Humor results, they propose, when a person simultaneously recognizes both that an ethical, social or physical norm has been violated and that this violation is not very offensive, reprehensible or upsetting. McGraw and Warren’s hypothesis derives from the theory of incongruity, but it goes deeper. “It’s a very interesting idea,” says Delia Chiaro, a linguist at the University of Bologna in Italy. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren, both then at the University of Colorado Boulder, proposed a theory they call “benign violation” to unify the previous theories and to address their limits. In 2010 in the journal Psychological Science, A. None, for example, seems to fully clarify the appeal of slapstick. They also do not explain all types of humor. They do not provide a complete theoretical framework with a hypothesis that can be measured using well-defined parameters. These and other explanations all capture something, and yet they are insufficient. According to a variant of the theory known as resolution of incongruity, laughter results when a person discovers an unexpected solution to an apparent incongruity, such as when an individual grasps a double meaning in a statement and thus sees the statement in a completely new light. People laugh at the juxtaposition of incompatible concepts and at defiance of their expectations-that is, at the incongruity between expectations and reality. When the punch line comes, the energy being expended to suppress inappropriate emotions, such as desire or hostility, is no longer needed and is released as laughter.Ī third long-standing explanation of humor is the theory of incongruity. The best-known version, formulated later by Sigmund Freud, held that laughter allows people to let off steam or release pent-up “nervous energy.” According to Freud, this process explains why tabooed scatological and sexual themes and jokes that broach thorny social and ethnic topics can amuse us. The 18th century gave rise to the theory of release. Perhaps the oldest theory of humor, which dates back to Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers, posits that people find humor in, and laugh at, earlier versions of themselves and the misfortunes of others because of feeling superior. The search for this essence occupied first philosophers and then psychologists, who formalized the philosophical ideas and translated them into concepts that could be tested. Credit: Max Munn Autrey Getty Images Superiority and Reliefįor more than 2,000 years pundits have assumed that all forms of humor share a common ingredient. Chaplin refined his comedy by tinging it with melancholy and social commitment. The greatest of them all: Charlie Chaplin was among the fathers of slapstick comedy, which relies on physical gags. And some of the research has come out of the lab to investigate humor in its natural habitat: everyday life. It may evoke the merest smile or explosive laughter it can be conveyed by words, images or actions and through photos, films, skits or plays and it can take a wide range of forms, from innocent jokes to biting sarcasm and from physical gags and slapstick to a cerebral double entendre.Įven so, progress has been made. Although everyone understands intuitively what humor is, and dictionaries may define it simply as “the quality of being amusing,” it is difficult to define in a way that encompasses all its aspects. Indeed, the concept of humor is itself elusive. As psychologist Christian Jarrett noted in a 2013 article featuring that riddle as its title, scientists still struggle to explain exactly what makes people laugh.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |