1 00:00:06,70 --> 00:00:09,728 My name is Peter McGraw and I'm an Associate Professor of Marketing and 2 00:00:09,728 --> 00:00:13,880 Psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 3 00:00:13,880 --> 00:00:17,291 And I've studied judgement, emotion and choice. 4 00:00:17,291 --> 00:00:22,950 And along my travels on this research topic I stumbled onto the question. 5 00:00:22,950 --> 00:00:29,160 What makes things funny? And as a result of that that experience. 6 00:00:29,160 --> 00:00:32,610 I started the humor research lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 7 00:00:32,610 --> 00:00:36,640 And I'm going to be talking about what makes things funny from a psychological 8 00:00:36,640 --> 00:00:41,50 perspective. So the question of what makes things 9 00:00:41,50 --> 00:00:44,120 funny is actually a surprisingly important question. 10 00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:49,190 And that is the consequences of humor have really important implications for 11 00:00:49,190 --> 00:00:53,920 how we live. So people who are funny are well liked. 12 00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:56,620 Humorous things are really attention getting. 13 00:00:56,620 --> 00:01:00,280 It's something that influences the choices that we make in terms of how we 14 00:01:00,280 --> 00:01:03,870 spend our leisure time, our leisure dollars. 15 00:01:03,870 --> 00:01:08,420 It influences who our friends are, who we end up dating, who we end up marrying, 16 00:01:08,420 --> 00:01:13,309 and unfortunately sometimes who we end up divorcing. 17 00:01:15,50 --> 00:01:18,380 Those types of effects are really obvious and very clear. 18 00:01:18,380 --> 00:01:24,610 What's less clear is what it is that actually makes things humourous. 19 00:01:24,610 --> 00:01:27,737 And I'm going to focus today on the antecedents and at the end of the talk 20 00:01:27,737 --> 00:01:32,385 I'll connect these antecedents to some of these important consequences. 21 00:01:32,385 --> 00:01:37,270 So let's do a little bit of housekeeping first. 22 00:01:37,270 --> 00:01:41,808 What is humor? I think of humor as a response, a 23 00:01:41,808 --> 00:01:50,58 response that people experience in one of three ways, or all of three ways. 24 00:01:50,58 --> 00:01:55,419 So humor is a cognitive response, a judgement. 25 00:01:55,419 --> 00:01:59,509 Hey, that's funny. It's an emotional response. 26 00:01:59,509 --> 00:02:04,53 This positive of feeling, this positive feeling of amusement that we have when we 27 00:02:04,53 --> 00:02:09,180 perceive something as humorous. And then finally a behavioral response. 28 00:02:09,180 --> 00:02:12,84 The tendency to laugh. Now, of course, you don't always laugh at 29 00:02:12,84 --> 00:02:14,690 things that you see funny, but it tends to have a theory there. 30 00:02:14,690 --> 00:02:15,15 So, there are many theories of humor. They go back thousands of years. 31 00:02:15,15 --> 00:02:20,610 Freud had a theory of what makes things funny. 32 00:02:20,610 --> 00:02:31,400 In which he described humor as a release of sexual or aggressive tensions. 33 00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:34,590 And many things that people laugh at seem to have that element. 34 00:02:34,590 --> 00:02:39,660 Although Freud's theory has been largely abandoned. 35 00:02:39,660 --> 00:02:44,700 Plato and Socrates talked about humor and described it as something that occurs 36 00:02:44,700 --> 00:02:51,429 when bad things happen to other people, that we laugh at other people's misery. 37 00:02:52,450 --> 00:02:58,654 I think Hobbes put it best in Laviathan he wrote that humor, the laughter occurs 38 00:02:58,654 --> 00:03:04,330 in response to sudden glory over our enemies. 39 00:03:04,330 --> 00:03:08,746 And then the most sort of compelling predominate theory of humor today is one 40 00:03:08,746 --> 00:03:13,683 based on incongruity. That is that there's something surprising 41 00:03:13,683 --> 00:03:17,930 or something that we expect but don't actually get. 42 00:03:17,930 --> 00:03:21,480 There's some mismatch between expectations and reality. 