According to undergraduate researcher Mary Y. Liu of the University of California, there are nine types of laughter.
They include the submissive laugh, the embarrassed laugh and the amused laugh. Other yucks are related to nervousness, taking offense, love, “a need to validate someone else”, conflict avoidance and dominance.
Research methodology involves coding hundreds of hours of video tapes with a view to understanding the social context of laughter. Sometimes they filmed couples, other times they taped frat boys.
Why do we laugh? (Liu doesn’t know.) Does this taxonomy give any hints as to why movies or fiction can be funny? Any thoughts?
Given the highly preliminary nature of this research, I thought that those with fictive expertise might give the best feedback.