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Living near an unsafe housing block or a landfill is unattractive because of their negative influence on the environment. The question we ask is "Would a nearby attractive location cancel out this negative influence?" In two studies, participants were shown fictitious neighborhoods that contained an unattractive location (an unsafe housing block or a landfill) located close to an attractive location (one's own home or a park). The participants were asked to evaluate how pleasant it would feel to live at increasing distances from these locations. The results showed that positively evaluated locations can mitigate but not entirely neutralize the effects of negatively evaluated locations. The present research elucidates how people combine the effects of sources of positive and negative influence.

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Laughter is an ambiguous phenomenon in response to both positive and negative events and a social signal that coordinates social interactions. We assessed (i) who laughs and why, and (ii) if the type of laughter and whether the observer approves of it impact on facial mimicry as a proxy for shared laughter. For this, 329 participants watched funny, schadenfreude and disgusting scenes and then saw individuals who purportedly reacted to each scene while participants' facial expressions were recorded and analysed. Participants laughed more in response to funny than in response to schadenfreude scenes and least in response to disgust scenes, and laughter within each scene could be explained both by situational perceptions of the scenes as well as by individual differences. Furthermore, others’ laughter in response to funny scenes was perceived as more appropriate, elicited more closeness and more laughter mimicry than others' laughter in response to schadenfreude and especially in response to disgust scenes. Appropriateness and closeness as well as individual differences could explain laughter mimicry within each scene. This is in line with the notion that laughter is not per se an affiliative signal and that different types of laughter have distinct social implications. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience’.