43 00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:26,663 And some pretty fart smart folks like Emmanuel Cont has suggested that, that 44 00:03:26,663 --> 00:03:30,920 humor occurs as a response to incongruity. 45 00:03:30,920 --> 00:03:34,439 So the research that we've been doing in the humor research lab says, shows that 46 00:03:34,439 --> 00:03:38,850 there's some problems with each of these different types of theories. 47 00:03:38,850 --> 00:03:43,486 So putting them all together, accidentally killing a loved one would 48 00:03:43,486 --> 00:03:48,426 would foster a release in aggressive tension, would assert your superiority 49 00:03:48,426 --> 00:03:54,360 and certainly would be an expected turn of events. 50 00:03:54,360 --> 00:04:00,778 But it's hard, hardly laughable. Instead what we argue is that humor comes 51 00:04:00,778 --> 00:04:05,560 from benign violations. So what do I mean by benign violations? 52 00:04:05,560 --> 00:04:10,864 Well it's actually a little bit of a counter intuitive thought, that idea that 53 00:04:10,864 --> 00:04:16,402 humor actually starts with something that is wrong Unsettling, threatening in some 54 00:04:16,402 --> 00:04:22,30 way. It violates the way you see the world. 55 00:04:22,30 --> 00:04:25,780 The way the world ought to be. Some pretty smart people have recognized 56 00:04:25,780 --> 00:04:30,54 this to be the case. Mark Twain said that the secret source of 57 00:04:30,54 --> 00:04:36,210 humor is not joy, it's sorrow. There is no laughter in heaven. 58 00:04:36,210 --> 00:04:40,430 That is there's nothing wrong in heaven, thus there's nothing to laugh about. 59 00:04:40,430 --> 00:04:43,615 So in each of the previous theories I've discussed, you can see those negative 60 00:04:43,615 --> 00:04:48,246 elements. Aggressive things tend to be negative. 61 00:04:48,246 --> 00:04:53,560 as, asserting superiority. Bad things are happening to other people. 62 00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:58,120 And in the sense that things that are unexpected, if they're unexpectedly bad. 63 00:04:58,120 --> 00:05:02,748 They can be violations. Now in the benign violation theory the 64 00:05:02,748 --> 00:05:06,140 range of violations is really quite broad. 65 00:05:06,140 --> 00:05:11,490 It could be physical threats. It could be violations of social norms. 66 00:05:11,490 --> 00:05:15,938 It could be violations of cultural norms. It could be violations of linguistic 67 00:05:15,938 --> 00:05:18,812 norms. So that things that are wrong vary. 68 00:05:18,812 --> 00:05:24,425 really quite broad. But of course, violations don't normally 69 00:05:24,425 --> 00:05:27,860 make us laugh, they cause negative emotions. 70 00:05:27,860 --> 00:05:30,472 And that's where you need the benign condition. 71 00:05:30,472 --> 00:05:37,122 That violation needs to simultaneously be seen as okay, acceptable, safe, or in our 72 00:05:37,122 --> 00:05:43,700 vernacular, benign. So, take tickling for example, or play 73 00:05:43,700 --> 00:05:48,420 fighting, both are benign violations, they're mock attacks. 74 00:05:48,420 --> 00:05:52,68 So, they're threatening events, or physically threatening events that are 75 00:05:52,68 --> 00:05:56,191 not intended to hurt. And, when is it that they cause laughter, 76 00:05:56,191 --> 00:06:00,828 that cause a humorous response? Well it's when they're not done too 77 00:06:00,828 --> 00:06:05,750 aggressively and when they're done by someone Who you trust. 78 00:06:05,750 --> 00:06:08,600 So, for instance, you can't tickle yourself. 79 00:06:08,600 --> 00:06:13,580 There's no violation there, there's nothing threatening about that situation. 80 00:06:13,580 --> 00:06:18,404 Similarly, if a creepy stranger walked up to you on the street and tired to tickle 81 00:06:18,404 --> 00:06:23,60 you, it's hardly going to be a funny situation. 