humor research essay

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Eur J Psychol
v.12(3); 2016 Aug

Three Decades Investigating Humor and Laughter: An Interview With Professor Rod Martin

a Department of Psychology, Westminster Hall, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

Nicholas A. Kuiper

Since the start of the 21st century, the investigation of various psychological aspects of humor and laughter has become an increasingly prominent topic of research. This growth can be attributed, in no small part, to the pioneering and creative work on humor and laughter conducted by Professor Rod Martin. Dr. Martin’s research interests in humor and laughter began in the early 1980s and continued throughout his 32 year long career as a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Western Ontario. During this time, Dr. Martin published numerous scholarly articles, chapters, and books on psychological aspects of humor and laughter. Professor Martin has just retired in July 2016, and in the present interview he recounts a number of research highlights of his illustrious career. Dr. Martin’s earliest influential work, conducted while he was still in graduate school, stemmed from an individual difference perspective that focused on the beneficial effects of sense of humor on psychological well-being. This research focus remained evident in many of Professor Martin’s subsequent investigations, but became increasingly refined as he developed several measures of different components of sense of humor, including both adaptive and maladaptive humor styles. In this interview, Dr. Martin describes the conceptualization, development and use of the Humor Styles Questionnaire, along with suggestions for future research and development. In doing so, he also discusses the three main components of humor (i.e., cognitive, emotional and interpersonal), as well as the distinctions and similarities between humor and laughter. Further highlights of this interview include Professor Martin’s comments on such diverse issues as the genetic versus environmental loadings for sense of humor, the multifaceted nature of the construct of humor, and the possible limitations of teaching individuals to use humor in a beneficial manner to cope with stress and enhance their social and interpersonal relationships.

Nick Kuiper: I would like to thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for this special humor issue of Europe’s Journal of Psychology (EJOP) that honors your many contributions to the psychological investigation of humor and laughter. Over the past 30 years or so you have published numerous scholarly articles, chapters and books on various topics pertaining to humor and laughter. Your creative approach, combined with a rigorous theoretical-empirical orientation to your research, has resulted in a very strong positive influence on the field. Psychological investigations of humor and laughter have increased dramatically over the past decade, with the number of published research studies soaring. Many different facets of humor and laughter have been explored, with several of these being represented in the articles presented in this special humor issue of EJOP. Taken together, these contributions further mark the importance of utilizing a rigorous theoretical-empirical approach to increase our understanding of the various psychological aspects of humor and laughter.

Perhaps we could begin this interview by going back to the start. What was it that first piqued your interest in examining humor and laughter from a psychological perspective?

Rod Martin: Soon after I began as a graduate student in the clinical psychology program at the University of Waterloo in the Fall of 1979, I began talking with my research adviser, Herb Lefcourt, about possible topics for my Master’s thesis. There had previously been a lot of research showing the adverse effects of life stress on emotional and physical health, and Lefcourt was interested in looking at personality traits that might potentially moderate these stress effects. Lefcourt was really an early proponent of positive psychology before that label became popular. He was especially interested in the factors that make some people particularly healthy and resilient, rather than focusing on mental disturbance and emotional distress.

My research advisor had become quite well-known for his earlier research on locus of control, and at that time he was conducting some studies on the potential stress-moderating effects of this personality dimension. So we began talking about what other traits or characteristics might also help people to weather stress and adversity without becoming overly distressed or ill, and we started thinking about sense of humor as an interesting research topic. There has long been a great deal of popular lore about the health benefits of a good sense of humor, but very little scientific research had been done on it. In fact, this was right around the time that Norman Cousins came out with his book Anatomy of an Illness ( Cousins, 1976 ), in which he described how he supposedly used laughter to cure himself of a life-threatening disease. So this was about to become quite a hot topic. Looking back, I think I was fortunate to get into this line of research just at that time.

Nick Kuiper: How did this interest in humor and laughter translate into research studies?

Rod Martin: Given the individual differences approach that Herb Lefcourt took in his research (and which I have generally continued to follow), we first had to find a reliable and valid way of measuring people’s sense of humor. So I spent a couple of months delving into the scholarly literature looking at how earlier researchers had approached this topic. I quickly discovered that the concept of sense of humor is much more complex and multifaceted than I had thought, and there weren’t any well-established measures that seemed appropriate for our purpose. Most of the research on humor up till then had focused on humor appreciation, which involves asking participants to rate the funniness of different types of jokes, cartoons, and other humorous materials, and then looking at how these funniness ratings correlate with other characteristics of the individuals. This is a valid approach for some purposes, but I didn’t think it got at the aspects of humor that were relevant to what I was interested in. Some people might find lots of jokes amusing and enjoyable, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they produce humor, or that they are able to maintain a humorous outlook particularly during times of stress. So I started thinking about other ways of conceptualizing and measuring sense of humor, particularly using self-report scales. The only published self-report measure of sense of humor I could find was the one Sven Svebak had recently developed in Norway, which seemed quite interesting but had not yet been used much in research and hadn’t really been validated.

One big concern we had at that time was that there might be a large social desirability bias in a self-report humor measure: a sense of humor is so positively valued that people might not be willing to admit that they don’t have one, and might not give valid answers on scales. I thought we might be able to get around this if we had participants recall past experiences of being in a variety of stressful and non-stressful life situations and asked them to report how much they would typically laugh in each situation. This led to the development of the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire, which became the main focus of my Master’s thesis. I also created the shorter Coping Humor Scale, which more directly asked participants to rate the degree to which they use humor to cope with stress in their lives (see Martin, 1996 for an overview of research using these two humor scales).

Over the five years of working with Lefcourt on my Master’s and Ph.D., we carried out a number of studies, first looking at the reliability and validity of these measures along with Svebak’s scale, and then examining stress-moderating effects using life events scales and self-report measures of positive and negative moods. We also conducted some experimental studies in which we had participants watch a very stressful and rather gruesome movie called Subincision , under either humorous or non-humorous conditions, and assessed their level of emotional distress via behavioral observation and self-report. Herb had quite an infectious sense of humor himself, and I remember having a lot of laughs with him and his other graduate students while doing that research. Fortunately, we got some rather nice results from those studies, and we published them in some journal articles (e.g., Martin & Lefcourt, 1983 ) and later in our book, Humor and life stress: Antidote to adversity ( Lefcourt & Martin, 1986 ).

Nick Kuiper: What do you view as the most significant findings that emerged from this early work on sense of humor as a strategy for coping with stress?

Rod Martin: Those early studies focused on a stress-moderation paradigm, and did produce some evidence that individual differences in sense of humor moderate the association between stressful life events and negative moods ( Martin & Lefcourt, 1983 ). In other words, individuals with higher scores on certain humor measures showed a weaker correlation between life stressors and distressed moods than did those with lower humor scores. These findings gave support to the idea that people who have more of a sense of humor are better able to cope with stress and therefore are less adversely affected by it. Those early studies helped to stimulate more interest and research on this topic and were also picked up by the media, contributing to the development of the “humor and health movement” in the 1980’s and 90’s.

Nick Kuiper : How do you see your early work addressing the broader issue of humor’s role in psychological well-being?

Rod Martin: After I was hired as a faculty member at the University of Western Ontario in 1984, I started collaborating with you, as well as some of my graduate students, on further studies on humor and stress. My first PhD student, James Dobbin, was interested in the effects of stress on physical health, and we ran some studies looking at various components of the immune system ( Martin & Dobbin, 1988 ). Among other things, we were able to replicate the earlier stress-moderator findings using immunoglobulin A as the outcome variable, thus extending the earlier findings to physical health as well as emotional well-being. In the research with you, we explored some possible mechanisms of these stress-moderating effects. For example, we looked at how the humor measures related to cognitive appraisals of stress, and found that people with higher humor scores tended to perceive potentially stressful events as more of a challenge, whereas those with lower humor saw them more as a threat ( Kuiper, Martin, & Olinger, 1993 ). This gave support to the idea that the benefits of a sense of humor for coping may be partly due to the way it changes the individual’s appraisals of stressors. In other studies we found that those with high humor scores tend to have more stable self-concepts over time, suggesting another possible benefit of humor for coping ( Kuiper & Martin, 1993 ).

Later we ran a number of studies looking at the correlations between the sense of humor scales and a variety of measures of psychological well-being, including positive and negative moods, self-esteem, optimism, mastery, purpose in life, and so on ( Kuiper & Martin, 1998 ). Surprisingly, we found that many of these well-being variables were unrelated or only weakly related to the humor scales. This got me thinking that our approach to measuring individual differences in humor may have been a little too simplistic. I started thinking more about ways that humor could be detrimental as well as beneficial for well-being, which led eventually to the development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire ( Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003 ).

Nick Kuiper : Over your career you have devoted considerable energy to measuring a variety of individual differences in humor and laughter. Some of your earliest work, for example, developed both the Coping Humor Scale (CHS) and the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ). What do you see as the primary theoretical reasons for taking this individual differences approach to humor and laughter?

Rod Martin: I gravitated toward the individual differences approach mainly because that was the approach I learned in graduate school, so it has always been most familiar to me and consistent with the way I think about psychology generally. This also seems most consistent with the popular concept of “sense of humor,” which is generally viewed as a fairly stable trait or personality dimension. The major limitation of this approach, though, is that it lends itself most readily to correlational research, which has the drawback of not being able to demonstrate causal relationships between variables. If we find a correlation between a particular humor measure and some aspect of well-being, we don’t know whether the humor actually causes the well-being. An alternative approach would be the sorts of experimental methods taken by social psychologists, and certainly I see that type of research as also being very important in the study of humor and well-being. A drawback of the experimental approach, in my view, is that it can often be somewhat artificial, whereas the individual differences approach seems to have more external validity. So we need both approaches to offset each of their limitations.

Nick Kuiper : Although humor and laughter have been examined in many studies, these constructs can sometimes still remain a bit elusive. In this regard, how might we best define humor from a psychological perspective?

Rod Martin: I view humor as quite a broad and multifaceted psychological phenomenon that encompasses several components ( Martin, 2007 ; Martin, 2016 ). The first is the cognitive aspect, namely the perception of incongruity, which has also been referred to as “bisociation” or “cognitive synergy.” It seems to involve the simultaneous activation of two or more incompatible interpretations of a situation in the mind. It also tends to be associated with a playful, non-serious frame of mind and some degree of diminishment, in which things are viewed as being less important or admirable than they usually are. These cognitive elements are what make something “funny.”

Second, there is the emotional component. The cognitive processes activate a unique emotional response, which I refer to as “mirth.” In the English language, this word “mirth” has a long lineage and seems to be perfect as a technical term for this emotional aspect of humor. Mirth is related to joy, but is somewhat different because of the element of “funniness” involved. It is accompanied by activation of the pleasure circuits in the limbic system as well as various autonomic and endocrine responses, and is what makes humor so enjoyable.

Third, there is the social or interpersonal aspect. I see humor as being fundamentally a social activity. We are much more likely to laugh with other people than when alone, and most humor arises in response to the behavior of other people or human-like traits in non-human animals. From an evolutionary perspective, I think humor evolved as a mechanism for enhancing group cohesion.

The final component is laughter , which I see as a hard-wired nonverbal expression or communication of the emotion of mirth. Laughter occurs also in other primates, so it has a long evolutionary history going back long before we evolved language and other higher cognitive abilities. So laughter is the way we let others know we are experiencing mirth, and it also has the effect of eliciting this emotion in the listener. That’s why laughter is so contagious. Strong laughter can also intensify and amplify the emotion of mirth. Usually this happens when people are in small groups, and they engage in intense bouts of laughter that are very enjoyable and create strong feelings of group cohesion.

Some theorists might define humor more narrowly, focusing only on the cognitive aspect, for example. But I think humor should be defined broadly enough to include the constellation of all these elements. In any one instance of humor, one or another of these elements might predominate. For example, in more cerebral types of wit the cognitive element might be primary, with very little mirth or laughter. At other times, laughter and mirth might predominate and the cognitive incongruity component may be minimal. Sometimes people experience mirth and even some laughter when alone, so the social element may be lacking, but usually this occurs in a “pseudo-social” situation such as watching a comedy show on TV or remembering an amusing incident that involved other people.

