On Teasing and Playful Provocation

Sur­vival of the fittest is often mis­in­ter­preted to mean sur­vival of the most cut­throat. But fit­ness means so much more than that. In this inter­view, Dacher Kelt­ner points out that kind­ness, play, gen­eros­ity, rev­er­ence and self-sacrifice are also vital to the tasks of evo­lu­tion. And so is teas­ing, which sur­prised me because we tend to be against teas­ing of any sort in our schools and work­places. Kelt­ner calls teas­ing the art of play­ful provo­ca­tion and sug­gests that we use our play­ful voices and bod­ies to pro­voke oth­ers to avoid inap­pro­pri­ate behaviours:

Teas­ing (in the right way, which is what most peo­ple do) … is a way to play and express affec­tion. It is a way of nego­ti­at­ing con­flicts at work and in the fam­ily. Teas­ing exchanges teach chil­dren how to use their voices in innu­mer­able ways — such an impor­tant medium of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In teas­ing, chil­dren learn bound­aries between harm and play. And chil­dren learn empa­thy in teas­ing, and how to appre­ci­ate oth­ers’ feel­ings (for exam­ple, in going too far). And in teas­ing we have fun. All of this ben­e­fit is accom­plished in this remark­able modal­ity of play.