Germans might not be known for their sense of humour or quickness to laugh.
But scientists now say that you should be able to figure out what’s making them giggle – just by listening.
Researchers from Brunel University of London played 121 clips of German laughter to an international group of participants.
They found that people from all around the world were able to tell whether the laughter was caused by joy, tickling, or enjoying the suffering of others.
So, can you work out the emotions behind these chuckles?
When we see or hear someone laughing, it gives us information about what kind of emotions they might be feeling and what kind of stimulus they might be responding to.
But while it might be easy to know why your friends are laughing, the researchers wanted to test whether this was something that could cross cultural borders.
Dr Diana Szameitat, co-author of the paper published in Scientific Reports, told MailOnline: ‘Laughter is a nonverbal signal that we use for social interaction and emotional communication.
‘However, it can also be used to ostracise others from our peer group, for example when we laugh at others.’
In the study, 161 participants from the UK, Poland, India, and Hong Kong were played 121 different clips of spontaneous laughter from a group of German speakers.
The clips of laughter were classified according to three different sources: joy, schadenfreude (taking pleasure from the pain of others), or being tickled.
The participants were then asked to try to guess what type of laughter each clip was.
To take the test yourself, listen to the three different clips in these videos.
If you correctly identified these clips, then you are actually not alone.
The researchers discovered that this emotional aspect of laughter is not culturally specific, meaning anyone from around the world can figure out why someone is laughing.
Overall, 97 per cent of participants were better than chance at guessing the type of laughter.
Dr Szameitat said: ‘Interestingly, the laughter we used, which was produced by German students, could be discriminated by participants of all the cultures we examined.
‘This suggests that emotional meanings in laughter are communicated across cultures.’
The researchers say their results indicate that the emotional content of laughter is not culturally specific, meaning that laughter can cross borders and keep its original meaning (stock image)
However, they also found that listeners from countries closer to the laugher’s own tended to be more successful at identifying emotions.
Participants from Britain and Poland were the most successful, correctly guessing the type of laughter more than 50 per cent of the time.
Dr Szameitat says this was ‘either because participants from the UK and Poland interact more often with German people, or because the British and Polish cultures are more similar to the German culture.’
Participants from Hong Kong and India had the lowest overall recognition rate, but were still correct 43 per cent and 48 per cent of the time, respectively.
The researchers also found that some types of laughter were easier to recognise than others.
Joy was the most widely recognised of all laughter types in every country except Poland, where schadenfreude was most widely recognised.
Dr Szameitat said: ‘It is surprising that even schadenfreude laughter is communicated across cultures, even though it is a type of laughter that only emerges later on in life and might have been strongly influenced by cultural norms.’
Schadenfreude, laughing at another’s suffering, was more easily recognised than tickling. The researchers say this is unusual because tickling laughter emerges first in children and is less influenced by culture (stock image)
Tickling meanwhile, proved to be the type of laughter that was hardest to recognise across cultures.
During the tests, participants from Hong Kong were only able to identify tickling laughter 40 per cent of the time.
Dr Szameitat says this is an unusual result since tickling is one of the first ways that humans begin to laugh.
She explained: ‘It is one of the few signals that we have in common with animals. Interestingly, being tickled is one of the first triggers for laughter in human babies.
‘Baby’s first laugh is elicited by physical play and rewards between caregiver and child and strengthens their bond.
‘Later on, around school age, laughter is not only positive but starts to be used against other people, for example, in bullying.’
CAN AI SPOT SARCASM BETTER THAN A HUMAN?
Researchers have created an AI, known as DeepMoji, that can understand sarcasm in social media posts better than humans.
The team fed it 1.2 billion tweets, and the robot analysed each tweet to understand how 64 popular emoji were used in them to express meaning.
Scientists first taught DeepMoji how to use emojis in the appropriate context based on whether a tweet was happy, funny or sad.
The AI then applied this emotional understanding to interpret the meaning behind online messages.
DeepMoji is the most advanced sarcasm-detecting AI ever developed, with an accuracy rate of 82 per cent.
It even outperformed human detectors, who managed a 76 per cent accuracy rate in the MIT study.
