an agat the Christie parlor room mystery. We're like, oh, you've figured it out to have you bravo? All right, Well, well you know we'll let you. We'll give you a moment here in just a second to to applaud us for another podcast. UM. Hopefully well done, um or slow applaud us. If you found this not all that helpful, but we think it's

pretty interesting and certainly Uh. You know, some of the most mind blowing stuff is when you take something every day, something you just completely take for granted, and you get to to really dive down into the depths beneath it. So you out there, if you have any tidbits you'd like to share based on this information about clapping, we would love to hear from you. Um, what's the weirdest clapping or applause situation you've encountered? So what's the most awkward? Uh?

We always love stories like that. Uh. And you can get in touch with a number of ways. You can go to our Mothership, Stuff of Goal, Your Mind dot com. You can go to Facebook or Twitter. We're on both of those. On Twitter we're blow the Mind. We're also on tumbler. And I think there's one more way to get in touch with us. Oh yeah, you can send us an email at blow the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics, does It How stuff Works dot com