By Keola Spencer
Nowadays, the TV seems to be giggling more than we do. The Hollywood’s trick to get the audience at home chuckling is to play frequent outbursts of artificial uproars from a laugh track. Little does the happy viewer know that the laughter that they hear are from the deceased, since the audio was recorded in the 1940’s. Laugh tracks, also called canned laughter, are commonly used in modern-day comedies such as The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, and Good Luck Charlie.
The history of filming in front of a live audience dates all the way back to the early ages of comedic radio, in 1946. To cover up the awkward silences between dead jokes, the radio host usually cued the fake laughter to convince listeners that the joke was in fact funny, even if it wasn’t. Today, a similar method is used on national television. Interestingly enough, the producers use the same laugh tracks that our ancestors probably heard on the radio. When reality sinks in, you’ll realize that the voices you’re hearing are all from people who are currently buried six feet underground.
A study ran by Bill Kelley, a psychology professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, shows that humans are much more likely to laugh at something funny in the presence of other people. Another study in 1974 published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology proves the theory that people are more likely to laugh at jokes and dialogue on TV when the “live” audience laughs with them. Show producers hypnotize their home audience into thinking that they’re sitting with a crowd of other people in hopes of synchronizing their reactions with each other.
One way or another, producers want to gain the highest ratings for their shows to collect money and fame. Whether you think the canned laughter is loud and obnoxious or not, it’s been doing the industry good for centuries. The next time you watch your favorite comedy on TV, think about the people you hear laughing, because they might be thinking of you, too.
Photo courtesy of: science.howstuffworks.com