82 00:06:23,60 --> 00:06:28,850 That situation is purely a violation. There is nothing okay about it. 83 00:06:28,850 --> 00:06:35,252 Benign violation approach also explains things like word play and puns to take 84 00:06:35,252 --> 00:06:42,350 for example, this situation. If you find this this situation funny, 85 00:06:42,350 --> 00:06:47,630 it's likely cause you see how the phrasing of pen and is both wrong and not 86 00:06:47,630 --> 00:06:51,984 wrong. At the same time. 87 00:06:51,984 --> 00:06:56,520 So I'm going to present to you four good reasons why benign violations is a good 88 00:06:56,520 --> 00:07:03,580 theory for what makes things funny. So let's start with the idea of distance. 89 00:07:03,580 --> 00:07:08,930 so Mark Twain said, that comedy is tragedy plus time. 90 00:07:08,930 --> 00:07:14,120 And Mel Brooks similarly quipped that, tragedy is when I cut my finger. 91 00:07:14,120 --> 00:07:17,988 Comedy is when you fall down an open sewer and die. 92 00:07:17,988 --> 00:07:23,13 In both cases these humorists recognize that being far away from, being distant 93 00:07:23,13 --> 00:07:30,85 from a tragedy helps enhance humor. And research in in our lab the Humor 94 00:07:30,85 --> 00:07:34,726 Research Lab, AKA HURL, has found that to be the case. 95 00:07:34,726 --> 00:07:38,756 So, what happens is, is that for really severe violations like tragedies, 96 00:07:38,756 --> 00:07:43,111 distance helps lower the threat of of the violation and helps transform this 97 00:07:43,111 --> 00:07:50,81 violation into a benign violation. But what's interesting is that distance 98 00:07:50,81 --> 00:07:56,960 doesn't always help in some situations. As in the case of mild mishaps. 99 00:07:56,960 --> 00:08:00,40 Actually, moving closer may help enhance humor. 100 00:08:00,40 --> 00:08:04,460 So let me give you an example, that, that illustrates this. 101 00:08:04,460 --> 00:08:08,680 Imagine a situation where you've been hit by a car. 102 00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:13,230 Which of the two situations would be funnier whether if it happened five years 103 00:08:13,230 --> 00:08:18,381 ago or if it happened yesterday. But what about a mild violation, like 104 00:08:18,381 --> 00:08:22,285 stubbing your toe, in what situation is more likely to be funny if it happened 105 00:08:22,285 --> 00:08:27,517 five years ago or yesterday? Well, participants in our laboratory 106 00:08:27,517 --> 00:08:32,90 demonstrate how this reversal occurs. How the effect of distance depends on the 107 00:08:32,90 --> 00:08:35,740 severity of the violation. Getting hit by a car five years ago is 108 00:08:35,740 --> 00:08:40,28 now distant and can be transformed into a benign violation but stubbing your toe 109 00:08:40,28 --> 00:08:45,129 five years ago is so far away for this mild violation. 110 00:08:45,129 --> 00:08:49,155 It's not even worth our attention in actually moving closer to it makes it 111 00:08:49,155 --> 00:08:53,815 funnier. None of the previous theories can account 112 00:08:53,815 --> 00:09:01,10 for this reversal of distance due to the severity of the violation. 113 00:09:01,10 --> 00:09:04,670 The next piece of evidence is that many things that we laugh about, we also 114 00:09:04,670 --> 00:09:09,230 experience a little bit of negative emotions along the way. 115 00:09:09,230 --> 00:09:12,220 You can think about nervous laughter, when you're laughing at something that 116 00:09:12,220 --> 00:09:16,790 you know is wrong. Well, that occurs because you need to 117 00:09:16,790 --> 00:09:20,800 have something wrong to find something laughable. 118 00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:24,460 And so, we've been doing some research on moral violations and when moral 119 00:09:24,460 --> 00:09:29,6 violations can become funny. And what we find is that one way that you 120 00:09:29,6 --> 00:09:33,353 can do this, is that you could have some alternative explanation that explains 121 00:09:33,353 --> 00:09:38,70 explains away the thing that is seemingly wrong. 122 00:09:38,70 --> 00:09:41,170 So a, we use a scenario by Jonathan Height. 123 00:09:41,170 --> 00:09:47,320 A social psychologist. And I'll just read this along with you. 124 00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:49,510 Matthew is playing with his new kitten late one night. 