From the time of ancient Greece defined by Aristotle as the “ugliness that does not disgust”, to being considered one of the nine emotional essences in Bharata Muni’s Natya Shastra and “the art of reprehension” in Persian literary tradition, humor is ubiquitous in the fabric of human history. But why humor? What is it about humor that so effectively lubricates our social and existential experience? When life gets awkward or painful, why don’t we reach for spreadsheets and facts? Why do we instead reach for jokes?
From the time of ancient Greece defined by Aristotle as the “ugliness that does not disgust”, to being considered one of the nine emotional essences in Bharata Muni’s Natya Shastra and “the art of reprehension” in Persian literary tradition, humor is ubiquitous in the fabric of human history. But why humor? What is it about humor that so effectively lubricates our social and existential experience? When life gets awkward or painful, why don’t we reach for spreadsheets and facts? Why do we instead reach for jokes?
Photo by Mikhail Marchenko
Photo by Mikhail Marchenko
Humor is a tool we employ to digest and metabolise our emotional and physical reality. In its structure and purpose, it is the marriage of the violating and the benign, of congruity and chaos; a balance of realism, tension, and detachment that allows us to cope with the absurdity of our existence. E.B White once said that “analysing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies with it”. And yet, perhaps a sensible dose of meta-scrutiny is necessary for acknowledging and appreciating humor’s capacity to enhance our human experience.
So what is it about humor that allows unexpected twists, stupidity, and exaggeration to bless us with miniature, enjoyable seizures? Well, the Humor Research Lab (HuRL) has answers! Formulated by Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren, the Benign Violation Theory posits a framework for the anatomy of humor, proposing it arises if and only if three conditions are satisfied: (1) A situation is a violation: it threatens a norm, or the way one thinks the world should be. That is, via something threatening, unsettling or plain wrong. (2) The situation is benign: it is congruent, clear and consistent with the context of the humor, and (3) both perceptions occur simultaneously (McGraw & Warren, 2010). Violations come in different flavours: physical, identity, cultural, linguistic, logical, and moral. Pure violations do not make people laugh. If you approach a stranger at a funeral with a “glad they’re gone, what a jerk”, laughter is unlikely to be your audience’s response. Same setting, but commenting “I’m so sorry for your loss”, is safe, appropriate, and not funny. Now, still at the funeral, if the gravestone reads “I told you I was sick”, it is its clarity as a comedic epitaph (benign), combined with a joke about death (violation), that may crack a chuckle. Importantly, do take note of the third condition on the necessary simultaneity of the balance. The timing of comedic timing is key. If the juxtaposition is unsynchronised, our brain often overlooks the association entirely: seeing a life insurance ad a week before you’re invited to a funeral is forgettable, attending the funeral and seeing a life insurance advertisement in the church bathroom is not.
“Balance in humor is necessary because it reframes violation without denying its existence, it encourages us to appreciate incongruity and approach hardship from a different angle.”
Humor is not just about pairing a violation with the benign, it’s about balancing them in relation to one another. A variety of subtle elements play into facilitating this balance, with psychological distance and its effect on perceived salience as a notable example. Whether it be (a) spatial, literal distance, (b) social, the way a stranger is more distant than a friend, (c) temporal, the way a week is more distant than an hour, or (d) hypothetical, how imagined events are more distant than real ones, psychological distance is why solemn moments rarely deter the funny people in our lives from turning any situation into comedy material. Mark Twain’s quote, that “Humor is tragedy plus time”, illuminates our subtle awareness of this factor, but how does this relationship with distance actually work? Rolling up their sleeves of earnest empiricism, the HuRL got involved with reviewing the specifics of this factor, finding that tragedies (severe violations) are perceived as more humorous when distant, while mishaps (mild violations) are more humorous when psychologically close. This makes sense, and as a demonstration of the effect: in 2016, Samsung sold 3 million washing machines that exploded in people’s bathrooms, a fact only humorous given you were not one of the unlucky owners of such a machine. Moreover, it’s funny to watch a video of a stranger driving their bike into a bush, but it would not be as funny if the subject in question had been your mother. So in essence, distance enables humor by facilitating the balance between threatening violations and benign security by changing their salience, softening the threat in the case of tragedies, but emphasising the threat’s salience in the case of harmless mistakes.