Some researchers see laughter as something quite distinct from humor, and argue that it frequently occurs as a sort of social signal of friendliness that has nothing to do with humor (e.g., Provine, 2000 ). However, the research evidence for that view is very limited, and I’m not convinced by it. I would draw the boundary of humor broadly enough to include most instances of social laughter. Even though people may laugh when there is very little cognitive incongruity present, I think the playfulness and diminishment aspects are typically still occurring, and certainly the mirth and social dimension.

Nick Kuiper: To what extent do you think contemporary researchers are cognizant of the main distinctions between humor and laughter? What would you see as the most profitable directions for future research in this area?

Rod Martin: I think some contemporary researchers are actually exaggerating the distinctions between humor and laughter. I agree that laughter sometimes occurs outside of humor, but that may be an anomaly. In general, I see laughter as one component of the broader constellation of phenomena of humor. However, I think it can be worthwhile to study each of these components individually. For example, psycholinguistic studies investigating cognitive aspects of humor can focus on the essential elements involved in the perception of incongruity and what makes something funny, without being concerned with the emotion of mirth or laughter or the social dimension. Other researchers may be more interested in focusing on the emotional component and the neurological and physiological aspects. Others may focus on the social dimension or on laughter. In fact, I think this kind of narrowing in on various sub-components might be the best way to make progress in understanding the broader phenomenon of humor. Even for those of us who are particularly interested in psychological and physical health aspects of humor, it might be beneficial to focus on particular dimensions individually and see how they relate to various aspects of health and well-being. For example, the cognitive component of humor may be particularly important for coping with stress, whereas the emotional aspect may be particularly relevant for physiological health.

Nick Kuiper: More recently you have developed an assessment instrument to measure four different humor styles, namely, the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ). This scale provides a measure of individual differences in affiliative humor, self-enhancing humor, aggressive humor and self-defeating humor. Could you please take us through the thinking and process that led to the development and validation of this scale?

Rod Martin : In the late 1990’s I started thinking more about the idea that the relevance of humor to health and well-being may have more to do with the way people use humor than the overall degree to which they have a “sense of humor.” Some people can be very funny and comical without necessarily being particularly healthy from a psychological perspective. We only need to look at comedians like Chris Farley and John Belushi for examples of this. I went back to the writings of some earlier psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Gordon Allport, and even Sigmund Freud, and looked at how they distinguished between healthy and unhealthy forms of humor. This led me to the idea of looking at the psychosocial functions of humor in everyday life, some of which may be beneficial for well-being while others may be detrimental.

I worked particularly with one of my graduate students, Patricia Puhlik-Doris, on the development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire, and both her Masters and Ph.D. focused on this measure. In coming up with the four dimensions, we were influenced by the research on agency and communion as two primary, orthogonal dimensions underlying interpersonal traits and behavior. Agency has to do with individual autonomy and control, whereas communion relates to social connectedness. So we saw self-enhancing and aggressive humor as being on the agency dimension – one healthy and the other unhealthy – whereas affiliative and self-defeating humor were healthy and unhealthy forms on the communion dimension.

In developing the HSQ, we quickly found out how difficult it is to assess these different functions of humor using a self-report format. I don’t think most people are consciously aware of the implicit goals and psychological effects that their humor may have at any given time. They’re only aware that they’re laughing because something seems funny to them. Similarly, I don’t think most people use humor in a strategic way to achieve particular goals. We don’t say, “I’m going to say something funny now in order to cope with this stressful situation or to make that person look like an idiot.” Instead, humor tends to occur quite spontaneously most of the time, arising out of unconscious processes. Nonetheless, I think we can see that humor serves various functions by looking at the patterns of consequences over time.

In our first attempts at creating items for the HSQ we tried to ask research participants directly about the degree to which they engaged in humor for various purposes. But people had a hard time answering these questions, and we were unable to get any reliability. So then we worked on items that get at the functions of humor more indirectly, asking more about the typical context and consequences of their use of humor. Over a couple of years we went through several revisions of the scales, using a number of different subject samples, before arriving at a final measure with four scales showing good reliability, discriminant validity, and a consistently stable factor structure ( Martin et al., 2003 ; Martin, 2007 ).

Nick Kuiper: The HSQ has been a phenomenally successful assessment instrument, with over 125 published studies using the measure and more than 500 citations. Why do you think the HSQ has been so broadly endorsed and employed in contemporary humor research? What are its main advantages for research on humor?

Rod Martin: It certainly has been gratifying to me to see how widely used the HSQ has become. It has now been translated into over 30 languages, and I frequently get emails from researchers all over the world asking about it. I think it has gained such wide acceptance in part because it did turn out to be more strongly predictive of various aspects of psychosocial well-being than the earlier humor measures. The four scales do seem to have quite distinct patterns of correlations, both positive and negative, with a range of variables involving well-being, personal relationships, and personality more generally. So it does seem to have been quite successful in doing what we set out to do with it. The fact that we put so much care and effort into developing the HSQ also likely helped, both with the strength of the results, and with its perceived usefulness for further research. Also, I think the HSQ came along just at a time when research on humor was starting to become more main-stream in psychology. Previously, I think humor was seen as a topic that was perhaps not “serious” enough for respectable research. The positive psychology movement was probably a factor in making topics like this more respectable.

Also, some brain imaging studies came out around that time, showing that particular areas of the brain are activated in response to humor. There seems to be an odd perception that if something can be seen in the brain, it is more real and scientifically valid. As more researchers started getting interested in looking at humor, the HSQ happened to be available as a reliable and reasonably well validated measure, so they naturally started using it, giving it further momentum.

Nick Kuiper: What are some other ways that you see the HSQ being used in the future?

Rod Martin: In recent years, my students and I have been developing versions of the HSQ for different purposes. For example, we have peer-report formats and also versions specific to particular relationships such as friendships and dating relationships. This has led to some interesting findings about the role of humor styles in different types of relationships. Also, we’ve been developing versions for assessing humor experiences over shorter time frames rather than using it as a trait measure. We’ve used these in a number of daily diary studies, looking at the way within-person changes in the frequency of the different styles of humor from day to day are associated with corresponding changes in individuals’ positive and negative moods, relationship satisfaction, and so on. This has led to some interesting findings of different patterns of results within individuals over time as compared to the cross-sectional findings. For example, one of my recent graduate students, Kim Edwards, found that, for people who don’t engage in self-defeating humor very often overall, this style of humor actually tends to be positively associated with psychological well-being on a day-to-day basis ( Edwards, 2013 ; Edwards & Martin, 2014 ). However, for people who use it a lot, it is negatively related to well-being. So this research helps to tease out some more fine-grained nuances of the humor styles.

Another avenue of research that I’ve been involved in with my students and my colleague Lorne Campbell is to develop an observational coding system based on the HSQ framework. We’ve used this system to rate the humor that occurs naturalistically in dating couples while they’re engaged in conversations about conflict-related issues in their relationships, and also in friendship dyads discussing stressful experiences in their lives ( Campbell, Martin, & Ward, 2008 ). We found that these humor style ratings were predictive of various outcomes such as feelings of satisfaction and perceptions of problem resolution following the conversations. By observing humor in “real time” like this, we can start to see how different styles of humor may lead to various outcomes. I think there is still a lot of potential for further research using these different kinds of methodologies based on the HSQ framework.

Nick Kuiper : In the HSQ two of the humor styles are generally considered to be adaptive (affiliative & self-enhancing) whereas two are generally considered to be maladaptive (aggressive & self-defeating). How hard and fast do you see this distinction to be? Could you envision instances were maladaptive humor use may actually prove to be facilitative (e.g., a small amount of self-defeating or aggressive humor used in the right context)? How might researchers develop a means of examining this issue? What is necessary for investigators to consider in order to come to a more complete understanding of the function of humor from an adaptive versus maladaptive perspective?

Rod Martin: From the outset, we saw the different humor styles as having rather fuzzy boundaries. Some styles of humor may be benign or even beneficial when used sparingly, but detrimental when used excessively. The diary study findings with self-defeating humor that I mentioned previously are a good example of that. As long as you don’t use it too much, it may actually be beneficial. Also, I think the differences between healthy and unhealthy forms of humor can be very subtle. For example, I think there is a difference between self-defeating humor and self-deprecating humor. Self-deprecating humor is a healthy form of humor in which you don’t take yourself too seriously and are able to laugh at your own mistakes in a self-accepting way. I think this comes out of healthy self-esteem. In contrast, self-defeating humor arises from low self-esteem, and involves excessively self-disparaging humor that is used to ingratiate oneself with others. However, it’s often difficult to distinguish between the two in any single instance. Similarly, friendly types of teasing can be a form of healthy affiliative humor, whereas more destructive teasing is part of aggressive humor. Again, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between them. Also, it’s important to recognize that we conceptualized the four humor styles as being relatively independent of each other, meaning that people can be high or low on more than one of them. Some people who are high on affiliative humor also engage in a lot of aggressive humor, and in fact the two styles tend to be weakly positively correlated, at least in western cultures.

I certainly don’t see the HSQ as the final word on healthy and unhealthy forms of humor, and I have no doubt that it will eventually be replaced by something else, as research progresses. I think it has been useful for identifying some broadly-defined functions of humor and showing different overall patterns of associations with aspects of well-being. But I think future research will need to become more fine-grained, breaking these humor styles into smaller components, and also looking at them in various combinations. There may also be other relevant humor styles that are not currently included in the HSQ that will be identified by future researchers. It will also be useful to pay more attention to the interpersonal context of the humor. For example, aggressive humor is likely to be less detrimental when directed towards a member of an out-group than when directed at someone within the in-group. For this kind of research, we may need to move away from the trait approach and self-report scales and do more observational and experimental studies.

Nick Kuiper: When talking about humor styles, what has research indicated in terms of the relative genetic and environmental loadings for each style? What are some of the broader ramifications of these loadings? For instance, what do these loadings suggest for any attempts to alter an individual’s characteristic pattern of use for the four humor styles?

Rod Martin: I’ve collaborated with my colleague Tony Vernon and others on some twin studies to determine the heritability of the humor styles. The first study seemed to show that the two positive humor styles have a sizable genetic contribution, whereas the two negative styles are entirely influenced by environmental factors ( Vernon, Martin, Schermer, Cherkas, & Spector, 2008 ). However, in subsequent studies we found that, for all four humor styles, about half of the variance can be explained by genetics and half by environmental influences ( Vernon, Martin, Schermer, & Mackie, 2008 ). This is very similar to what researchers have found for most personality traits, such as extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and so on. In fact, the twin studies also show that part of the variance in humor styles is due to the same genetic factors underlying these broader personality traits. In other words, the different humor styles can be viewed as expressions of particular personality traits, at least to some extent. Affiliative humor tends to be an extraverted style of humor, for example. I would interpret these findings as indicating that humor styles can be changed to some degree, but it would be difficult to change them a lot. Just as it’s very difficult for an introverted person to become an extravert, it would be hard for a person who is low on affiliative humor to become someone who is always telling jokes, engaging in witty banter, and making others laugh.

Nick Kuiper: In considering “sense of humor”, it is clear that current researchers view this construct as being multi-dimensional in nature. One prominent example, of course, is the HSQ, with two of the humor styles often thought of as being more adaptive (e.g., affiliative and self-enhancing humor) and two being more maladaptive (e.g., aggressive and self-defeating humor). In addition, the HSQ also considers the self versus other focus of the humor style being used (e.g., self-defeating versus aggressive). It is also the case, however, that sense of humor can be divided up in many other ways. Just one example distinguishes between humor appreciation (the ability to enjoy or appreciate humor in one’s environment) versus humor generation (the ability to generate humorous or witty comments in response to various interactions with one’s environment). If you were to build upon the HSQ, what other dimensions or facets of sense of humor would you consider adding?

