Introduction

Humor

• Text definitions

  • Humor is a broad, multifaceted term that represents anything that people say or do that other perceive as funny, and tends to make them laugh, as well as the mental processes that go into both creating and perceiving such an amusing stimuli, and also the emotional response of mirth involved in the enjoyment of it expressed through laughter…

  • Humor is a universal human activity that most people experience many times over the course of a typical day. From a psychological perspective, humor is fundamentally a social phenomenon; it is a form of social play comprised of perception of playful incongruity that includes the positive response of mirth and the vocal-behavioral expression of laughter…

Psychology of Humor

• Form of social play

• Includes perception and appraisal of incongruity in a non-serious mindest (cognition)

• Then mirth (emotion) - mirth is like amusement

• Then it turns into something more physical like laughter (behavior)

Empirical Science of Humor

• Humor isn’t easily defined or measured, laughter (concrete behavior) has been studied more often

Laughter

• The ability to enjoy humor and express it through laughter seems to be a fundamental human experience

  • Universal

    • occurs in nearly every person

    • in nearly every type of interpersonal relationship

    • in all cultures (sound indistinguishable)

  • Inborn

    • First human vocalization after crying

    • Children born deaf + blind still laugh

  • Pervasive

    • Displayed more than any other emotion (15-20 times a day)

    • Not necessarily knee-jerking laughter

      • though we laugh more in the afternoon/evening (strongest in young), and women (but not men laugh less as they get older)

    • Evidence of specialized brain circuit for humor and laughter

Etymology Humor

• “Humour” has changed dramatically over the centuries

• Hippocrates (4th Century BC): good health depends on proper balance of four “Humors”

• Humor → unbalanced temperament (16th century) or caprice

• Modern meaning (19th century)

Philosophy

Philosophical Roots

• Influential thinkers have been interested in explaining humor and laughter long before empirical investigation....

  • Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Freud, Bergson, Nietzsche...

• Plato

  • Wrote about humor in more of a negative connotation

  • Thought it would affect youth

  • Earliest surviving theory of laughter is from Plato (427-348 B.C)

    • Feared humor would disrupt power of state and corrupt youth – Gods laughing uncontrollably should be edited out of texts

    • “Laughable people” lacked self-knowledge (think better than they are)

    • Laughter is to pain as scratching is to an itch

    • Malicious, associated with derision of inferiors

  • (CT: relief theories; superiority theories)

• Aristotle

  • Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) thought humans were only animal to laugh

  • First to appreciate that the unexpected triggered laughter (incongruity)

  • Was more favorable to laughter than Plato, but thought “those who go into excess in making fun appear to be buffoons and vulgar”

  • (superiority and incongruity theories)

• Hobbes

  • Hobbes (1588-1679) built upon Plato and Aristotle’s notion that laughter is associated with superiority over others

  • Laughter is the expression of “Sudden glory” arising from sudden conception of our eminency over another (including our past self)

  • Consistent with his ideas in Leviathan, humans constant struggle for power

  • The core idea in “Leviathan” is that a strong centeralized government is necessary to prevent the chaos and conflict that would arise in a state of nature, where individuals pursue their own self-interest without regard for others

  • (superiority theories)

• Social standards

  • Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes seemed to see laughter as derisive and bad

  • This may be driven by social standards at the time

    • rich employed “fools“

    • physical deformity was a legitimate source of amusement

    • elite entertained themselves by visiting insane asylums to taunt inmates

• Kant

  • Kant (1724-1804) said “Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothingness”

  • More of a psychological perspective

  • First to dig into incongruity - means like out of place

  • Response to sudden unexpected change in expectation, laughter when initial expectation is contradicted by turn of events

  • (CT: relief theories + incongruity resolution theories)

• Schopenhauer

  • Schopenhauer (1788-1860) expanded on Kant, theorizing that laughter arises from the perceived mismatch between the physical perception and abstract representation of something, person, or action

  • We celebrate our incongruity detection with laughter

  • (CT: incongruity resolution theories)

• Nietzsche

  • Nietzsche (1844-1900) thought humor and laughter were human’s reactions to existential loneliness

  • Powerful tool in coping with life. Humor allows us to distance ourselves from difficulties and assert our own power over them

  • not superiority theory

  • (relief theory?)

• Freud

  • Freud (1856-1939) saw laughter is the release of tension and psychic energy

  • Jokes allowed us to express forbidden or repressed thoughts in an acceptable way

  • more philosophical because his ideas aren’t really testable

  • (relief theories)

• Bergson

  • Bergson (1859-1941) contributed the insight that laughter is inherently social

  • For something to be funny it must be human (have a social component) - animals and inmate objects become funny only in proportion to the degree they remind us of something human

  • laughter loses meaning and disappears outside the context of the group

  • Means of highlighting absurdities and inconsistencies of social conventions and norms

  • Laughing about something with someone is establishing/agreeing what’s socially acceptable to find funny

  • Reinforces societal values: individuals can express shared understanding of what is considered acceptable or absurd within their social context

  • Laughter, therefore, acts as a form of social cohesion, reinforcing group identity and solidarity

Humor Is Social

Social Behavior

• Heider and Simmel (1940)

  • no one every says what they physically see about the shapes

  • they say the social interaction

  • they make up a story about what’s going on

• Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

  • proposed the concept of the intentional stance to describe the way humans understand and predict behavior of complex systems, assuming rational agents w/ mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions)

  • Thus perhaps difficult to clearly differentiate social from non-social interaction

  • Most researchers who study humor agree that humor is fundamentally a social phenomenon...

  • Most people rarely laugh alone, and when they do the stimuli itself is of a social nature

Psychology of Humor

Primary Forms

• Situations that elicit humor are remarkably diverse with seemingly
  endless variety/forms; some researchers have categorized most humor into these four broad categories

• According to Martin and Kiuper (1999)

• Jokes (11%)

• Performance humor (17%)

• Spontaneous conversational humor (70%)

• Other (2%)

  • Unintentional humor

Jokes

• Jokes are short amusing stories with a set-up and
  punchline

• The set-up creates expectations about how the situation; the punchline shifts the meaning in an unexpected way, creating the perception of incongruity

• Richard Wiseman’s LaughLab project - what makes a joke funny?

  • Users submitted and rated jokes (2001)

    • Funny jokes are, on average, 103 words long

    • 5th of the month is funniest time of month

    • And 6:03pm is the funniest time of day

    • Ducks are the funniest animal

Conversational Humor

• Puns

  • humorous use of words that evoke a second meaning, usually based on a homophone - a word with a different meaning that sounds the same

    • Ex: How do you organize a space party? You planet!

Unintentional Humor

• Unintentional humor: things people say and do that are not meant to be funny

  • Accidental physical humor

    • /r/ Accidental linguistic humor