The empirical lens reveals the admirable complexity of comedy, and the contextual calculations we perform subconsciously to achieve the art of humor. Perhaps it’s even mildly intimidating, making you question the quality of your own comedic timing. But to admire humor as a balance is also to recognise its purpose as a tool for emotional homeostasis. Humor, while representing a cognitively sophisticated defense mechanism, may operate by the same unconscious principles that guide our other homeostatic tendencies. More than just a balm for interaction, humor is a stabilising force, a constant in our present, our past, and our history as a species. The reason why we’re surprisingly good at it is because it serves a greater purpose and it works. Effective humor preserves emotional homeostasis by balancing three forces: a) Realism – it grounds us by acknowledging uncomfortable truths. b) Tension – it converts the chaos and unpredictability of life into something tolerable, sharable even. c) Detachment – it helps us step back, recognise our own absurdity, placing personal violations as specks within the shared theatre of human experiences. Humor allows us to recognise, process, and feel reality without becoming so overwhelmed that we fall apart, and balance is necessary for its successful execution. Exaggerate or minimise the reality too much, and the joke risks trivialising pain. Emphasise our lack of control, and the joke becomes unsettling. Remove empathy, and we’re left with cynicism that hinders us from relating to others about the universally human experience of unfortunate situations.
“To be a comedian is to to recognise the shared humanness of life’s unpredictable and incongruous moments, and to revel in their ridiculousness.”
Balance in humor is necessary because it reframes violation without denying its existence, it encourages us to appreciate incongruity and approach hardship from a different angle. Especially when shared with other people, recognising violations through humor doesn’t erase their discomfort, but rather redistributes it to a settling acceptance. Balance is at the heart of everyday comedic timing, it’s what lands a joke in the center of a spectrum between excessively benign dad humor, and ridiculously violating twitter cancellation. To be a comedian is to to recognise the shared humanness of life’s unpredictable and incongruous moments, and to revel in their ridiculousness. We don’t laugh because everything is okay, we laugh because it’s not, and because we all share the experience of having stuck around to acknowledge it. Humor is a structure for surviving contradiction, one that comedians skillfully balance, and researchers dissect to ruins. If life is a joke, it’s the kind that keeps us alive, the kind that reminds us that a violation’s tragedy is never too far from being conquered by its absurdity.
References
- McGraw, A. P., & Warren, C. (2010). Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1141–1149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610376073
- McGraw, A. P., Warren, C., Williams, L. E., & Leonard, B. (2012). Too Close for Comfort, or Too Far to Care? Finding Humor in Distant Tragedies and Close Mishaps. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1215–1223. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612443831
- Webber, Edwin J. (January 1958), “Comedy as Satire in Hispano-Arabic Spain”, Hispanic Review, 26 (1): 1–11, doi:10.2307/470561, JSTOR 470561
- Harbsmeier, “Confucius-Ridens, Humor in the Analects.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50. 1: 131–61. https://www.worldmime.org/en/about-mime/liaisons/101-liaisons/256-comedy.html
Humor is a tool we employ to digest and metabolise our emotional and physical reality. In its structure and purpose, it is the marriage of the violating and the benign, of congruity and chaos; a balance of realism, tension, and detachment that allows us to cope with the absurdity of our existence. E.B White once said that “analysing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies with it”. And yet, perhaps a sensible dose of meta-scrutiny is necessary for acknowledging and appreciating humor’s capacity to enhance our human experience.
So what is it about humor that allows unexpected twists, stupidity, and exaggeration to bless us with miniature, enjoyable seizures? Well, the Humor Research Lab (HuRL) has answers! Formulated by Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren, the Benign Violation Theory posits a framework for the anatomy of humor, proposing it arises if and only if three conditions are satisfied: (1) A situation is a violation: it threatens a norm, or the way one thinks the world should be. That is, via something threatening, unsettling or plain wrong. (2) The situation is benign: it is congruent, clear and consistent with the context of the humor, and (3) both perceptions occur simultaneously (McGraw & Warren, 2010). Violations come in different flavours: physical, identity, cultural, linguistic, logical, and moral. Pure violations do not make people laugh. If you approach a stranger at a funeral with a “glad they’re gone, what a jerk”, laughter is unlikely to be your audience’s response. Same setting, but commenting “I’m so sorry for your loss”, is safe, appropriate, and not funny. Now, still at the funeral, if the gravestone reads “I told you I was sick”, it is its clarity as a comedic epitaph (benign), combined with a joke about death (violation), that may crack a chuckle. Importantly, do take note of the third condition on the necessary simultaneity of the balance. The timing of comedic timing is key. If the juxtaposition is unsynchronised, our brain often overlooks the association entirely: seeing a life insurance ad a week before you’re invited to a funeral is forgettable, attending the funeral and seeing a life insurance advertisement in the church bathroom is not.
