The Psychology of Humor: Why Are Things Funny?

In 2001, Dr. Richard Wiseman asked a question: What is the funniest joke in the world? He got people to submit and rate jokes on his website, LaughLab. After 40,000 submissions and a million ratings, he got his answer. Are you ready for the world's funniest joke, as determined by science? Here it is. Two hunters are in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glassy. The other guy pulls out his phone and calls emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says, "Calm down, I can help you.

First, let's make sure he's dead." There's silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, "Okay, so what? Now what?" Now, regardless of whether you thought that joke was

funny

or not, it raises some interesting scientific questions. Why did so many people find it

funny

? What makes a good joke? What is

humor

? Why Do we laugh? These are actually complicated questions and there are multiple hypotheses about what

humor

is and why we laugh. Let's spend a little time exploring what exactly tickles our funny bone. To study humor is to start by discovering what exactly makes us laugh.

Laughter is omnipresent. A good estimate says that we laugh about 17 times a day. It is a pleasurable activity that makes us feel good. to make us laugh. If you've ever attended a stand-up show or seen a comedy movie, you've participated in these industries. Biologically, laughter is a human universal that begins around 3.5 to 4 months of age. It is an automatic reaction to funny or tickling stimuli. Mechanically, it is a series of staccato segments each approximately 1/15 of a second, separated by approximately 1/5 of a second. Laughter is also often full of vowels: hence the familiar "ha-ha" or "ho-ho." What about the physiological or neural components behind laughter?

When you laugh, 15 different facial muscles contract. The zygomaticus major, the main muscle responsible for raising the upper lip, is also stimulated. In the respiratory system, the larynx, or the upper part of the trachea, is half closed by the epiglottis, a flap of cartilage that normally covers the trachea when swallowing to prevent choking. This half closure causes the air intake to occur irregularly, making you gasp. In extreme circumstances, when you laugh a lot, your tear ducts also activate. Peter Derks' research tells us what happens in your brain when you laugh at a joke. First, the left side of the cortex, the side that is generally responsible for language and speech, analyzes the words and structure of the joke.

Then your frontal lobe becomes very active. The right hemisphere of the cortex will also show activity, presumably the intellectual analysis necessary to "get" the joke. The brain wave activity then spreads to the sensory processing area of ​​the occipital lobe, the area at the back of the brain that processes visual signals. If the motor cortex is stimulated, there will also be physical responses to the joke. Laughter itself seems to come from a specific area of ​​the brain. A 1998 study traced it to a small 2 cm by 2 cm area in the left superior frontal gyrus. In this study, electrical stimulation was applied to 85 different sites in the brain of a girl who had had severe seizures in an effort to discover where the seizures were coming from.

When this small area was stimulated, the girl constantly produced laughter and she felt a sense of joy or exhilaration. At the very least, this area of ​​the brain is extremely important for laughter. Finally, laughter also appears to be physiologically rewarding. It appears to be regulated by the same reward circuit that makes us feel good when we perform activities. Endorphins, the same chemicals that can cause a “runner's high,” are also released during laughter. In fact, there is a grain of truth in the saying "laughter is the best medicine." Reduces stress hormones, decreases muscle tension and increases positive immune markers.

In diabetics, laughter may cause a smaller rise in blood sugar after a meal. And, of course, laughter is incompatible with many chronic negative emotional states that are harmful to health, such as anger and depression. It's hard to be angry and laugh at the same time. All this mechanically explains how we laugh. But when do we laugh and why? Laughter seems to be a social and communicative activity. We rarely laugh alone. In fact, people are 30 times more likely to laugh in a social setting. In fact, laughter can help create social bonds and help us grow closer. Dr.

Robert Provine conducted years of naturalistic studies that provide evidence for this. He and his research assistants went to shopping malls and city sidewalks to record what happened just before people laughed. For 10 years they studied more than 2,000 cases of natural laughter. What did you find? First of all, women tend to laugh more than men, unless the men listen to a woman. They also discovered that the speaker laughs 50% more than the listener in a conversation. Most of the laughs also don't follow jokes or any real attempt at humor. 90% of the pre-laugh comments were

things

like "I'll see you guys later", "Are you sure?", "I know!" and “Does anyone have a rubber band?” Obviously these comments are not funny.

This suggests that laughter may serve as a way to create social bonds between people. But what about the humor itself? Why are

things

funny? Actually, we don't know for sure. Psychologists are still trying to figure out what aspects of a joke or situation make us laugh. However, we have several theories. One theory is that humor is due to incongruity. We laugh when there is a disconnect between what we expect and what actually happens. Incongruous joke jokes force us to reconsider or rethink something. Take this joke. Police were called to a daycare center, where a three-year-old boy was refusing to rest.

When we hear the beginning of the joke about the police, we don't expect the punchline to be about a child who doesn't want to take a nap. But incongruity is not the best explanation for humor, especially since there are many cases in which incongruity does not provoke laughter at all. Would you laugh if you got an F on a test when you thought you got an A? No, because that's not funny, even if there is a disconnect between our expectations and reality. Another possible explanation for humor is the superiority theory. We laugh at older versions of ourselves and at the misfortunes of others because we think we are better than them.

This type of humor is often used to ridicule others. Think about your childhood, playing on the playground or at school. Have you ever laughed when someone dropped their lunch or vomited gas? Your laughter could be explained by the realization that you are superior to that poor person. Here's another example: It's quite funny if the Queen of England farts because it goes against the royalty and majesty we expect from her. Psychologists Thomas Veatch and Peter McGraw propose yet another theory: humor arises from a benign violation of an accepted rule or morality. Emphasis on benign here; Jokes with this type of humor only work if the violation is non-threatening.

In this case, an ethical, social, or physical norm has been violated, but the violation is not very offensive or upsetting. This theory helps explain slapstick humor. We know that getting hit in the head with a frying pan causes brain damage. But when the Three Stooges do it, we laugh because we know it's just cartoon violence and the characters don't actually get hurt. Humor could also simply be the result of a release of tension. Philosopher John Morreall suggested that laughter may have its biological origins as a kind of shared expression of relief in the face of danger.

We laugh when something creates tension and then relieves it. Sigmund Freud would agree. In his opinion, laughter allows people to release repressed “nervous energy.” This explains why we laugh at poop jokes and sex jokes. When we get to the bottom line, we don't have to continue repressing supposedly inappropriate emotions like desire or disgust. This energy is released in the form of laughter. Finally, we may be able to explain parts of humor in an evolutionary context. Laughter and humor occur in all human societies. While we are the only species that laughs in response to a joke, some animals seem to make laughter-like sounds when they play.

Rats, for example, squeak while playing in a way that resembles our laughter. When rats are tickled, they also squeak and bond socially with their human tickler. And rats seem to like being tickled; They actively seek more tickling. Non-human primates also seem to laugh. When chimpanzees play, tickle and chase each other, they produce a sound similar to human laughter. The universality of laughter even outside of humans suggests it could play an evolutionary role. For example, laughter could be important to animals and to our ancestors by signaling when simulated aggression and fighting are just that, a form of play.

If you laugh while fighting someone, make it clear that you are just playing and not actively trying to hurt them. Humor is complicated. Although we have many theories about why we laugh, we honestly don't know exactly what makes things funny. But maybe it's not necessary. Maybe it's better not to analyze some jokes.