The presence of laughter enhances how funny people find jokes, even recorded laughter; this effect is increased for spontaneous laughter; effect was present for both neurotypical & autistic participants

Modulation of humor ratings of bad jokes by other people’s laughter. Qing Cai, Sinead Chen, Sarah J. White, Sophie K. Scott. Current Biology, Volume 29, Issue 14, July 22 2019, Pages R677-R678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.073

Summary: Laughter is a positive vocal emotional expression: most laughter is found in social interactions [1]. We are overwhelmingly more likely to laugh when we are with other people [1], and laughter can play a very important communicative role [2]. We do of course also laugh at humor — but can laughter influence how funny we actually perceive the humorous material to be? In this study, we show that the presence of laughter enhances how funny people find jokes and that this effect is increased for spontaneous laughter. This effect was present for both neurotypical and autistic participants, indicating similarities in their implicit processing of laughter.

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This may be due to our autistic participants being high functioning, or perhaps similar performance patterns can rest on distinctly different neural systems 6, 7, or laughter is implicitly processed by autistic individuals in the same way as their neurotypical peers.