Recognition of emotions in German laughter across cultures

Abstract

Laughter conveys a wide range of information relevant for social interaction. In previous research we have shown that laughter can convey information about the sender’s emotional state, however other research did not find such an effect. This paper aims to replicate our previous study using participant samples of diverse cultural backgrounds. 161 participants from Poland, the UK, India, Hong Kong, and other countries classified 121 spontaneously emitted German laughter sounds according to the laughter type, i.e., joyful, schadenfreude, and tickling laughter. Results showed that all participant groups classified the laughter sounds above chance level, and that there is a slight ingroup advantage for Western listeners. This suggests that classification of laughter according to the sender’s emotional state is possible across different cultures, and that there might be a small advantage for classifying laughter of close cultural proximity.