Rod Martin: I certainly agree that “sense of humor” is a multifaceted concept. When we think of the different components of humor that I talked about earlier (cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, expressive), it’s clear that there are many different humor-related dimensions along which people can differ from one another. These different dimensions are not necessarily correlated with each other, and some may even be negatively correlated. Humor creation ability seems to be completely unrelated to humor appreciation, for example. So I don’t think we’ll ever be able to capture all the relevant dimensions in one measure alone.

When we developed the HSQ, we were interested in certain aspects of humor that might be particularly relevant to psychosocial health and well-being. We were not trying to create a comprehensive measure of “sense of humor.” There are lots of other dimensions, such as humor appreciation and humor creation ability that are likely not very relevant to psychological well-being. Overall, I don’t believe that someone needs to have a good sense of humor to be psychologically healthy. Some very funny people who laugh and joke a great deal have a lot of emotional disturbance and dysfunctional relationships, and some very serious, introverted people are well adjusted and have healthy personal relationships. So I don’t think I’d try to incorporate these other dimensions into the HSQ, since this was not the purpose of it.

Nick Kuiper: Do you see it as being possible to try and develop a very broad-based sense of humor measure that would incorporate the most important facets or dimensions of sense of humor, as described in the contemporary humor literature? What might such a measure look like?

Rod Martin: I think it would need to be more of a battery of tests rather than a single measure. I’m thinking of something like the Wechsler intelligence tests that have a dozen or so sub-tests, each designed to assess a different aspect of intelligence. In a comprehensive humor test battery there would need to be different sub-tests for getting at different humor dimensions, such as humor appreciation, humor creation ability, humor styles, and so on. They would also need to be different types of tests, some being maximal performance-type tests to assess humor-related abilities, others assessing typical trait-like behaviors, some involving behavioral observation or peer reports, and others using self-report methods. Instead of leading to one overall “humor IQ” score, this test battery would produce a profile of scores on a number of different dimensions, mapping out each individual’s unique combination of humor-related abilities, preferences, styles, strengths, and weaknesses.

Nick Kuiper: How might such a broad-based sense of humor measure be used in research to help advance our understanding of an individual difference approach to humor and laughter?

Rod Martin: For the most part, I think each dimension would likely need to be studied independently in relation to other variables, because I’m assuming that they’re largely independent factors. Thus, I think they would each show different patterns of relationships with other personality traits, well-being variables, abilities, and so on. There might also be some interesting interactions among different humor dimensions, such that one dimension might moderate the relationship between another dimension and some other personality trait or ability. The possibilities here are endless!

Nick Kuiper : Let’s talk a bit more about the ways that humor may be related to stress and personal well-being. Underlying this type of research is a major distinction between humor that an individual might be exposed to (for example, watching a comedy film) versus humor that is a personality characteristic or trait of the individual (for example, having a “good sense of humor”). Perhaps you could comment on the usefulness of this basic distinction in humor theory and research, while also highlighting some of the major findings in this domain. What might you suggest for future research directions?

Rod Martin: I think the distinction you’re talking about also relates to a broader distinction that I make between what I call “performance humor” versus “conversational humor.” Performance humor includes things like television sit-coms, stand-up comedy, humorous books and movies, which are mostly produced by people who make their living on humor. Conversational humor involves everyday joke-telling, humorous personal anecdotes, witty banter, irony, and other funny comments that tend to occur spontaneously in all sorts of social interactions. Performance humor is certainly an interesting topic for research, but I’ve always assumed that conversational humor is much more relevant for health and well-being, which is what I’ve been most interested in. Spending a lot of time laughing at sit-coms on TV is likely to make you less healthy, rather than more healthy! In my view, if there really are any emotional or physical health benefits of humor, they’re more likely to come from conversational humor.

At the same time, though, I think it can be very useful to employ comedy videos and other types of humorous materials in experimental studies to investigate psychological and physiological effects of humor. There have been quite a few studies in which participants are randomly assigned to view either humorous or non-humorous videos, in order to examine the effects of humor on mood, blood pressure, heart rate, immune system functioning, etc. These are the sorts of experimental investigations that are useful for demonstrating causal effects, as I mentioned earlier. I certainly think there’s a need for more of these kinds of studies in this area of stress and well-being, rather than relying too much on correlational research.

However, I would tend to see the comedy videos and other humorous materials in these types of experimental studies as being a sort of “stand-in” for the conversational humor that occurs in everyday life. If an experiment shows that watching a comedy video causes participants to be less adversely affected by some sort of laboratory stressor, I wouldn’t think the take-home message is that people should spend more time watching television comedy in order to cope better with stress in their lives. Instead, I’d extrapolate the findings to the kinds of humor that people can generate and enjoy in their everyday social interactions. This gets back to my earlier comment that experimental approaches can often be somewhat artificial. It would be good for experimental researchers to develop more realistic ways of manipulating humor in the laboratory besides videos, in order to increase the external validity. But greater external validity often comes with less control over the variables being manipulated. So again, there’s always a trade-off with different research approaches, and we need to use multiple approaches to triangulate on the truth.

Nick Kuiper: To what degree do you think it is possible to teach individuals how to use humor in a positive adaptive manner to manage stress? Similarly, can individuals also be taught to stop using maladaptive humor that is detrimental to their well-being? Along the same lines, what is your take on the current state of empirically-based research on humor-based interventions for improving psychological well-being?

Rod Martin: I think it’s probably more difficult to teach people to improve their ability to create humor than to teach them to use the humor they already have in a more adaptive way. If someone is not very funny to begin with, it’s very hard for them to learn to be more witty. But someone who is already constantly cracking jokes, but doing it in a maladaptive way, might be able to learn more adaptive ways of being funny.

Overall, if we’re trying to help people with psychological difficulties and disorders, I think it’s more beneficial to target broader psychological issues rather than to try to modify humor directly. This is why I’m not very keen on the idea of humor-based therapies. I think that more established approaches like cognitive-behavioral therapy can be very beneficial for helping people to modify their maladaptive cognitions, behaviors, and emotions. More healthy styles of humor are likely to come along with the resulting improvements in mental health, without necessarily needing to target them directly.

At the same time, though, I think many psychotherapists could benefit from being more aware of the functions of humor in their clients’ lives and in the client-therapist relationship, and more alert to ways in which maladaptive humor may play a role in their clients’ psychological dysfunctions. So some targeting of humor styles in therapy could be beneficial, as an adjunct to other therapeutic techniques.

On the other hand, for people who are already reasonably healthy psychologically, some sort of humor training might potentially be useful for enhancing their well-being further. I think it might be worthwhile for researchers to investigate these sorts of interventions more as a way of enhancing well-being rather than treating disorders. This is in line with a positive psychology approach, where the focus is on developing simple exercises that can enhance happiness and life satisfaction in generally healthy people. One of my recent graduate students, Kim Edwards, focused her research on the role of humor in positive psychology. As part of her PhD, she developed a humor-based intervention for enhancing well-being based on the humor styles framework, and found that it produced significantly greater improvements in positive mood compared with a no-treatment control group, but no reduction in negative moods ( Edwards, 2013 ).

A few other studies have come out recently showing fairly promising results with some of these types of humor-training programs (e.g., Falkenberg, Buchkremer, Bartels, & Wild, 2011 ), but I don’t think we’re at the point yet where we can have much confidence in their effectiveness. More research is needed to identify which components of the interventions are most effective, what types of people are most likely to benefit, and to compare them with other non-humor interventions. I’ve always frowned on those who jump on what I call the “humor promotion bandwagon” and run far ahead of the research evidence, making unsubstantiated claims about benefits of humor. I think they risk doing more harm than good.

Nick Kuiper : Humor is also quite relevant to close interpersonal and social relationships. In your research you have conducted a number of studies that have looked at various aspects of close interpersonal and social relationships that bear on humor. Can you tell us a bit about this research and what you consider the major findings to be?

Rod Martin: I’ve always viewed healthy personal relationships as being an essential component of overall psychological health. I think of humans as fundamentally social animals. We evolved in small groups, and to function well we need to be able to get along well with others, both in our close relationships and in more casual interactions. There is a lot of research supporting these ideas. Also, as I said earlier, I see humor as being essentially a social phenomenon. So in studying potential benefits of humor for mental health, it was quite a natural step for me to look at interpersonal relationships in addition to emotional well-being.

Quite a lot of the research that I’ve done with my graduate students over the past 10 or 15 years has focused on relationships using the humor styles framework. We’ve looked particularly at the role of humor in dating relationships and in close friendships. A lot of this research made use of daily diary techniques to get at within-person, day-to-day changes in humor styles in relation to relationship satisfaction and related variables. Not surprisingly, these studies have shown that, on days when people engage in more positive humor styles with their partners, particularly affiliative humor, they tend to have higher levels of satisfaction in their relationships, whereas negative humor styles on a given day, particularly aggressive humor, are associated with more dissatisfaction that day ( Caird & Martin, 2014 ). Recent research by my student Sara Caird was designed to examine potential mediators of these effects ( Caird, 2015 ). She found that these day-to-day associations between humor styles and relationship satisfaction were mediated by changes in intimacy and positive and negative moods. In other words, when individuals engage in more adaptive forms of humor with their partners, they experience an increased sense of intimacy and more positive and less negative moods, which in turn lead to greater satisfaction with the relationship.

Other research on interpersonal relationships made use of observational methods. Another one of my graduate students, Jennie Ward, had pairs of close friends come into the lab and engage in a videotaped conversation in which one of them (the “discloser”) talked about some stressful situation that he or she was currently dealing with, while the other (the “supporter”) was to respond supportively ( Ward, 2008 ). We then coded the humor styles of both friendship partners in each dyad, and looked at how these were related to their moods and perceptions of how helpful the conversation was. Interestingly, we found that different styles of humor were important, depending on which role the individual was playing. For the disclosers, their expressions of affiliative and self-enhancing humor were particularly related to how well they felt afterwards. On the other hand, for the supporters, the absence of aggressive humor was more important than the presence of the positive humor styles.

Another one of my recent graduate students, Dave Podnar, investigated the role of friendly teasing in relationships ( Podnar, 2013 ). He found that even friendly teasing is not as benign as commonly thought. People who engage in a lot of this sort of kidding tend to be less well liked by others, and tend to have aggressive, non-empathic personalities.

Nick Kuiper : In closing, I would like to thank you once again for sharing your comments and views with us. I would also like to note that you have just recently retired this summer, and I was wondering if you would share with us some of your plans for retirement.

Rod Martin: I’m looking forward to having some time to relax, read, travel, and pursue other hobbies. My wife, Myra, and I now have eight grandchildren, so that’s enough to keep us busy! We also just bought a motorhome and are looking forward to doing some traveling across Canada and the United States over the next few years. We plan to take some trips overseas as well. I’m hoping also to have some time for hobbies like oil painting and woodworking. However, I also hope to have some ongoing involvement in humor research. The publisher of my book, The Psychology of Humor (2007), has been encouraging me to write a revised edition, so I expect to be working on that in coming months. I also hope to continue attending the annual conferences of the International Society for Humor Studies, which meets in different countries each year. Looking back over the years, I value the many good friendships I’ve made with humor scholars from various disciplines all over the world, and I hope to keep in touch with them and keep up on developments in their research.

Nick Kuiper: Any last words?

Rod Martin: I’d just like to thank you, Nick, for editing this special journal issue on humor research. It’s a real honor for me. I appreciate also the opportunities you and I have had to collaborate on research together over the years. I’ve enjoyed having you as a colleague.

Acknowledgments

The authors have no support to report.

Biographies

Dr. Rod Martin completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Waterloo in 1984. Since then, he has been a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario. He retired in July, 2016, and is now a Professor Emeritus. A major focus of his research has been on the psychology of humor, particularly as it relates to psychological health and well-being. He has authored more than 100 scholarly journal articles, books, and book chapters, including a book entitled The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach . He has developed several tests for measuring aspects of the sense of humor, which have been translated into numerous languages and have been used by researchers around the world. In recent years, his research has focused on the distinction between beneficial and detrimental styles of humor and their association with well-being and interpersonal relationships. He has served as President of the International Society for Humor Studies and is on the editorial board of Humor: International Journal of Humor Research . He and his wife have three adult children and eight grandchildren.

