WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: How Do Laugh Tracks Work?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,

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<v Speaker 1>I'm Lauren Voge Obam, and I've got another classic episode

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<v Speaker 1>of brain stuff for you today from our erstwhile host,

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<v Speaker 1>Christian Saga. This one is about laugh tracks in sitcoms.

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<v Speaker 1>Why are they there? How did they get their start?

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<v Speaker 1>And do they really make us more likely to laugh? Hey? Everybody,

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<v Speaker 1>I'm Christian Saga and this is brain Stuff. Do you

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<v Speaker 1>remember how sitcoms used to lay in those horrible laugh

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<v Speaker 1>tracks after every joke, including cartoons, like just in case

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<v Speaker 1>the jokes weren't insulting your intelligence, they had to go

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<v Speaker 1>to you with taped laughter, like they're running the faucet

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<v Speaker 1>to get somebody with a shy bladder to pee. I

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<v Speaker 1>can't believe this, but some shows are still doing it.

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<v Speaker 1>Why Well, back before recordings and radio and TV, all

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<v Speaker 1>performances were live. This meant actors always had the benefit

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<v Speaker 1>of a crowd's reacts to drive their performance, and the

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<v Speaker 1>audience reaped the benefits of that energy to pension during

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<v Speaker 1>a sad moment, a collective gasp at a revelation, or

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<v Speaker 1>mass laughter when something funny happened. Broadcasts and recordings, however,

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<v Speaker 1>brought these performances to a wider audience, but some of

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<v Speaker 1>that energy got lost in the transition. Every show couldn't

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<v Speaker 1>involve a crowd, and you couldn't always rely on an

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<v Speaker 1>audience to have the right reaction. They might be too

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<v Speaker 1>loud or too quiet, or they might not laugh at

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<v Speaker 1>all after say the fifth take of a joke. So

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<v Speaker 1>in the late forties and early fifties, radio and TV

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<v Speaker 1>engineers began sweetening audience reactions, mixing them to sound more appropriate.

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<v Speaker 1>This became a huge trend in the industry. When Charlie

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<v Speaker 1>Douglas invented the original laugh box. It looked sort of

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<v Speaker 1>like a typewriter, but contained three hundred and twenty laughs

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<v Speaker 1>and other audience noises. The noises were grouped by type

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<v Speaker 1>of response into already two loops of tape, each activated

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<v Speaker 1>by a single key. You played it like an organ.

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<v Speaker 1>You'd select the style, age, and gender of the response

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<v Speaker 1>you wanted by pressing one or more keys. Then you'd

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<v Speaker 1>use a foot pedal to control the sound level. Supposedly,

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<v Speaker 1>Douglas recorded these original noises at Marcel Marceau and Red

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<v Speaker 1>Skeleton shows, totally pantomime parts to make sure he'd get

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<v Speaker 1>a clean tape of just the audience. These days, laugh

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<v Speaker 1>tracks are digital and they contain lots of sounds, though

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<v Speaker 1>if you watch any particular sitcom, you've probably heard distinctive

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<v Speaker 1>laughs repeat, which brings me to my next point. Industry

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<v Speaker 1>critics and creators alike hate laugh tracks. Pretty much everybody

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<v Speaker 1>who stops to think about them hates them. But do

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<v Speaker 1>they work? You bet they do. Have you ever seen

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<v Speaker 1>one of those YouTube videos where they take a popular

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<v Speaker 1>sitcom and remove the laugh track. It turns into this

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<v Speaker 1>creepy nightmare world where people say to pressing things to

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<v Speaker 1>each other and then pause for three seconds. Without the

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<v Speaker 1>laugh track, you realize the jokes aren't necessarily funny, you're

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<v Speaker 1>just laughing along with some invisible crowd. One theory says

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<v Speaker 1>that we feel social pressure to conform to the group.

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<v Speaker 1>Another suggest laughter is an automatic neurological response, something a

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<v Speaker 1>little more hardwired. Either way, real research going back decades

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<v Speaker 1>shows that laugh tracks work. In nineteen seventy four, a

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<v Speaker 1>study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed

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<v Speaker 1>empirically that people were more likely to laugh at jokes

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<v Speaker 1>that were supplemented with a laugh track. In fact, with

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<v Speaker 1>a laugh track you might not even need the joke.

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<v Speaker 1>In neuroscientist Robert Provine showed that test subjects smiled and

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<v Speaker 1>laughed in response to an electronic track that wasn't even

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<v Speaker 1>attached to a narrative. They were just reacting to the

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<v Speaker 1>laughter itself. But provines results wore off after repeated tests.

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<v Speaker 1>By the tenth round, subjects stopped laughing along and reported

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<v Speaker 1>that they found the taped laughter obnoxious. So okay, laugh

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<v Speaker 1>tracks do seem to influence the audience, but there are

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<v Speaker 1>tons of factors that moderate this. For example, what if

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<v Speaker 1>you're consciously aware that the laughters canned? Study in ninet

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<v Speaker 1>found that people who thought the sound was coming from

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<v Speaker 1>a live audience were more influenced by it than people

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<v Speaker 1>who were aware that it was artificial. Or what if

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<v Speaker 1>you don't think you'd get along with the people who

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<v Speaker 1>were laughing? In two thousand five, a paper published by

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<v Speaker 1>the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that college students

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<v Speaker 1>laughed less and rated a taped comedian lower when they

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<v Speaker 1>thought that the tape laughter they heard was coming from

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<v Speaker 1>members of a political party they disagreed with. But laughing

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<v Speaker 1>in response to hearing laughter may be involuntary. In two

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<v Speaker 1>thousand six, research yours at the University College London used

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<v Speaker 1>f m R I to discover that human vocal sounds

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<v Speaker 1>activated part of the brain called the pre motor cortical region,

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<v Speaker 1>which primes our facial muscles to react. That means that

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<v Speaker 1>when subjects heard laughing, they began to smile. Some theorists

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<v Speaker 1>think that gestures and sounds like laughter predated speech. Could

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<v Speaker 1>our vulnerability to laughter actually be a survival mechanism. Today's

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<v Speaker 1>episode was produced by Tyler Clang and written by Joe

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<v Speaker 1>McCormick and I for Brainstuff's YouTube series. If you enjoy

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