Laughing in the face of tragedy.
These are some comments on the Internet:
Keeping severe mental illness out of the equation, not everyone reacts to tragedy in the same way. Some laugh to release tension. Their reaction is involuntary, but our society judges them on it, anyway.
Laughter is a great emotional equalizer. We’re often told it’s the best medicine. Deeply stressful or emotional episodes overload our emotional engine and send the needle into overdrive. To release stress, we often respond through inappropriate laughter. It’s not ideal, but it is effective. On top of reducing the stress hormone cortisol and improving short-term memory, laughter has even been found to ameliorate physical pain. Generally speaking, studies say that this is a way for our subconscious to assuage our fears and convince us that everything is actually okay. Sometimes we laugh because we’re having trouble accepting what we see — we’re in shock. So we distance ourselves from the fear or pain of the circumstance by laughing it off.
The medical community even has a term for this. It is called the Pseudobulbar Affect
From my perception, Aspies experience significantly more stress than the average NT. Stress is chemical in nature and stored within the body. Unless this stress is vented, it will accumulate until it produces a state of distress. Sometimes your body will automatically sense this buildup and produce an involuntary reaction, such as laughing in the face of great turmoil. Your body does this to relieve and vent this accumulated stress.