Pre-recorded, or “canned” laughter is often used to encourage audience laughter. Previous research suggests that hearing others laugh can influence an audience, although several variables moderate its effects. We examined an unexplored moderator, hypothesizing that canned laughter would influence listeners only if they believed the laughter came from fellow in-group members. We manipulated the presence or absence of canned laughter in a potentially humorous recording and participants’ beliefs about the in-group or out-group composition of the laughing audience. The results confirmed our hypothesis: participants laughed and smiled more, laughed longer, and rated humorous material more favorably when they heard in-group laughter rather than out-group laughter or no laughter at all.
Both laughter and smiling have long been known to be socially mediated, at least in part (e.g., Freud, 1905/1960, Fugel, 1954, Giles and Oxford, 1970 and Hayworth, 1928). We laugh and smile when we hear others doing so (Provine, 1992), particularly friends (Smoski & Bachorowski, 2003), and we smile more if we think that we and our friends are watching the same humorous material rather than different material (Fridlund, 1991). This social mediation of laughter is the basis for influence attempts involving pre-recorded, or “canned” laughter (Cialdini, 1993 and Fuller, 1977). Through the use of canned laughter, influencing agents attempt to capitalize on the social nature of laughter to produce audience laughter. In Cialdini’s terms, the laughter of others offers “social proof” (e.g., p. 94) that potentially humorous material is funny. According to Cialdini, people laugh in response to canned laughter because of automatic, non-thinking conformity—simply hearing others laugh leads us to laugh as well. Provine (1996) suggests that laughing in response to others’ laughter may have a biological basis, again suggesting its automatic nature.
Although research broadly supports the effectiveness of canned laughter, the consistency of its effects and reasons why it works remain unclear, if only because several variables can moderate the relationship between canned and audience laughter. For example, once canned laughter is recognized as artificial (so that it no longer offers real social proof), its effects on audiences are weakened (Lawson, Downing, & Cetola, 1998). In this paper, we consider one moderating variable that has not yet been studied, namely the in-group vs. out-group status of the laughing others. Given self-categorization theory’s analysis of social influence (Turner, 1987, Turner, 1991 and Turner and Oakes, 1989), we suggest that an out-group’s laughter offers no social proof of funniness at all, and thus should have no effect on audience laughter (and other humor responses).
