Laughter appears a rather simple, almost automatic behavior, but scholars have struggled to explain it.

Most theoretical approaches answer some of the questions raised but fall short of being comprehensive.

There are several topics related to laughter and humor that an exhaustive theory must tackle.

In two prior posts, here and here, I reported on some of the results from an article I wrote for the European Journal of Humour Research titled “Essential Attributes of a Comprehensive Theory of Laughter” (Simon, 2020). That paper cataloged a range of topics scholars have investigated about laughter over the past four decades and revealed why a single, “unified” theory of laughter and humor has remained so elusive.

Previously reported themes

Part One of this series reported about a dozen themes into which the various topics could be categorized. Last month, in Part Two, I described a dozen more questions, including those relating to laughter’s acoustic structure; the message it conveys, if any; how it serves as an indicator of personality, health, and status; laughter’s relationship with smiling; why it has a dual nature, sometimes friendly, other times mean spirited; laughter’s evolutionary origins; why we express volitional (feigned) laughter; why laughter is sometime contagious; and whether there are different varieties, embarrassed, nervous, excited, etc.; why it varies in intensity and duration; why laughter and humor is used by bullies; and laughter’s close association with tickling. Below are the........

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