This was an interesting question for me. I did a bit of looking and this is what I came up with. Hope it answers your question.
A big mystery: Why do we laugh?
Contrary to folk wisdom, most laughter is not about humor
"Very little is known about the specific brain mechanisms responsible for laughter. But we do know that laughter is triggered by many sensations and thoughts, and that it activates many parts of the body."
Pleasure and Pain
"How much affect do other people have on what we find funny? That's what researchers at Melbourne's Latrobe University have been investigating"
Here's a slightly different angle,
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL BENEFITS OF LAUGHTER
We love to laugh. Laughter can be exhilarating, cathartic, embarrassing, debilitating, punitive, liberating, grotesque, or helpless. This course is designed to explore the universal (we believe) human phenomenon of laughter from a number of different perspectives, not all of them areas of expertise of the instructor. We will be interested in such questions as:
- How do we laugh?
- Why do we laugh?
- What makes us laugh?
- What physiological, psychological, social, and political work does or might laughter do?
- Do other animals laugh?
- Do the gods laugh?
- How do artists and performers make us laugh?
- Are there kinds of laughter?
- Has laughter changed across time?
- Across space?
- Is laughter gendered?
- Is there a specifically Roman, Japanese, or Southern laughter?
- Is there anything that can’t or mustn’t be funny?
- What is the opposite of laughter?
The course will involve a series of readings and discussions—but also a series of jokes, stories, excursions, interviews, and performances. We will want not only to analyze laughter, but also to do it—and to induce it.