Dr. Nick Kuiper has been a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario since 1978. During this time, he has published numerous articles and chapters on the self-reference effect, depression and anxiety, psychological well-being, humor, and several other topics of interest. Most of his current research pertains to various facets and implications of humor. This interest in studying humor began in the early 1990’s, with a special emphasis on personality and social psychological aspects of laughter and humor. Much of this work has focused on individual differences in sense of humor, with implications for stress, coping, psychological well-being, physical health, and social interactions. Further work has examined humor use in romantic relationships, the potential links between humor use and bullying in middle childhood, cross-cultural patterns in humor, the implicit theories of humor that individuals develop about themselves and others, and the potential links between various humor styles and different forms of anxiety.

The authors have no funding to report.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Book Cover for Shtick To Business: What the masters of comedy can teach you about breaking rules, being fearless, and building a serious career.

What makes things funny? How does humor benefit well-being? When can comedy go wrong?

The European Journal of Humour Research

Current Issue

The EJHR is an open-access, academic journal published by Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies and endorsed by The International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS) . The EJHR publishes full research articles, shorter commentaries, which discuss ground-breaking or controversial areas, research notes, which provide details on the research project rationale, methodology and outcomes, as well as book reviews. The journal has a special focus on supporting PhD students and early career researchers by providing them with a forum within which to disseminate their work alongside established scholars and practitioners.

The EJHR welcomes submissions that combine research and relevant applications as well as empirical studies detailing their usefulness to the study of humour. All contributions received (apart from book reviews) undergo a double-blind, peer-review process. In addition to established scholars within humor research, we invite those as yet unfamiliar with (or wary of) humor research to enter the discussion, especially based on less known or less covered material. The elaboration of joint methodological frameworks is strongly encouraged. For further details or inquiries you may contact the Editors.

No charges are applied either for submitting, reviewing or processing articles for publication.

The journal is now listed in important international indexing bases including Scopus and Scimago ranking :

This publication is supported by the CEES and ELM Scholarly Press.

Announcements

Interesting scillit data on the ejhr journal.

Browse and enjoy some statistics on our journal in the decade from 2014-2024.

EJHR has joined the Reviewer Credit system

We are pleased to announce that the European Journal of Humour Research is now registered with ReviewerCredits, the system for supporting and appreciating journal reviewers for their work.

The Primer of Humor Research

Edited by: Victor Raskin
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Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Copyright year: 2008
Audience: Researchers in Humor Studies, Psychology, Anthropology, Folklore, Popular Culture, Communication and Media Studies
Front matter: 6
Main content: 673
Keywords: Humor
Published: November 6, 2008
ISBN: 9783110198492
Published: November 17, 2008
ISBN: 9783110186161
Published: May 20, 2009
ISBN: 9783110186857

The Importance of Humor Research

A serious non-serious research topic..

Posted September 14, 2011 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

Humor has been around for as long as there has been humanity -- and considering that chimps and other primates laugh, humor has likely been around even longer than that. In comparison, psychological research on humor is just getting cracking.

Sure, Freud took a stab at it, but he didn't have the scientific tools to get the job done. We've been fortunate to have the International Society for Humor Studies working on the topic since late 80's. Yet despite several decades of determined effort on the part of this small cadre of humor researchers, the field is still fighting for respectability. The 2,000-page Handbook of Social Psychology mentions humor exactly once - the same number of times as it mentions cliques, Puerto Ricans, and the Gurin Index (whatever that is). Martin Seligman , the father of the positive psychology movement even deems a good sense of humor to be one of 24 characteristics associated with well-being, yet the hugely influential field of happiness research has largely ignored the topic.

"Humor research is seen as a non-serious topic," says Rod Martin , author of The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach, one of the preeminent books in the field. "Scientists always want to make sure their work is respectable, and to be doing research on humor is seen as not respectable enough. People think there are a lot of other, really pressing problems we have to try to solve."

But when you think about it, humor may be one of the most important topics of all.

The ubiquity of humor

Humor is everywhere, for example. Laughter is one of the first things you do as a newborn, and, if all goes well, it will be one of the last things you do before you die. Try going through a day without so much as a chuckle, and you'll find that it's downright impossible. And those chuckles occur much more frequently than other commonly researched emotions like regret, pride, and shame .

People typically approach pleasure and avoid pain. Hence, the pursuit of humor influences many of our daily decisions - the websites, books and magazines we read, the television shows and movies we watch, and the people we decide to talk to (or not). And because humor is valued by consumers, businesses are constantly creating funny advertisements (e.g., Superbowl ads) and funny products (e.g., blockbuster comedic films) in order to get our attention and entertain us. The psychological study of humor may lead to an improvement in humor, in the same way that developing a better understanding of language comprehension has led to an improvement in language instruction.

Humor is (typically) good

By examining humor's antecedents, we will also better understand (and harness) humor's many benefits.

Humor appears to help people's psychological and physical well-being - for example, helping folks cope with stress and adversity. Humor even seems to help people grieve: Dacher Keltner and colleagues found that people who spontaneously experienced amusement and laughter when discussing a deceased spouse showed better emotional adjustment in the years following the spouse's death.

But humor has physical benefits, too. Laughter - especially a hearty laugh - has been shown to benefit your circulation, lungs and muscles (especially those around the belly area). Humor also helps people deal with pain and physical adversity. Hollywood even made a movie, Patch Adams , about the benefits of humor in clinical settings.

Let's not forget humor's social benefits. Not surprisingly, funny people receive positive attention and admiration. Your ability to create and appreciate humor also influences who wants to date, mate and befriend you. Most studies find humor to be a highly desirable attribute, which explains why the acronym GSOH (good sense of humor) finds its way into personal and online dating posts. And according to the work of Barb Frederickson and others who examine the benefits of positivity , humor is an excellent way to boost your creative prowess. Finally, humor smoothes potentially awkward social and cultural interactions. Think about how much easier an uncomfortable situation can be when you joke about it.

Consistent with historical accounts of the use of humor as a weapon of subversion, research being conducted in the Humor Research Lab (aka HuRL) finds that consumers can effectively use humor to criticize brands. The release of Dave Carroll's wildly popular, " United Breaks Guitars ," on YouTube coincided with a 10% decrease in United stock price, and has since garnered ten million plus views.

Not getting the joke

Finally, researching humor is important because it will help us understand why it doesn't always work. While successful humor leads to myriad benefits, failed humor can be downright destructive, from bruised egos and broken friendships to million-dollar marketing mistakes (think Groupon's failed Super Bowl commercial). If we can better figure out what makes things funny, we will end up far better equipped to handle it when we don't get the joke.

In sum, when done well, humor can have a significant positive effect on your life. Isn't it time we use a little more academic rigor to figure out how it works? By developing a better understanding of humor we believe we can then suggest ways that people can live better lives - from helping them cope with pain and stress to encouraging people to use humor to criticize brands that have done them wrong.

Professor Peter McGraw ( @PeterMcGraw ) and journalist Joel Warner ( @JoelmWarner ) have embarked on the Humor Code , an around-the-world exploration of what makes things funny. Follow the Humor Code on Facebook and Twitter.

Peter McGraw, Ph.D., a behavioral economist, a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. He directs the Humor Research Lab, is the author of many books, and hosts a podcast on living single, Solo.

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Philosophy of Humor

Although most people value humor, philosophers have said little about it, and what they have said is largely critical. Three traditional theories of laughter and humor are examined, along with the theory that humor evolved from mock-aggressive play in apes. Understanding humor as play helps counter the traditional objections to it and reveals some of its benefits, including those it shares with philosophy itself.

1. Humor’s Bad Reputation

2. the superiority theory, 3. the relief theory, 4. the incongruity theory, 5. humor as play, laughter as play signal, other internet resources, related entries.

When people are asked what’s important in their lives, they often mention humor. Couples listing the traits they prize in their spouses usually put “sense of humor” at or near the top. Philosophers are concerned with what is important in life, so two things are surprising about what they have said about humor.

The first is how little they have said. From ancient times to the 20 th century, the most that any notable philosopher wrote about laughter or humor was an essay, and only a few lesser-known thinkers such as Frances Hutcheson and James Beattie wrote that much. The word humor was not used in its current sense of funniness until the 18 th century, we should note, and so traditional discussions were about laughter or comedy. The most that major philosophers like Plato, Hobbes, and Kant wrote about laughter or humor was a few paragraphs within a discussion of another topic. Henri Bergson’s 1900 Laughter was the first book by a notable philosopher on humor. Martian anthropologists comparing the amount of philosophical writing on humor with what has been written on, say, justice, or even on Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance, might well conclude that humor could be left out of human life without much loss.

The second surprising thing is how negative most philosophers have been in their assessments of humor. From ancient Greece until the 20 th century, the vast majority of philosophical comments on laughter and humor focused on scornful or mocking laughter, or on laughter that overpowers people, rather than on comedy, wit, or joking. Plato, the most influential critic of laughter, treated laughter as an emotion that overrides rational self-control. In the Republic ( 388e), he says that the Guardians of the state should avoid laughter, “for ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter, his condition provokes a violent reaction.” Especially disturbing to Plato were the passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey where Mount Olympus was said to ring with the laughter of the gods. He protested that “if anyone represents men of worth as overpowered by laughter we must not accept it, much less if gods.”

Another of Plato’s objections to laughter is that it is malicious. In Philebus (48–50), he analyzes the enjoyment of comedy as a form of scorn. “Taken generally,” he says, “the ridiculous is a certain kind of evil, specifically a vice.” That vice is self-ignorance: the people we laugh at imagine themselves to be wealthier, better looking, or more virtuous than they really are. In laughing at them, we take delight in something evil—their self-ignorance—and that malice is morally objectionable.

Because of these objections to laughter and humor, Plato says that in the ideal state, comedy should be tightly controlled. “We shall enjoin that such representations be left to slaves or hired aliens, and that they receive no serious consideration whatsoever. No free person, whether woman or man, shall be found taking lessons in them.” “No composer of comedy, iambic or lyric verse shall be permitted to hold any citizen up to laughter, by word or gesture, with passion or otherwise” ( Laws , 7: 816e; 11: 935e).

Greek thinkers after Plato had similarly negative comments about laughter and humor. Though Aristotle considered wit a valuable part of conversation ( Nicomachean Ethics 4, 8), he agreed with Plato that laughter expresses scorn. Wit, he says in the Rhetoric (2, 12), is educated insolence. In the Nicomachean Ethics (4, 8) he warns that “Most people enjoy amusement and jesting more than they should … a jest is a kind of mockery, and lawgivers forbid some kinds of mockery—perhaps they ought to have forbidden some kinds of jesting.” The Stoics, with their emphasis on self-control, agreed with Plato that laughter diminishes self-control. Epictetus’s Enchiridion (33) advises “Let not your laughter be loud, frequent, or unrestrained.” His followers said that he never laughed at all.

These objections to laughter and humor influenced early Christian thinkers, and through them later European culture. They were reinforced by negative representations of laughter and humor in the Bible, the vast majority of which are linked to hostility. The only way God is described as laughing in the Bible is with hostility:

The kings of the earth stand ready, and the rulers conspire together against the Lord and his anointed king… . The Lord who sits enthroned in heaven laughs them to scorn; then he rebukes them in anger, he threatens them in his wrath (Psalm 2:2–5).

God’s spokesmen in the Bible are the Prophets, and for them, too, laughter expresses hostility. In the contest between God’s prophet Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal, for example, Elijah ridicules them for their god’s powerlessness, and then has them slain (1 Kings 18:21–27). In the Bible, mockery is so offensive that it may deserve death, as when a group of children laugh at the prophet Elisha for his baldness:

He went up from there to Bethel and, as he was on his way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Get along with you, bald head, get along.” He turned round and looked at them and he cursed then in the name of the Lord; and two she-bears came out of a wood and mauled forty-two of them (2 Kings 2:23).