125 00:09:49,510 --> 00:09:53,479 He is wearing only his boxer shorts, and sometimes the kitten walks over his 126 00:09:53,479 --> 00:09:57,760 genitals. Eventually, this arouses him and he 127 00:09:57,760 --> 00:10:02,10 begins to rub his bare genitals along the kittens body. 128 00:10:02,10 --> 00:10:06,50 The kitten purrs and seems to enjoy the contact. 129 00:10:06,50 --> 00:10:10,460 So this is very clearly a pretty disgusting scenario, and almost everybody 130 00:10:10,460 --> 00:10:16,220 agrees with that fact. But we find a large proportion of our 131 00:10:16,220 --> 00:10:21,781 participants also find the situation to be funny, so they're both disgusted and 132 00:10:21,781 --> 00:10:25,664 amused. As you can see I've underlined a 133 00:10:25,664 --> 00:10:29,440 particular passage in this scenario, the kitten purrs and seems to enjoy the 134 00:10:29,440 --> 00:10:34,947 contact. That helps make this violation benign, 135 00:10:34,947 --> 00:10:40,360 that is, the kitten seems to be enjoying the experience also. 136 00:10:40,360 --> 00:10:44,180 No kitten is being harmed in the making of this scenario. 137 00:10:44,180 --> 00:10:48,660 In our study, we actually manipulated whether this sentence was present or a 138 00:10:48,660 --> 00:10:53,210 different pres-, sentence was present, where the kitten whines, and does not 139 00:10:53,210 --> 00:10:58,811 seem to enjoy the contact. In that situation, we have very low 140 00:10:58,811 --> 00:11:02,195 levels of amusement. There's nothing okay about this 141 00:11:02,195 --> 00:11:05,119 situation, and people are only disgusted by it. 142 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:10,461 So, when you have a benign violation, you can end up having mixed emotions. 143 00:11:10,461 --> 00:11:14,670 It's I think very good support fact that something wrong has to be present there. 144 00:11:14,670 --> 00:11:19,695 The third support that I can present for benign violation account is the vast 145 00:11:19,695 --> 00:11:25,570 individual differences in what people find funny. 146 00:11:25,570 --> 00:11:29,795 What one person finds funny, another person might find boring and yet another 147 00:11:29,795 --> 00:11:34,510 person might find offensive. Why is that the case? 148 00:11:34,510 --> 00:11:40,30 Well humor is a uniquely individual thing and it's determined by one's values, 149 00:11:40,30 --> 00:11:45,660 experiences and beliefs. What one person sees as a benign 150 00:11:45,660 --> 00:11:50,385 violation, another sees as totally benign and yet another sees as totally a 151 00:11:50,385 --> 00:11:54,745 violation. Shows that there's sort of this very, 152 00:11:54,745 --> 00:11:59,390 kind of, tough, going when you want to make something funny. 153 00:11:59,390 --> 00:12:03,107 You've got to find the sweet spot of comedy that perfectly matches these two 154 00:12:03,107 --> 00:12:08,279 appraisals. So in one study we presented our 155 00:12:08,279 --> 00:12:14,558 participants with a scenario in which a church is trying to get people to come to 156 00:12:14,558 --> 00:12:22,300 the congregation, and they're raffling off an H2 Hummer SUV. 157 00:12:22,300 --> 00:12:26,95 And we find that people often find this this scenario to be upsetting. 158 00:12:26,95 --> 00:12:30,60 But some group of people also find it to be amusing. 159 00:12:30,60 --> 00:12:34,794 Who is it that finds it amusing? Well those are people who are not regular 160 00:12:34,794 --> 00:12:38,56 church-goers. So they can recognize that this is 161 00:12:38,56 --> 00:12:41,940 potentially threatening to the sanctity of the church. 162 00:12:41,940 --> 00:12:45,396 But because they don't care about it, they're not, they're not particularly 163 00:12:45,396 --> 00:12:49,310 hearing, adhering to any sort of religious doctrine. 164 00:12:49,310 --> 00:12:52,910 They have enough distance from it to see how it can be funny. 165 00:12:52,910 --> 00:12:56,595 People who are regular churchgoers how, however, don't find this scenario to be 166 00:12:56,595 --> 00:13:01,610 amusing. They're only disgusted by it. 167 00:13:01,610 --> 00:13:06,750 The last piece of support is that the theory not only explains what is funny. 