Is being ticklish partly a mental thing?

Social aspects of tickling

Charles Darwin theorized on the link between tickling and social relations, arguing that tickling provokes laughter through the anticipation of pleasure. If a stranger tickles a child without any preliminaries, catching the child by surprise, the likely result will be not laughter but withdrawal and displeasure. Darwin also noticed that for tickling to be effective, you must not know the precise point of stimulation in advance, and reasoned that this is why you cannot effectively tickle yourself.

Tickling is defined by many child psychologists as an integral bonding activity between parents and children. In the parent-child concept, tickling establishes at an early age the pleasure associated with being touched by a parent with a trust-bond developed so that parents may touch a child, in an unpleasant way, should circumstances develop such as the need to treat a painful injury or prevent harm from danger. This tickling relationship continues throughout childhood and often into the early to mid teenage years.

Another tickling social relationship is that which forms between siblings of relatively the same age. Many case studies have indicated that siblings often use tickling as an alternative to outright violence when attempting to either punish or intimidate a sibling. The sibling tickling relationship can occasionally develop into an anti-social situation, or “tickle-torture”, where one sibling will tickle the other, without mercy. The motivation behind tickle-torture is often to portray the sense of domination the tickler has over the "ticklee".

As with parents and siblings, tickling serves as a bonding mechanism between friends, and is classified by psychologists as part of the fifth and highest grade of social play which involves special intimacy or “cognitive interaction”. This suggests that tickling works best when all the parties involved feel comfortable with the situation and one another. During adolescence, tickling often serves as an outlet for sexual energy between individuals, with erotic games, foreplay and sex becoming the motivation of the tickler. The body openings and erogenous zones are extremely ticklish, however the tickling of these areas is generally not associated with laughter or withdrawal.

Tickling is perhaps one of the most common human behaviors known. While many people assume that other people enjoy tickling, a recent survey of 84 college students indicated that only 32% of respondents enjoyed being tickled (32% and 36% of respondents, respectively, either gave neutral responses, or stated that they did not enjoy being tickled.) In the same study the authors found that those people who indicated that they did not enjoy being tickled actually smiled more often during tickling than those who did enjoy being tickled, which confirms that the usual association between smiling and pleasure is broken in the context of unpleasant tickling.

Excessive tickling has been described as a primary sexual obsession and, under these circumstances, is sometimes considered a form of paraphilia. Tickling can also be a form of, or simply mistaken for, sexual harassment.

WHY DO WE TICKLE?

Many of history's greatest thinkers have pondered the mysteries of the tickle response, including Plato, Francis Bacon, Galileo and Darwin.[6] Many scientists have followed in their footsteps and have ventured opinions and theories that attempt to explain the nearly ubiquitous nature of the tickle response.

One theory, as mentioned above, is that tickling serves as a pleasant bonding experience between parent and child. However, this theory does not adequately explain why many children and adults find tickling to be an unpleasant experience. Another view maintained is that tickling develops as a prenatal response and that the development of sensitive areas on the fetus helps to orient the fetus into favourable positions while in the womb.

It is unknown why certain people find areas of the body to be more ticklish than others; additionally, studies have shown that there is no significant difference in ticklishness between the genders. In 1924 J.C. Gregory proposed that the most ticklish places on the body were also those areas that were the most vulnerable during hand-to-hand combat. He posited that ticklishness might confer an evolutionary advantage by enticing the individual to protect these areas. Consistent with this idea, University of Iowa psychiatrist, Donald W. Black observed that most ticklish spots are found in the same places as the protective reflexes.

A third, hybrid theory, has suggested that tickling encourages the development of combat skills. Most tickling is done by parents, siblings and friends and is often a type of rough-and-tumble play, during which time children often develop valuable defensive and combat moves. Although people generally make movements to get away from, and report disliking, being tickled, laughter encourages the tickler to continue. If the facial expressions induced by tickle were less pleasant the tickler would be less likely to continue, thus diminishing the frequency of these valuable combat lessons.

To understand how much of the tickle response is dependent on the interpersonal relationship of the parties involved, Christenfeld and Harris presented subjects with a "mechanical tickle machine". They found that the subjects laughed just as much when they believed they were being tickled by a machine as when they thought they were being tickled by a person. Harris goes on to suggest that the tickle response is reflex, similar to the startle reflex, that is contingent on the element of surprise.

More on this here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickling
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I believe yes. I know people that will begin laughing before you even touch them but are close to doing so and they know it. This might explain people having different tolerance levels for such an action.

I don't get it really. How could something make us laugh but be painful at the same time?

It sometimes seems like it is, because sometimes I am ticklish and sometimes I am not.