Bringing together negative assessments of laughter from the Bible with criticisms from Greek philosophy, early Christian leaders such as Ambrose, Jerome, Basil, Ephraim, and John Chrysostom warned against either excessive laughter or laughter generally. Sometimes what they criticized was laughter in which the person loses self-control. In his Long Rules , for instance, Basil the Great wrote that “raucous laughter and uncontrollable shaking of the body are not indications of a well-regulated soul, or of personal dignity, or self-mastery” (in Wagner 1962, 271). Other times they linked laughter with idleness, irresponsibility, lust, or anger. John Chrysostom, for example, warned that

Laughter often gives birth to foul discourse, and foul discourse to actions still more foul. Often from words and laughter proceed railing and insult; and from railing and insult, blows and wounds; and from blows and wounds, slaughter and murder. If, then, you would take good counsel for yourself, avoid not merely foul words and foul deeds, or blows and wounds and murders, but unseasonable laughter itself (in Schaff 1889, 442).

Not surprisingly, the Christian institution that most emphasized self-control—the monastery—was harsh in condemning laughter. One of the earliest monastic orders, of Pachom of Egypt, forbade joking (Adkin 1985, 151–152). The Rule of St. Benedict, the most influential monastic code, advised monks to “prefer moderation in speech and speak no foolish chatter, nothing just to provoke laughter; do not love immoderate or boisterous laughter.” In Benedict’s Ladder of Humility, Step Ten is a restraint against laughter, and Step Eleven a warning against joking (Gilhus 1997, 65). The monastery of St. Columbanus Hibernus had these punishments: “He who smiles in the service … six strokes; if he breaks out in the noise of laughter, a special fast unless it has happened pardonably” (Resnick 1987, 95).

The Christian European rejection of laughter and humor continued through the Middle Ages, and whatever the Reformers reformed, it did not include the traditional assessment of humor. Among the strongest condemnations came from the Puritans, who wrote tracts against laughter and comedy. One by William Prynne (1633) was over 1100 pages long and purported to show that comedies “are sinfull, heathenish, lewde, ungodly spectacles, and most pernicious corruptions; condemned in all ages, as intolerable mischiefes to churches, to republickes, to the manners, mindes, and soules of men.” It encouraged Christians to live sober, serious lives, and not to be “immoderately tickled with mere lascivious vanities, or … lash out in excessive cachinnations in the public view of dissolute graceless persons.” When the Puritans came to rule England in the mid-17 th century, they outlawed comedies.

At this time, too, the philosophical case against laughter was strengthened by Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes. Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651 [1982]) describes human beings as naturally individualistic and competitive. That makes us alert to signs that we are winning or losing. The former make us feel good and the latter bad. If our perception of some sign that we are superior comes over us quickly, our good feelings are likely to issue in laughter. In Part I, ch. 6, he writes that

Sudden glory, is the passion which makes those grimaces called laughter; and is caused either by some sudden act of their own, that pleases them; or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. And it is incident most to them, that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves; who are forced to keep themselves in their own favor by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of others, is a sign of pusillanimity. For of great minds, one of the proper works is, to help and free others from scorn; and to compare themselves only with the most able.

A similar explanation of laughter from the same time is found in Descartes’ Passions of the Soul . He says that laughter accompanies three of the six basic emotions—wonder, love, (mild) hatred, desire, joy, and sadness. Although admitting that there are other causes of laughter than hatred, in Part 3 of this book, “Of Particular Passions,” he considers laughter only as an expression of scorn and ridicule.

Derision or scorn is a sort of joy mingled with hatred, which proceeds from our perceiving some small evil in a person whom we consider to be deserving of it; we have hatred for this evil, we have joy in seeing it in him who is deserving of it; and when that comes upon us unexpectedly, the surprise of wonder is the cause of our bursting into laughter… And we notice that people with very obvious defects such as those who are lame, blind of an eye, hunched-backed, or who have received some public insult, are specially given to mockery; for, desiring to see all others held in as low estimation as themselves, they are truly rejoiced at the evils that befall them, and they hold them deserving of these (art. 178–179).

With these comments of Hobbes and Descartes, we have a sketchy psychological theory articulating the view of laughter that started in Plato and the Bible and dominated Western thinking about laughter for two millennia. In the 20 th century, this idea was called the Superiority Theory. Simply put, our laughter expresses feelings of superiority over other people or over a former state of ourselves. A contemporary proponent of this theory is Roger Scruton, who analyses amusement as an “attentive demolition” of a person or something connected with a person. “If people dislike being laughed at,” Scruton says, “it is surely because laughter devalues its object in the subject’s eyes” (in Morreall 1987, 168).

In the 18 th century, the dominance of the Superiority Theory began to weaken when Francis Hutcheson (1750) wrote a critique of Hobbes’ account of laughter. Feelings of superiority, Hutcheson argued, are neither necessary nor sufficient for laughter. In laughing, we may not be comparing ourselves with anyone, as when we laugh at odd figures of speech like those in this poem about a sunrise:

The sun, long since, had in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap; And like a lobster boil’d, the morn From black to red began to turn.

If self-comparison and sudden glory are not necessary for laughter, neither are they sufficient for laughter. Hutcheson says that we can feel superior to lower animals without laughing, and that “some ingenuity in dogs and monkeys, which comes near to some of our own arts, very often makes us merry; whereas their duller actions in which they are much below us, are no matter of jest at all.” He also cites cases of pity. A gentleman riding in a coach who sees ragged beggars in the street, for example, will feel that he is better off than they, but such feelings are unlikely to amuse him. In such situations, “we are in greater danger of weeping than laughing.”

To these counterexamples to the Superiority Theory we could add more. Sometimes we laugh when a comic character shows surprising skills that we lack. In the silent movies of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton, the hero is often trapped in a situation where he looks doomed. But then he escapes with a clever acrobatic stunt that we would not have thought of, much less been able to perform. Laughing at such scenes does not seem to require that we compare ourselves with the hero; and if we do make such a comparison, we do not find ourselves superior.

At least some people, too, laugh at themselves—not a former state of themselves, but what is happening now. If I search high and low for my eyeglasses only to find them on my head, the Superiority Theory seems unable to explain my laughter at myself.

While these examples involve persons with whom we might compare ourselves, there are other cases of laughter where no personal comparisons seem involved. In experiments by Lambert Deckers (1993), subjects were asked to lift a series of apparently identical weights. The first several weights turned out to be identical, and that strengthened the expectation that the remaining weights would be the same. But then subjects picked up a weight that was much heavier or lighter than the others. Most laughed, but apparently not out of Hobbesian “sudden glory,” and apparently without comparing themselves with anyone.

Further weakening the dominance of the Superiority Theory in the 18 th century were two new accounts of laughter which are now called the Relief Theory and the Incongruity Theory. Neither even mentions feelings of superiority.

The Relief Theory is an hydraulic explanation in which laughter does in the nervous system what a pressure-relief valve does in a steam boiler. The theory was sketched in Lord Shaftesbury’s 1709 essay “An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor,” the first publication in which humor is used in its modern sense of funniness. Scientists at the time knew that nerves connect the brain with the sense organs and muscles, but they thought that nerves carried “animal spirits”—gases and liquids such as air and blood. John Locke (1690, Book 3, ch. 9, para.16), for instance, describes animal spirits as “fluid and subtile Matter, passing through the Conduits of the Nerves.”

Shaftesbury’s explanation of laughter is that it releases animal spirits that have built up pressure inside the nerves.

The natural free spirits of ingenious men, if imprisoned or controlled, will find out other ways of motion to relieve themselves in their constraint; and whether it be in burlesque, mimicry, or buffoonery, they will be glad at any rate to vent themselves, and be revenged upon their constrainers.

Over the next two centuries, as the nervous system came to be better understood, thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud revised the biology behind the Relief Theory but kept the idea that laughter relieves pent-up nervous energy.

Spencer’s explanation in his essay “On the Physiology of Laughter” (1911) is based on the idea that emotions take the physical form of nervous energy. Nervous energy, he says, “always tends to beget muscular motion, and when it rises to a certain intensity, always does beget it” (299). “Feeling passing a certain pitch habitually vents itself in bodily action” (302). When we are angry, for example, nervous energy produces small aggressive movements such as clenching our fists; and if the energy reaches a certain level, we attack the offending person. In fear, the energy produces small-scale movements in preparation for fleeing; and if the fear gets strong enough, we flee. The movements associated with emotions, then, discharge or release the built-up nervous energy.

Laughter releases nervous energy, too, Spencer says, but with this important difference: the muscular movements in laughter are not the early stages of larger practical actions such as attacking or fleeing. Unlike emotions, laughter does not involve the motivation to do anything. The movements of laughter, Spencer says, “have no object” (303): they are merely a release of nervous energy.

The nervous energy relieved through laughter, according to Spencer, is the energy of emotions that have been found to be inappropriate. Consider this poem entitled “Waste” by Harry Graham (2009):

I had written to Aunt Maud Who was on a trip abroad When I heard she’d died of cramp, Just too late to save the stamp.

Reading the first three lines, we might feel pity for the bereaved nephew writing the poem. But the last line makes us reinterpret those lines. Far from being a loving nephew in mourning, he turns out to be an insensitive cheapskate. So the nervous energy of our pity, now superfluous, is released in laughter. That discharge occurs, Spencer says, first through the muscles “which feeling most habitually stimulates,” the muscles of the vocal tract. If still more energy needs to be relieved, it spills over to the muscles connected with breathing, and if the movements of those muscles do not release all the energy, the remainder moves the arms, legs, and other muscle groups (304).

In the 20 th century, John Dewey (1894: 558–559) had a similar version of the Relief Theory. Laughter, he said, “marks the ending … of a period of suspense, or expectation.” It is a “sudden relaxation of strain, so far as occurring through the medium of the breathing and vocal apparatus… The laugh is thus a phenomenon of the same general kind as the sigh of relief.”

Better known than the versions of the Relief Theory of Shaftesbury, Spencer, and Dewey is that of Sigmund Freud. In his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905 [1974]), Freud analyzes three laughter situations: der Witz (often translated “jokes” or “joking”), “the comic,” and “humor.” In all three, laughter releases nervous energy that was summoned for a psychological task, but then became superfluous as that task was abandoned. In der Witz , that superfluous energy is energy used to repress feelings; in the comic it is energy used to think, and in humor it is the energy of feeling emotions. (In this article, we are not using humor in Freud’s narrow sense, but in the general sense that includes joking, wit, the comic, etc.)

Der Witz includes telling prepared fictional jokes, making spontaneous witty comments, and repartee. In der Witz , Freud says, the psychic energy released is the energy that would have repressed the emotions that are being expressed as the person laughs. (Most summaries of Freud’s theory of joking mistakenly describe laughter as a release of repressed emotions themselves.) According to Freud, the emotions which are most repressed are sexual desire and hostility, and so most jokes and witty remarks are about sex, hostility, or both. In telling a sexual joke or listening to one, we bypass our internal censor and give vent to our libido. In telling or listening to a joke that puts down an individual or group we dislike, similarly, we let out the hostility we usually repress. In both cases, the psychic energy normally used to do the repressing becomes superfluous, and is released in laughter.

Freud’s second laughter situation, “the comic,” involves a similar release of energy that is summoned but is then found unnecessary. Here it is the energy normally devoted to thinking. An example is laughter at the clumsy actions of a clown. As we watch the clown stumble through actions that we would perform smoothly and efficiently, there is a saving of the energy that we would normally expend to understand the clown’s movements. Here Freud appeals to a theory of “mimetic representation” in which we expend a large packet of energy to understand something large and a small packet of energy to understand something small. Our mental representation of the clown’s clumsy movements, Freud says, calls for more energy than the energy we would expend to mentally represent our own smooth, efficient movements in performing the same task. Our laughter at the clown is our venting of that surplus energy.

These two possibilities in my imagination amount to a comparison between the observed movement and my own. If the other person’s movement is exaggerated and inexpedient, my increased expenditure in order to understand it is inhibited in statu nascendi , as it were in the act of being mobilized; it is declared superfluous and is free for use elsewhere or perhaps for discharge by laughter (Freud 1905 [1974], 254).