168 00:13:06,750 --> 00:13:12,134 But it also explains what is not funny. So in a, a study that we conducted in the 169 00:13:12,134 --> 00:13:17,293 human research lab, we had a research assistant approach approach people on 170 00:13:17,293 --> 00:13:24,759 campus and ask them to read a survey. And while they were reading the survey, 171 00:13:24,759 --> 00:13:29,808 she just looked at their faces. And she just coded how their, how they 172 00:13:29,808 --> 00:13:32,800 reacted facially to the information that we gave them. 173 00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:37,344 And we gave them a story that was similar to Keith Richard's acknowledgement that 174 00:13:37,344 --> 00:13:42,260 he had snorted his dead father's ashes with some cocaine. 175 00:13:42,260 --> 00:13:46,464 So we made up a scenario akin to that. And with Keith, in which Keith's father 176 00:13:46,464 --> 00:13:49,536 tells his son to cremate his body, and that Keith can do whatever he wants to do 177 00:13:49,536 --> 00:13:53,248 with the remains. So his dad gives him a license to do 178 00:13:53,248 --> 00:13:58,139 whatever he wants, and Keith decides to snort his dead father's ashes. 179 00:13:59,300 --> 00:14:03,76 What we've found was, that some people were upset by this, some people didn't 180 00:14:03,76 --> 00:14:06,830 think it was a big deal, and some people laughed. 181 00:14:06,830 --> 00:14:11,330 And we asked them, can you see the situation as wrong, yes or no? 182 00:14:11,330 --> 00:14:14,660 Can you see the situation as not wrong, yes or no? 183 00:14:14,660 --> 00:14:18,629 And what we've found was only the people who saw it as wrong and not wrong were 184 00:14:18,629 --> 00:14:23,653 more likely to laugh and smile. The people who saw it as totally wrong 185 00:14:23,653 --> 00:14:27,685 were not, not likely to laugh and smile and the people who saw it as totally not 186 00:14:27,685 --> 00:14:35,41 wrong were not likely to laugh and smile. In one case they were offended, in the 187 00:14:35,41 --> 00:14:40,179 other case they were bored. So let's get back to the original 188 00:14:40,179 --> 00:14:45,440 question of what makes things funny. I hope I've been able to convince you 189 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:51,6 that the answer is benign violations. And let me end with one last piece of 190 00:14:51,6 --> 00:14:56,20 evidence that I think is really quite persuasive. 191 00:14:56,20 --> 00:15:01,550 And that is that that a benign violation approach connects both the antecedents 192 00:15:01,550 --> 00:15:07,54 and the consequences of humor. So for instance, humor is this really 193 00:15:07,54 --> 00:15:11,534 positive thing and it's something people hold liking and admiration for the people 194 00:15:11,534 --> 00:15:15,818 who can create it. Well we should like people who can take 195 00:15:15,818 --> 00:15:20,220 the things that are bad in the world and somehow make them positive. 196 00:15:20,220 --> 00:15:22,629 Transform the violations into benign violations. 197 00:15:23,930 --> 00:15:27,792 Humor is attention-getting. Well, things that are wrong in the world 198 00:15:27,792 --> 00:15:32,118 tend to catch our attention. And one of the things that I hadn't 199 00:15:32,118 --> 00:15:36,733 mentioned yet, is that humor seems to be a very good way to help people cope with 200 00:15:36,733 --> 00:15:42,840 pain, stress, and adversity. And I think humor does that through one 201 00:15:42,840 --> 00:15:46,680 of two mechanisms. One is, we feel good, and when we feel 202 00:15:46,680 --> 00:15:51,390 good about things, the bad things in the world are less threatening to us. 203 00:15:51,390 --> 00:15:54,986 But there also can be this reappraisal process, is that if we can make fun of 204 00:15:54,986 --> 00:15:58,698 the bad things in the world, make fun of the violations, reappraise them into 205 00:15:58,698 --> 00:16:04,190 benign violations. Well then it helps us cope with them, 206 00:16:04,190 --> 00:16:08,450 because they just don't seem as bad. thank you very much. 207 00:16:08,450 --> 00:16:11,860 I want to thank my colleagues in the humor research lab. 208 00:16:11,860 --> 00:16:22,733 And my insights from the humor code.