“Balance in humor is necessary because it reframes violation without denying its existence, it encourages us to appreciate incongruity and approach hardship from a different angle.”
Humor is not just about pairing a violation with the benign, it’s about balancing them in relation to one another. A variety of subtle elements play into facilitating this balance, with psychological distance and its effect on perceived salience as a notable example. Whether it be (a) spatial, literal distance, (b) social, the way a stranger is more distant than a friend, (c) temporal, the way a week is more distant than an hour, or (d) hypothetical, how imagined events are more distant than real ones, psychological distance is why solemn moments rarely deter the funny people in our lives from turning any situation into comedy material. Mark Twain’s quote, that “Humor is tragedy plus time”, illuminates our subtle awareness of this factor, but how does this relationship with distance actually work? Rolling up their sleeves of earnest empiricism, the HuRL got involved with reviewing the specifics of this factor, finding that tragedies (severe violations) are perceived as more humorous when distant, while mishaps (mild violations) are more humorous when psychologically close. This makes sense, and as a demonstration of the effect: in 2016, Samsung sold 3 million washing machines that exploded in people’s bathrooms, a fact only humorous given you were not one of the unlucky owners of such a machine. Moreover, it’s funny to watch a video of a stranger driving their bike into a bush, but it would not be as funny if the subject in question had been your mother. So in essence, distance enables humor by facilitating the balance between threatening violations and benign security by changing their salience, softening the threat in the case of tragedies, but emphasising the threat’s salience in the case of harmless mistakes.
The empirical lens reveals the admirable complexity of comedy, and the contextual calculations we perform subconsciously to achieve the art of humor. Perhaps it’s even mildly intimidating, making you question the quality of your own comedic timing. But to admire humor as a balance is also to recognise its purpose as a tool for emotional homeostasis. Humor, while representing a cognitively sophisticated defense mechanism, may operate by the same unconscious principles that guide our other homeostatic tendencies. More than just a balm for interaction, humor is a stabilising force, a constant in our present, our past, and our history as a species. The reason why we’re surprisingly good at it is because it serves a greater purpose and it works. Effective humor preserves emotional homeostasis by balancing three forces: a) Realism – it grounds us by acknowledging uncomfortable truths. b) Tension – it converts the chaos and unpredictability of life into something tolerable, sharable even. c) Detachment – it helps us step back, recognise our own absurdity, placing personal violations as specks within the shared theatre of human experiences. Humor allows us to recognise, process, and feel reality without becoming so overwhelmed that we fall apart, and balance is necessary for its successful execution. Exaggerate or minimise the reality too much, and the joke risks trivialising pain. Emphasise our lack of control, and the joke becomes unsettling. Remove empathy, and we’re left with cynicism that hinders us from relating to others about the universally human experience of unfortunate situations.
“To be a comedian is to to recognise the shared humanness of life’s unpredictable and incongruous moments, and to revel in their ridiculousness.”
Balance in humor is necessary because it reframes violation without denying its existence, it encourages us to appreciate incongruity and approach hardship from a different angle. Especially when shared with other people, recognising violations through humor doesn’t erase their discomfort, but rather redistributes it to a settling acceptance. Balance is at the heart of everyday comedic timing, it’s what lands a joke in the center of a spectrum between excessively benign dad humor, and ridiculously violating twitter cancellation. To be a comedian is to to recognise the shared humanness of life’s unpredictable and incongruous moments, and to revel in their ridiculousness. We don’t laugh because everything is okay, we laugh because it’s not, and because we all share the experience of having stuck around to acknowledge it. Humor is a structure for surviving contradiction, one that comedians skillfully balance, and researchers dissect to ruins. If life is a joke, it’s the kind that keeps us alive, the kind that reminds us that a violation’s tragedy is never too far from being conquered by its absurdity. <<
References
- McGraw, A. P., & Warren, C. (2010). Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1141–1149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610376073
- McGraw, A. P., Warren, C., Williams, L. E., & Leonard, B. (2012). Too Close for Comfort, or Too Far to Care? Finding Humor in Distant Tragedies and Close Mishaps. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1215–1223. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612443831
- Webber, Edwin J. (January 1958), “Comedy as Satire in Hispano-Arabic Spain”, Hispanic Review, 26 (1): 1–11, doi:10.2307/470561, JSTOR 470561
- Harbsmeier, “Confucius-Ridens, Humor in the Analects.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50. 1: 131–61. https://www.worldmime.org/en/about-mime/liaisons/101-liaisons/256-comedy.html