Freud analyzes the third laughter situation, which he calls “humor,” much as Spencer analyzed laughter in general. Humor occurs “if there is a situation in which, according to our usual habits, we should be tempted to release a distressing affect and if motives then operate upon us which suppress that affect in statu nascendi [in the process of being born]… . The pleasure of humor … comes about … at the cost of a release of affect that does not occur: it arise from an economy in the expenditure of affect ” (293). His example is a story told by Mark Twain in which his brother was building a road when a charge of dynamite went off prematurely, blowing him high into the sky. When the poor man came down far from the work site, he was docked half a day’s pay for being “absent from his place of employment.” Freud’s explanation of our laughter at this story is like the explanation above at Graham’s poem about the cheapskate nephew. In laughing at this story, he says, we are releasing the psychic energy that we had summoned to feel pity for Twain’s brother, but that became superfluous when we heard the fantastic last part. “As a result of this understanding, the expenditure on the pity, which was already prepared, becomes unutilizable and we laugh it off” (295).

Having sketched several versions of the Relief Theory, we can note that today almost no scholar in philosophy or psychology explains laughter or humor as a process of releasing pent-up nervous energy. There is, of course, a connection between laughter and the expenditure of energy. Hearty laughter involves many muscle groups and several areas of the nervous system. Laughing hard gives our lungs a workout, too, as we take in far more oxygen than usual. But few contemporary scholars defend the claims of Spencer and Freud that the energy expended in laughter is the energy of feeling emotions, the energy of repressing emotions, or the energy of thinking, which have built up and require venting.

Funny things and situations may evoke emotions, but many seem not to. Consider P. G. Wodehouse’s line “If it’s feasible, let’s fease it.” Or the shortest poem in the English language, by Strickland Gillilan (1927), “Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes”:

Adam Had’em.

These do not seem to vent emotions that had built up before we read them, and they do not seem to summon emotions and then render them superfluous. So whatever energy is expended in laughing at them does not seem to be superfluous energy being vented. In fact, the whole hydraulic model of the nervous system on which the Relief Theory is based seems outdated.

To that hydraulic model, Freud adds several questionable claims derived from his general psychoanalytic theory of the mind. He says that the creation of der Witz —jokes and witty comments—is an unconscious process of letting repressed thoughts and feelings into the conscious mind. This claim seems falsified by professional humorists who approach the creation of jokes and cartoons with conscious strategies. Freud’s account of how psychic energy is vented in joke-telling is also questionable, especially his claim that packets of psychic energy are summoned to repress thoughts and feelings, but in statu nascendi (in the process of being born) are rendered superfluous. If Freud is right that the energy released in laughing at a joke is the energy normally used to repress hostile and sexual feelings, then it seems that those who laugh hardest at aggressive and sexual jokes should be people who usually repress such feelings. But studies about joke preferences by Hans Jürgen Eysenck (1972, xvi) have shown that the people who enjoy aggressive and sexual humor the most are not those who usually repress hostile and sexual feelings, but those who express them.

Freud’s account of “the comic” faces still more problems, particularly his ideas about “mimetic representation.” The psychic energy saved, he says, is energy summoned for understanding something, such as the antics of a clown. We summon a large packet of energy to understand the clown’s large movements, but as we are summoning it, we compare it with the small packet of energy required to understand our own smaller movements in doing the same thing. The difference between the two packets is surplus energy discharged in laughter. Freud’s account of thinking here is idiosyncratic and has strange implications, such as that thinking about swimming the English Channel takes far more energy than thinking about licking a stamp. With all these difficulties, it is not surprising that philosophers and psychologists studying humor today do not appeal to Freud’s theory to explain laughter or humor. More generally, the Relief Theory is seldom used as a general explanation of laughter or humor.

The second account of humor that arose in the 18 th century to challenge the Superiority Theory was the Incongruity Theory. While the Superiority Theory says that the cause of laughter is feelings of superiority, and the Relief Theory says that it is the release of nervous energy, the Incongruity Theory says that it is the perception of something incongruous—something that violates our mental patterns and expectations. This approach was taken by James Beattie, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, and many later philosophers and psychologists. It is now the dominant theory of humor in philosophy and psychology.

Although Aristotle did not use the term incongruity , he hints that it is the basis for at least some humor. In the Rhetoric (3, 2), a handbook for speakers, he says that one way for a speaker to get a laugh is to create an expectation in the audience and then violate it. As an example, he cites this line from a comedy, “And as he walked, beneath his feet were—chilblains [sores on the feet].” Jokes that depend on a change of spelling or word play, he notes, can have the same effect. Cicero, in On the Orator (ch. 63), says that “The most common kind of joke is that in which we expect one thing and another is said; here our own disappointed expectation makes us laugh.”

This approach to joking is similar to techniques of stand-up comedians today. They speak of the set-up and the punch (line). The set-up is the first part of the joke: it creates the expectation. The punch (line) is the last part that violates that expectation. In the language of the Incongruity Theory, the joke’s ending is incongruous with the beginning.

The first philosopher to use the word incongruous to analyze humor was James Beattie (1779). When we see something funny, he says, our laughter “always proceeds from a sentiment or emotion, excited in the mind, in consequence of certain objects or ideas being presented to it” (304). Our laughter “seems to arise from the view of things incongruous united in the same assemblage” (318). The cause of humorous laughter is “two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage, as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the peculiar manner in which the mind takes notice of them” (320).

Immanuel Kant (1790 [1911], First Part, sec. 54), a contemporary of Beattie’s, did not used the term incongruous but had an explanation of laughter at jokes and wit that involves incongruity.

In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something absurd (in which the understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction). Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. This transformation, which is certainly not enjoyable to the understanding, yet indirectly gives it very active enjoyment for a moment. Therefore its cause must consist in the influence of the representation upon the body, and the reflex effect of this upon the mind.

Kant illustrates with this story:

An Indian at the table of an Englishman in Surat, when he saw a bottle of ale opened and all the beer turned into froth and overflowing, testified his great astonishment with many exclamations. When the Englishman asked him, “What is there in this to astonish you so much?” he answered, “I am not at all astonished that it should flow out, but I do wonder how you ever got it in.”

We laugh at this story, Kant says, “not because we deem ourselves cleverer than this ignorant man, or because of anything in it that we note as satisfactory to the understanding, but because our expectation was strained (for a time) and then was suddenly dissipated into nothing.”

“We must note well,” Kant insists, that it [our expectation] does not transform itself into the positive opposite of an expected object… but it must be transformed into nothing.“ He illustrates with two more jokes:

The heir of a rich relative wished to arrange for an imposing funeral, but he lamented that he could not properly succeed; ‘for’ (said he) ‘the more money I give my mourners to look sad, the more cheerful they look!’ [A] merchant returning from India to Europe with all his wealth in merchandise … was forced to throw it overboard in a heavy storm and … grieved thereat so much that his wig turned gray the same night.”

A joke amuses us by evoking, shifting, and dissipating our thoughts, but we do not learn anything through these mental gymnastics. In humor generally, according to Kant, our reason finds nothing of worth. The jostling of ideas, however, produces a physical jostling of our internal organs and we enjoy that physical stimulation.

For if we admit that with all our thoughts is harmonically combined a movement in the organs of the body, we will easily comprehend how to this sudden transposition of the mind, now to one now to another standpoint in order to contemplate its object, may correspond an alternating tension and relaxation of the elastic portions of our intestines which communicates itself to the diaphragm (like that which ticklish people feel). In connection with this the lungs expel the air at rapidly succeeding intervals, and thus bring about a movement beneficial to health; which alone, and not what precedes it in the mind, is the proper cause of the gratification in a thought that at bottom represents nothing.

On this point, Kant compares the enjoyment of joking and wit to the enjoyment of games of chance and the enjoyment of music. In all three the pleasure is in a “changing free play of sensations,” which is caused by shifting ideas in the mind. In games of chance, “the play of fortune” causes bodily excitation; in music, it is “the play of tone,” and in joking, it is “the play of thought.” In a lively game of chance, “the affections of hope, fear, joy, wrath, scorn, are put in play … alternating every moment; and they are so vivid that by them, as by a kind of internal motion, all the vital processes of the body seem to be promoted.” In music and humor, similarly, what we enjoy are bodily changes caused by rapidly shifting ideas.

Music and that which excites laughter are two different kinds of play with aesthetical ideas, or of representations of the understanding through which ultimately nothing is thought, which can give lively gratification merely by their changes. Thus we recognize pretty clearly that the animation in both cases is merely bodily, although it is excited by ideas of the mind; and that the feeling of health produced by a motion of the intestines corresponding to the play in question makes up that whole gratification of a gay party.

A version of the Incongruity Theory that gave it more philosophical significance than Kant’s version is that of Arthur Schopenhauer (1818/1844 [1907]). While Kant located the lack of fit in humor between our expectations and our experience, Schopenhauer locates it between our sense perceptions of things and our abstract rational knowledge of those same things. We perceive unique individual things with many properties. But when we group our sense perceptions under abstract concepts, we focus on just one or a few properties of any individual thing. Thus we lump quite different things under one concept and one word. Think, for example, of a Chihuahua and a St. Bernard categorized under dog . For Schopenhauer, humor arises when we suddenly notice the incongruity between a concept and a perception that are supposed to be of the same thing.

Many human actions can only be performed by the help of reason and deliberation, and yet there are some which are better performed without its assistance. This very incongruity of sensuous and abstract knowledge, on account of which the latter always merely approximates to the former, as mosaic approximates to painting, is the cause of a very remarkable phenomenon which, like reason itself, is peculiar to human nature, and of which the explanations that have ever anew been attempted, as insufficient: I mean laughter… . The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity (1818/1844 [1907], Book I, sec. 13).

As an example, Schopenhauer tells of the prison guards who allowed a convict to play cards with them, but when they caught him cheating, they kicked him out. He comments, “They let themselves be led by the general conception, ‘Bad companions are turned out,’ and forget that he is also a prisoner, i. e., one whom they ought to hold fast” (Supplement to Book I: Ch. 8). He also comments on an Austrian joke (the equivalent of a Polish joke in the U.S. a few decades ago):

When someone had declared that he was fond of walking alone, an Austrian said to him: “You like walking alone; so do I: therefore we can go together.” He starts from the conception, “A pleasure which two love they can enjoy in common,” and subsumes under it the very case which excludes community.

Creating jokes like these requires the ability to think of an abstract idea under which very different things can be subsumed. Wit, Schopenhauer says, “consists entirely in a facility for finding for every object that appears a conception under which it certainly can be thought, though it is very different from all the other objects which come under this conception” (Supplement to Book I, Ch. 8).

With this theory of humor as based on the discrepancy between abstract ideas and real things, Schopenhauer explains the offensiveness of being laughed at, the kind of laughter at the heart of the Superiority Theory.

That the laughter of others at what we do or say seriously offends us so keenly depends on the fact that it asserts that there is a great incongruity between our conceptions and the objective realities. For the same reason, the predicate “ludicrous” or “absurd” is insulting. The laugh of scorn announces with triumph to the baffled adversary how incongruous were the conceptions he cherished with the reality which is now revealing itself to him (Supplement to Book I, Ch. 8).

With his theory, too, Schopenhauer explains the pleasure of humor.

In every suddenly appearing conflict between what is perceived and what is thought, what is perceived is always unquestionably right; for it is not subject to error at all, requires no confirmation from without, but answers for itself. … The victory of knowledge of perception over thought affords us pleasure. For perception is the original kind of knowledge inseparable from animal nature, in which everything that gives direct satisfaction to the will presents itself. It is the medium of the present, of enjoyment and gaiety; moreover it is attended with no exertion. With thinking the opposite is the case: it is the second power of knowledge, the exercise of which always demands some, and often considerable exertion. Besides, it is the conceptions of thought that often oppose the gratification of our immediate desires, for, as the medium of the past, the future, and of seriousness, they are the vehicles of our fears, our repentance, and all our cares. It must therefore be diverting to us to see this strict, untiring, troublesome governess, the reason, for once convicted of insufficiency. On this account then the mien or appearance of laughter is very closely related to that of joy (Supplement to Book I, Ch. 8).

