When the Audience Laughs with You: Effects of Virtual Audience Laughter Modality and Synchrony on Comedy Viewing in VR

Laugh tracks are a well-known technique for amplifying humor perception through audio. However, it remains unclear how such amplification transfers to VR, where audiences are embodied as virtual co-viewers in emerging shared entertainment spaces. To address this, we examined two design dimensions of virtual audience laughter: its audiovisual modality (the sensory channels through which laughter is expressed) and its temporal synchrony (the co-occurrence of audience and viewer laughter). In Study 1 (N=18), we found that the audiovisual modality influenced social presence. It increased social presence when visual and auditory cues were aligned and had an inverse effect when they were not aligned. Study 2 (N=24) revealed that temporal synchrony evoked perceived bidirectional exchange when audience reactions were synchronized with co-viewers’ laughter, even though the audience did not actually communicate with the viewer. Across both studies, participants viewing alone reported a sense of shared laughter with co-viewers and feeling they were not laughing alone, although neither dimension amplified humor perception. We propose the Embodied Laugh Track, a virtual audience design that shapes the social context of viewing, opening a new design axis for shared virtual entertainment beyond comedy.