How to Be Funny: to Make People Laugh, Attack Them
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Hong Kong Polytechnic University HOW TO BE FUNNY: TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH, ATTACK THEM • We make people laugh by attacking them • Laughing is a type of screaming • The key element in laughter is NOT surprise, but mental or physical violence Nury Vittachi Creativity and Design Education Lab School of Design The Hong Kong Polytechnic University March 2, 2015 Abstract: Laughter is rooted in fear, this paper proposes. • The widespread belief that the surprise is the basic building block of items of humor is inaccurate. Unpredictability is a common but non- essential element of the discomfort that creates laughter. • People essentially create laughter by attacking others. Parents physically attack their infants. Comedians verbally abuse audiences or threaten violence to their belief systems or senses of morality. • Laughter is a type of screaming. Our hypothesis, we suggest, sheds light on laughter-related puzzles. • Why can we not tickle ourselves? Answer: Fear is missing. • Why is embarrassment sometimes expressed by laughter? Answer: Gross emotional discomfort is the root of involuntary laughter. Our hypothesis also gives us a new understanding of human utterances sometimes defined as “courtesy laughter”, reclassifying them as “discomfort laughter”. 1 Hong Kong Polytechnic University One-line summary: The fundamental element of humor is not surprise, but attack, since the relationship between fear and laughter is significantly closer than is generally assumed. Keywords: humor, attack, evolution, laughter, fear, tension, comedy, embarrassment, discomfort, displacement, behavioral psychology, violation 1. Introduction: The study of humor THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HUMOR is still in its early stages, despite it having been a topic of interest for millennia, since Aristotle expressed his opinion that laughter was a technique people used to make them feel superior to others. But progress on acquiring a fuller understanding has been slow for many reasons, not least because the subject is extremely difficult to define. Laughing is a complex cognitive act that sometimes but not always involves language and sometimes but not always involves a physical response. There are times when we laugh inwardly, making little or no outside show of the act. There are times when the act is extremely physical, as our shoulders shake, we lose control of our vocal chords and we clutch our sides. Laughing is sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary and sometimes appears to be a mix of these, or somewhere in between. Furthermore, laughter is clearly contagious but no one knows exactly how it spreads. “Participants in a conversation move from a single laugh to laughing together…” (Glenn, 2003). Despite these mysteries, it is agreed that humor is universal in human beings, and has been around since time immemorial. Laughter is observable in all human cultures, from the most primitive to the most developed, and some researchers believe some animals laugh (Goodall, 1968). In humans, although laughter is often negative in tone, it is universally seen as a positive trait. This is true on a personal basis (“she’s got a good sense of humor”) and on a group basis (“they know how to laugh at themselves”). But what is the key element that underpins laughter? 2 Hong Kong Polytechnic University This study starts with an overview of the academic literature on humor, takes in what we all know about the subject (since we are all practitioners), and then investigates comedy from several angles, amateur and professional. It may usefully be mentioned that the senior investigator on this project has worked as a humorist for some years, so has practical experience on which to draw. This paper is drawn on material gathered over a four-year period, from 2009 to 2013. In seeking to provide insights, we will focus less on biochemical processes and more on psychology and discourse analysis. 2. Overview: All humans laugh Laughter is a standard human trait in communities around the world. While there may be individuals who do not laugh out loud, such people are considered socially incomplete or physically disabled, possibly even assumed to be suffering from a rare condition known as aphonogelia (Levin, 1931). For the rest of us, it should be noted that the amount of laughter we express differs widely among individuals. Children laugh far more than adults (Provine, 1993), with studies showing that babies from four months old can make chortling noises, and sometimes do so several hundred times a day, while adults laugh about 20 times a day. Personality is also a factor. Some individuals laugh a great deal, the sounds forming key parts of their personal vocabulary. Others go through life apparently never laughing out loud at all. “The varieties of laughter cover so vast and varied a terrain that they all but frustrate mapping,” lamented historian Peter Gay (Gay, 1993). Laughter has been academically studied (the field is known as “gelotology”) for decades, yet no one needs professors to tell us what we all feel we know by instinct: laughter is an amused response to stimuli. In practice, it is seen as an involuntary response to hearing a joke, seeing a humorous sight or being tickled. However, some researchers believe that laughter is often used as a voluntary act to smooth social interactions. This action can be defined as a 3 Hong Kong Polytechnic University “courtesy laugh” (Moss, 2009). The present investigators agree that laughter regularly forms a part of verbal exchanges which are not intentionally funny, although this study interprets these incidents differently, seeing them as fear-related and involuntary. This type of joke-free laughter is ubiquitous and can be easily observed in one-to-one conversations and in audience-performer situations. For example, picture a social gathering such as a Rotary Club meeting, wedding party or conference. During the opening minutes, a speaker may take the stage, lean into the microphone and say something such as: “I can’t believe I’m up here again.” The audience will laugh audibly, although no actual joke has been delivered by the speaker, nor has any example of wit or wordplay been demonstrated. It is the tension involved in setting up a speaker-audience relationship which has produced a small burst of laughter. 3. Physiology What happens insiDe when we lauGh In physical terms, it may be most straightforward to define laughter as a mental process triggered by stimuli which often leads to a physiological response. We see, hear or feel stimuli, usually from outside sources, but occasionally from inner sources (for example, you remember a joke or replay a humorous memory and it sets you laughing). We may react to the stimuli with a series of actions: our cheeks rise, the larynx forms sounds and the epiglottis begins a rhythmic episode of constrictions, often resulting in our uttering a series of staccato notes. While comic-book creators follow the convention of portraying the resulting sound as “ha ha ha” or “tee hee hee”, in reality it can take a wide variety of forms, from yelping to squealing to howling to sniggering to shrieking. You can also laugh silently. The physiological responses can be slight, virtually imperceptible, or great, producing a visual and audible reaction and faster heartbeat and breathing rates (Ruch, 1993). In the more extreme cases, your shoulders shake, sometimes there is a convulsive response in the viscera, and you wrap your arms around yourself. You may even double over or in very extreme cases, fall off your chair. 4 Hong Kong Polytechnic University And in your head? Neuroscientists know that when this process occurs, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is activated—the part of the brain which produces endorphins. We also know that two parts of the limbic system, the hippocampus and the amygdala, are involved. These are both associated with emotions. A burst of electrical activity occurs in specific areas of your brain (Fried et al, 1998). How much control do you have? Probably everyone reading this will at some time have experienced a visceral bout of laughing in which their whole torso shakes. This appears to be involuntary and can sometimes last so long that we end up in pain. Yet despite the hurt, laughter in human societies is associated with positive emotional feelings and physical good health. Even in strict behavioral codes, laughter is seen as a good thing. For example, while Islamic tradition contains warnings against laughing too much, ancient writings specifically list instances of Mohammed laughing (al-Hajjaj, 874). Laughter has been associated with introducing not just a general feeling of greater wellbeing, but measurable improvements in health. Laughter is believed to expand the blood vessels, decrease serum cortisol and boost the immune system. It even makes you more able to withstand pain (Dunbar, 2012). 4. Laughter comes from fear Development of our hypothesis Conventional wisdom says laughter is associated with joy, and especially with jokes in the sense of items of wordplay and the presentation of “funny” lines. Jokes are seen as aphorisms or short narratives which end in a punch line containing a surprise. Yet scholars have long known that laughter is more complex than that. People can also be observed to laugh in reaction to being embarrassed, distressed or even angry. Frederick Nietzsche said that laughter was a reaction to the sense of existential loneliness and mortality that humans, and only humans, experience. In other words, it is a yelp of emotion from the deepest parts of the human consciousness. (This is refuted by scholars who believe that other animals laugh.) “Relief theory” was posited by Sigmund Freud and others as a general theory of laughter. John Morreall theorized that the passing of 5 Hong Kong Polytechnic University danger led to the “shared expression of relief”, which was a smile and a laugh.