Like Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard saw humor as based on incongruity and as philosophically significant. In his discussion of the “three spheres of existence,” (the three existential stages of life—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious), he discusses humor and its close relative, irony. Irony marks the boundary between the aesthetic and the ethical spheres, while humor marks the boundary between the ethical and religious spheres. “Humor is the last stage of existential awareness before faith” (1846 [1941], 448, 259). The person with a religious view of life is likely to cultivate humor, he says, and Christianity is the most humorous view of life in world history ([JP], Entries 1681–1682).

Kierkegaard (1846 [1941], 459–468) locates the essence of humor, which he calls “the comical,” in a disparity between what is expected and what is experienced, though instead of calling it “incongruity” he calls it “contradiction.” For example, “Errors are comical, and are all to be explained by the contradiction involved.” He cites the story of the baker who said to the begging woman, “No, mother, I cannot give you anything. There was another here recently whom I had to send away without giving anything, too: we cannot give to everybody.”

The violation of our expectations is at the heart of the tragic as well as the comic, Kierkegaard says. To contrast the two, he appeals to Aristotle’s definition of the comic in Chapter 5 of The Poetics : “The ridiculous is a mistake or unseemliness that is not painful or destructive.”

The tragic and the comic are the same, in so far as both are based on contradiction; but the tragic is the suffering contradiction, the comical, the painless contradiction… . The comic apprehension evokes the contradiction or makes it manifest by having in mind the way out, which is why the contradiction is painless. The tragic apprehension sees the contradiction and despairs of a way out.

A few decades earlier, William Hazlitt contrasted the tragic and comic this way in his essay “On Wit and Humor”:

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps: for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious matters; we laugh at what only disappoints our expectations in trifles… . To explain the nature of laughter and tears, is to account for the condition of human life; for it is in a manner compounded of the two! It is a tragedy or a comedy—sad or merry, as it happens… . Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before it has had time to reconcile its feelings to the change of circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere surprise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contrary appearances (Hazlitt 1819 [1907], 1).

The core meaning of “incongruity” in various versions of the Incongruity Theory, then, is that some thing or event we perceive or think about violates our standard mental patterns and normal expectations. (If we are listening to a joke for the second time, of course, there is a sense in which we expect the incongruous punch line, but it still violates our ordinary expectations.) Beyond that core meaning, various thinkers have added different details, many of which are incompatible with each other. In contemporary psychology, for example, theorists such as Thomas Schultz (1976) and Jerry Suls (1972, 1983) have claimed that what we enjoy in humor is not incongruity itself, but the resolution of incongruity. After age seven, Schultz says, we require the fitting of the apparently anomalous element into some conceptual schema. That is what happens when we “get” a joke. Indeed, Schultz does not even call unresolvable incongruity “humor”—he calls it “nonsense.” The examples of humor cited by these theorists are typically jokes in which the punch line is momentarily confusing, but then the hearer reinterprets the first part so that it makes a kind of sense. When, for instance, Mae West said, “Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution,” the shift in meanings of “institution” is the incongruity, but it takes a moment to follow that shift, and the pleasure is in figuring out that the word has two meanings. Amusement, according to this understanding of humor, is akin to puzzle-solving. Other theorists insist that incongruity-resolution figures in only some humor, and that the pleasure of amusement is not like puzzle-solving.

As philosophers and psychologists refined the Incongruity Theory in the late 20 th century, one flaw in several older versions came to light: they said, or more often implied, that the perception of incongruity is sufficient for humor. That is clearly false, since when our mental patterns and expectations are violated, we may well feel fear, disgust, or anger and not amusement. James Beattie, the first philosopher to analyze humor as a response to incongruity, was careful to point out that laughter is only one such response. Our perception of incongruity will not excite the “risible emotion,” he said, when that perception is “attended with some other emotion of greater authority” such as fear, pity, moral disapprobation, indignation, or disgust (1779, 420).

One way to correct this flaw is to say that humorous amusement is not just any response to incongruity, but a way of enjoying incongruity. Michael Clark, for example, offers these three features as necessary and sufficient for humor:

A person perceives (thinks, imagines) an object as being incongruous.
The person enjoys perceiving (thinking, imagining) the object.
The person enjoys the perceived (thought, imagined) incongruity at least partly for itself, rather than solely for some ulterior reason (in Morreall 1987, 139–155).

This version of the Incongruity Theory is an improvement on theories which describe amusement as the perception of incongruity, but it still seems not specific enough. Amusement is one way of enjoying incongruity, but not the only way. Mike W. Martin offers several examples from the arts (in Morreall, 1987, 176). Sophocles’ Oedipus the King has many lines in which Oedipus vows to do whatever it takes to bring King Laius’ killer to justice. We in the audience, knowing that Oedipus is himself that killer, may enjoy the incongruity of a king threatening himself, but that enjoyment need not be humorous amusement. John Morreall (1987, 204–205) argues that a number of aesthetic categories— the grotesque, the macabre, the horrible, the bizarre, and the fantastic—involve a non-humorous enjoyment of some violation of our mental patterns and expectations.

Whatever refinements the Incongruity Theory might require, it seems better able to account for laughter and humor than the scientifically obsolete Relief Theory. It also seems more comprehensive than the Superiority Theory since it can account for kinds of humor that do not seem based on superiority, such as puns and other wordplay.

While the Incongruity Theory made humor look less objectionable than the Superiority Theory did, it has not improved philosophers’ opinions of humor much in the last two centuries, at least judging from what they have published. Part of the continued bad reputation of humor comes from a new objection triggered by the Incongruity Theory: If humor is enjoying the violation of our mental patterns and expectations, then it is irrational. This Irrationality Objection is almost as old as the Incongruity Theory, and is implicit in Kant’s claim that the pleasure in laughter is only physical and not intellectual. “How could a delusive expectation gratify?” he asks. According to Kant, humor feels good in spite of, not because of, the way it frustrates our desire to understand. George Santayana (1896, 248) agreed, arguing that incongruity itself could not be enjoyed.

We have a prosaic background of common sense and everyday reality; upon this background an unexpected idea suddenly impinges. But the thing is a futility. The comic accident falsifies the nature before us, starts a wrong analogy in the mind, a suggestion that cannot be carried out. In a word, we are in the presence of an absurdity, and man, being a rational animal, can like absurdity no better than he can like hunger or cold.

If the widespread contemporary appreciation of humor is defensible, then this Irrationality Objection needs to be addressed. To do that seems to require an explanation of how our higher mental functions can operate in a beneficial way that is different from theoretical and practical reasoning. One way to construct that explanation is to analyze humor as a kind of play, and explain how such play can be beneficial.

Remarkably few philosophers have even mentioned that humor is a kind of play, much less seen benefits in such play. Kant spoke of joking as “the play of thought,” though he saw no value in it beyond laughter’s stimulation of the internal organs. One of the few to classify humor as play and see value in the mental side of humor was Thomas Aquinas. He followed the lead of Aristotle, who said in the Nicomachean Ethics (Ch. 8) that “Life includes rest as well as activity, and in this is included leisure and amusement.” Some people carry amusement to excess—“vulgar buffoons,” Aristotle calls them—but just as bad are “those who can neither make a joke themselves nor put up with those who do,” whom he calls “boorish and unpolished.” Between buffoonery and boorishness there is a happy medium—engaging in humor at the right time and place, and to the right degree. This virtue Aristotle calls eutrapelia, ready-wittedness, from the Greek for “turning well.” In his Summa Theologiae (2a2ae, Q. 168) Aquinas extends Aristotle’s ideas in three articles: “Whether there can be virtue in actions done in play,” “The sin of playing too much,” and “The sin of playing too little.” He agrees with Aristotle that humor and other forms of play provide occasional rest:

As bodily tiredness is eased by resting the body, so psychological tiredness is eased by resting the soul. As we have explained in discussing the feelings, pleasure is rest for the soul. And therefore the remedy for weariness of soul lies in slackening the tension of mental study and taking some pleasure… . Those words and deeds in which nothing is sought beyond the soul’s pleasure are called playful or humorous, and it is necessary to make use of them at times for solace of soul (2a2ae, Q. 168, Art. 2).

Beyond providing rest for the soul, Aquinas suggests that humor has social benefits. Extending the meaning of Aristotle’s eutrapelia , he talks about “a eutrapelos , a pleasant person with a happy cast of mind who gives his words and deeds a cheerful turn.” The person who is never playful or humorous, Aquinas says, is acting “against reason” and so is guilty of a vice.

Anything conflicting with reason in human action is vicious. It is against reason for a man to be burdensome to others, by never showing himself agreeable to others or being a kill-joy or wet blanket on their enjoyment. And so Seneca says, “Bear yourself with wit, lest you be regarded as sour or despised as dull.” Now those who lack playfulness are sinful, those who never say anything to make you smile, or are grumpy with those who do (2a2ae, Q. 168, Art. 4).

In the last century an early play theory of humor was developed by Max Eastman (1936), who found parallels to humor in the play of animals, particularly in the laughter of chimps during tickling. He argues that “we come into the world endowed with an instinctive tendency to laugh and have this feeling in response to pains presented playfully” (45). In humor and play generally, according to Eastman, we take a disinterested attitude toward something that could instead be treated seriously.

In the late 20 th century Ted Cohen (1999) wrote about the social benefits of joke-telling, and many psychologists confirmed Aquinas’ assessment of humor as virtuous. A chapter in the American Psychological Association’s Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification , under “Strengths of Transcendence,” is “Humor [Playfulness].” Engaging in humor can foster a tolerance for ambiguity and diversity, and promote creative problem-solving. It can serve as a social lubricant, engendering trust and reducing conflict. In communications that tend to evoke negative emotions--announcing bad news, apologizing, complaining, warning, criticizing, commanding, evaluating--humor can provide delight that reduces or even blocks negative emotions. Consider this paragraph from a debt-collection letter:

We appreciate your business, but, please, give us a break. Your account is overdue ten months. That means we’ve carried you longer than your mother did (Morreall 2009, 117).

Play activities such as humor are not usually pursued in order to achieve such benefits, of course; they are pursued, as Aquinas said, for pleasure. A parallel with humor here is music, which we typically play and listen to for pleasure, but which can boost our manual dexterity and even mathematical abilities, reduce stress, and strengthen our social bonds.

Ethologists (students of animal, including human, behavior) point out that in play activities, young animals learn important skills they will need later on. Young lions, for example, play by going through actions that will be part of hunting. Humans have hunted with rocks and spears for tens of thousands of years, and so boys often play by throwing projectiles at targets. Marek Spinka (2001) observes that in playing, young animals move in exaggerated ways. Young monkeys leap not just from branch to branch, but from trees into rivers. Children not only run, but skip and do cartwheels. Spinka suggests that in play young animals are testing the limits of their speed, balance, and coordination. In doing so, they learn to cope with unexpected situations such as being chased by a new kind of predator.

This account of the value of play in children and young animals does not automatically explain why humor is important to adult humans, but for us as for children and young animals, the play activities that seem the most fun are those in which we exercise our abilities in unusual and extreme ways, yet in a safe setting. Sports is an example. So is humor.

In humor the abilities we exercise in unusual and extreme ways in a safe setting are related to thinking and interacting with other people. What is enjoyed is incongruity, the violation of our mental patterns and expectations. In joking with friends, for example, we break rules of conversation such as these formulated by H. P. Grice (1975):

Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.

We break Rule 1 when for a laugh we exaggerate wildly, say the opposite of what we think, or “pull someone’s leg.” We break Rule 2 when we present funny fantasies as if they were facts. Rule 3 is broken to create humor when we reply to an embarrassing question with an obviously vague or confusing answer. We violate Rule 4 in telling most prepared jokes, as Victor Raskin (1984) has shown. A comment or story starts off with an assumed interpretation for a phrase, but then at the punch line, switches to a second, usually opposed interpretation. Consider the line “I love cats. They taste a lot like chicken.” Rule 5 is broken when we turn an ordinary complaint into a comic rant like those of Roseanne Barr and Lewis Black.

