An Attributional Explanation for the Effect of Audience Laughter on Perceived Funniness

Abstract

We conducted 2 experiments to investigate the possibility that audience laughter affects perceivers' cognitive evaluations of humorous material because, under certain conditions, perceivers use it to infer audience members' evaluations of the material. We predicted that audience laughter would not affect perceivers' cognitive evaluations of the material when the laughter was constrained or otherwise known to be forged. Consistent with this prediction, the results of Experiment1 showed that perceivers' cognitive evaluations were influenced less by audience laughter that they assumed(or were told) was canned, as compared to laughter that they assumed (or were told) was live. In Experiment 2, we found that constrained (as compared to unconstrained) laughter from an ostensibly live audience had a weaker influence onperceivers' cognitive evaluations of the humorous material because perceivers were less likely to infer that constrained laughter reflected audience members' evaluation of the material.