The Brain Stuff show put together a pretty useful overview of how laugh tracks work, including a bit of scientific data. They cite many of their sources, which is quite handy (see below).
Published on June 23, 2014.
The source they cite:
Laugh track is serious business. Brian McTavish. The Baltimore Sun. July 3, 2003. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2003…
The invention of laughter: Charley Douglass and the laff box. Valentina Palladino. The Verge. December 13, 2013.http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/13/52…
Funny Business: TV laugh tracks can still cause frowns, but the studios feel a need to be humored. Deborah Starr Seibel. Chicago Tribune. April 16, 1992. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/19…
Canned laughter: A history reconstructed. An Interview with Ben Glenn II, Television Historian. Mike Sacks. And Here’s the Kicker. http://www.mikesacks.com/canned-laughter-a-history-reconstructed/
Funniness of Jokes, Canned Laughter and Recall Performance. Antony J. Chapman. Sociometry. 1973.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307…
Canned laughter and public and private conformity. Nosanchuk, T. A.; Lightstone, Jack. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1974.
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-…
Contagious laughter: Laughter is a sufficient stimulus for laughs and smiles. Robert Provine. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society. 1992.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.3…
An attributional explanation for the eVect of audience laughter on perceived funniness. Timothy J. Lawson, Brian Downing & Hank Cetola. Basic and Applied Social Psychology. 1998. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10…
Neural correlates of humor detection and appreciation. Joseph M Moran, Gagan S Wig, Reginald B Adams Jr., Petr Janata, William M Kelley. NeuroImage. 2004.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/…
“It’s not funny if they’re laughing”: Self-categorization, social influence, and responses to canned laughter. Michael J. Platowa, S. Alexander Haslamb, Amanda Botha, Ivanne Chewa, Michelle Cuddona, Nahal Goharpeya, Jacqui Maurera, Simone Rosinia, Anna Tsekourasa, Diana M. Gracec. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2005.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/…