Humor, like other play, sometimes takes the form of activity that would not be mistaken for serious activity. Wearing a red clown nose and making up nonsense syllables are examples. More often, however, as in the conversational moves above, humor and play are modeled on serious activities. When in conversation we switch from serious discussion to making funny comments, for example, we keep the same vocabulary and grammar, and our sentences transcribed to paper might look like bona-fide assertions, questions, etc. This similarity between non-serious and serious language and actions calls for ways that participants can distinguish between the two. Ethologists call these ways “play signals.”

The oldest play signals in humans are smiling and laughing. According to ethologists, these evolved from similar play signals in pre-human apes. The apes that evolved into Homo sapiens split off from the apes that evolved into chimpanzees and gorillas about six million years ago. In chimps and gorillas, as in other mammals, play usually takes the form of mock-aggression such as chasing, wrestling, biting, and tickling. According to many ethologists, mock-aggression was the earliest form of play, from which all other play developed (Aldis 1975, 139; Panksepp 1993, 150). In mock-aggressive play, it is critical that all participants are aware that the activity is not real aggression. Without a way to distinguish between being chased or bitten playfully and being attacked in earnest, an animal might respond with deadly force. In the anthropoid apes, play signals are visual and auditory. Jan van Hooff (1972, 212–213) and others speculate that the first play signals in humans evolved from two facial displays in an ancestor of both humans and the great apes that are still found in gorillas and chimps. One was the “grin face” or “social grimace”: the corners of the mouth and the lips are retracted to expose the gums, the jaws are closed, there is no vocalization, body movement is inhibited, and the eyes are directed toward an interacting partner. This “silent bared-teeth display,” according to van Hooff (1972, 217), evolved into the human social smile of appeasement.

In the other facial display, the lips are relaxed and the mouth open, and breathing is shallow and staccato, like panting. This vocalization in chimpanzees is on the in-breath: “Ahh ahh ahh.” According to van Hooff, this “relaxed open-mouth display” or “play face” evolved into human laughter. The relaxed mouth in laughter contrasts with the mouth in real aggression that is tense and prepared to bite hard. That difference, combined with the distinctive shallow, staccato breathing pattern, allows laughter to serve as a play signal, announcing that “This is just for fun; it’s not real fighting.” Chimps and gorillas show that face and vocalization during rough-and-tumble play, and it can be elicited in them by the playful grabbing and poking we call tickling (Andrew 1963).

As early hominin species began walking upright and the front limbs were no longer used for locomotion, the muscles in the chest no longer had to synchronize breathing with locomotion. The larynx moved to a lower position in the throat, and the pharynx developed, allowing early humans to modulate their breathing and vocalize in complex ways (Harris 1989, 77). Eventually they would speak, but before that they came to laugh in our human way: “ha ha ha” on the out-breath instead of “ahh ahh ahh” on the in-breath.

In the last decade, thinkers in evolutionary psychology have extended van Hooff’s work, relating humor to such things as sexual selection (Greengross 2008; Li et al. 2009). In the competition for women to mate with, early men may have engaged in humor to show their intelligence, cleverness, adaptability, and desire to please others.

The hypothesis that laughter evolved as a play signal is appealing in several ways. Unlike the Superiority and Incongruity Theories, it explains the link between humor and the facial expression, body language, and sound of laughter. It also explains why laughter is overwhelmingly a social experience, as those theories do not. According to one estimate, we are thirty times more likely to laugh with other people than when we are alone (Provine 2000, 45). Tracing laughter to a play signal in early humans also accords with the fact that young children today laugh during the same activities—chasing, wrestling, and tickling—in which chimps and gorillas show their play face and laugh-like vocalizations. The idea that laughter and humor evolved from mock-aggression, furthermore, helps explain why so much humor today, especially in males, is playfully aggressive.

The playful aggression found in much humor has been widely misunderstood by philosophers, especially in discussions of the ethics of humor. Starting with Plato, most philosophers have treated humor that represents people in a negative light as if it were real aggression toward those people. Jokes in which blondes or Poles are extraordinarily stupid, blacks extraordinarily lazy, Italians extraordinarily cowardly, lawyers extraordinarily self-centered, women extraordinarily unmathematical, etc. have usually been analyzed as if they were bona fide assertions that blondes or Poles are extraordinarily stupid, blacks extraordinarily lazy, etc. This approach is announced in the title of Michael Philips’ “Racist Acts and Racist Humor”(1984). Philips classifies Polish jokes as racist, for example, but anyone who understands their popularity in the 1960s, knows that they did not involve hostility toward Polish people, who had long been assimilated into North American society. Consider the joke about the Polish astronaut calling a press conference to announce that he was going to fly a rocket to the sun. When asked how he would deal with the sun’s intense heat, he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll go at night.” To enjoy this joke, it is not necessary to have racist beliefs or attitudes towards Poles, any more than it is necessary to believe that Poland has a space program. This is a fantasy enjoyed for its clever depiction of unbelievable stupidity.

While playing with negative stereotypes in jokes does not require endorsement of those stereotypes, however, it still keeps them in circulation, and that can be harmful in a racist or sexist culture where stereotypes support prejudice and injustice. Jokes can be morally objectionable for perpetuating stereotypes that need to be eliminated. More generally, humor can be morally objectionable when it treats as a subject for play something that should be taken seriously. (Morreall 2009, ch. 5). Here humor often blocks compassion and responsible action. An egregious example is the cover of the July 1974 National Lampoon magazine, titled the “Dessert Issue.” A few years earlier George Harrison and other musicians had organized a charity concert to benefit the victims of a famine in Bangladesh. From it they produced the record album Concert for Bangladesh . The album cover featured a photograph of a starving child with a begging bowl. The photo on the cover of National Lampoon ’s “Dessert Issue” was virtually the same, only it was of a chocolate sculpture of a starving child, with part of the head bitten off.

Having sketched an account of humor as play with words and ideas, we need to go further in order to counter the Irrationality Objection, especially since that play is based on violating mental patterns and expectations. What must be added is an explanation of how playfully violating mental patterns and expectations could foster rationality rather than undermine it.

Part of rationality is thinking abstractly—in a way that is not tied to one’s immediate experience and individual perspective. If at a dinner party I spill a blob of ketchup on my shirt that looks like a bullet hole, I could be locked into a Here/Now/Me/Practical mode in which I think only about myself and my soiled shirt. Or I could think about embarrassing moments like this as experienced by millions of people over the centuries. More abstract still would be to think, as the Buddha did, about how human life is full of problems.

In the lower animals, mental processing is not abstract but tied to present experience, needs, and opportunities. It is about nearby predators, food, mates, etc. When something violates their expectations, especially something involving a potential or actual loss, their typical reaction is fear, anger, disgust, or sadness. These emotions evolved in mammals and were useful for millions of years because they motivate adaptive behavior such as fighting, fleeing, avoiding noxious substances, withdrawing from activity, and avoiding similar situations in the future.

Fear, anger, disgust, and sadness are still sometimes adaptive in humans: A snarling dog scares us, for example, and we move away quickly, avoiding a nasty bite. We scream and poke the eyes of a mugger, and he runs off. But if human mental development had not gone beyond such emotions, with their Here/Now/Me/Practical focus, we would not have become rational animals. What early humans needed was a way to react to the violation of their expectations that transcended their immediate experience and their individual perspective. Humorous amusement provided that. In the humorous frame of mind, we experience, think about, or even create something that violates our understanding of how things are supposed to be. But we suspend the personal, practical concerns that lead to negative emotions, and enjoy the oddness of what is occurring. If the incongruous situation is our own failure or mistake, we view it in the way we view the failures and mistakes of other people. This perspective is more abstract, objective, and rational than an emotional perspective. As the theme song of the old Candid Camera television program used to say, we “see ourselves as other people do.” Instead of tensing up and preparing to run away or attack, we relax and laugh. In laughter, as Wallace Chafe said in The Importance of Not Being Earnest (2007), not only do we not do anything, but we are disabled as we lose muscle control in our torsos, arms, and legs. In extremely heavy laughter, we fall on the floor and wet our pants.

The nonpractical attitude in humor would not be beneficial, of course, if I were in imminent danger. If instead of ketchup, I spilled sulfuric acid on my shirt, the Here/Now/Me/Practical narrow focus of fear would be preferable to the disengaged, playful attitude of humor. When immediate action is called for, humor is no substitute. But in many situations where our expectations are violated, no action would help. In the Poetics (5, 1449a) Aristotle said that what is funny is “a mistake or unseemliness that is not painful or destructive.” But people have joked about problems as grave as their own impending death. As he approached the gallows, Thomas More asked the executioner, “Could you help me up. I’ll be able to get down by myself.” On his deathbed, the story goes, Oscar Wilde said: “This wallpaper is atrocious. One of us has to go.”

Not only does such joking foster rationality and provide pleasure, but it reduces or eliminates the combination of fear and/or anger called “stress,” which is at epidemic levels in the industrialized world. In fear and anger, chemicals such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol are released into the blood, causing an increase in muscle tension, heart rate, and blood pressure, and a suppression of the immune system. Those physiological changes evolved in earlier mammals as a way to energize them to fight or flee, and in early humans, they were usually responses to physical dangers such as predators or enemies. Today, however, our bodies and brains react in the same way to problems that are not physically threatening, such as overbearing bosses and work deadlines. The increased muscle tension, the spike in blood pressure, and other changes in stress not only do not help us with such problems, but cause new ones such as headaches, heart attacks, and cancer. When in potentially stressful situations we shift to the play mode of humor, our heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension decrease, as do levels of epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. Laughter also increases pain tolerance and boosts the activity of the immune system, which stress suppresses (Morreall 1997, ch. 4; Morreall 2016, ch. 5–6).

A century ago, when psychologists still talked like philosophers, an editorial in the American Journal of Psychology (October 1907) said of humor that “Perhaps its largest function is to detach us from our world of good and evil, of loss and gain, and to enable us to see it in proper perspective. It frees us from vanity, on the one hand, and from pessimism, on the other, by keeping us larger than what we do, and greater than what can happen to us.”

While there is only speculation about how humor developed in early humans, we know that by the late 6 th century BCE the Greeks had institutionalized it in the ritual known as comedy, and that it was performed with a contrasting dramatic form known as tragedy. Both were based on the violation of mental patterns and expectations, and in both the world is a tangle of conflicting systems where humans live in the shadow of failure, folly, and death. Like tragedy, comedy represents life as full of tension, danger, and struggle, with success or failure often depending on chance factors. Where they differ is in the responses of the lead characters to life’s incongruities. Identifying with these characters, audiences at comedies and tragedies have contrasting responses to events in the dramas. And because these responses carry over to similar situations in life, comedy and tragedy embody contrasting responses to the incongruities in life. (Morreall 1999, ch. 1–4).

Tragedy valorizes serious, emotional engagement with life’s problems, even struggle to the death. Along with epic, it is part of the Western heroic tradition that extols ideals, the willingness to fight for them, and honor. The tragic ethos is linked to patriarchy and militarism—many of its heroes are kings and conquerors—and it valorizes what Conrad Hyers (1996) calls Warrior Virtues—blind obedience, the willingness to kill or die on command, unquestioning loyalty, single-mindedness, resoluteness of purpose, and pride.

Comedy, by contrast, embodies an anti-heroic, pragmatic attitude toward life’s incongruities. From Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 , comedy has mocked the irrationality of militarism and blind respect for authority. Its own methods of handling conflict include deal-making, trickery, getting an enemy drunk, and running away. As the Irish saying goes, you’re only a coward for a moment, but you’re dead for the rest of your life. In place of Warrior Virtues, it extols critical thinking, cleverness, adaptability, and an appreciation of physical pleasures like eating, drinking, and sex.

Along with the idealism of tragedy goes elitism. The people who matter are kings, queens, and generals. In comedy there are more characters and more kinds of characters, women are more prominent, and many protagonists come from lower classes. Everybody counts for one. That shows in the language of comedy, which, unlike the elevated language of tragedy, is common speech. The basic unit in tragedy is the individual, in comedy it is the family, group of friends, or bunch of co-workers.

While tragic heroes are emotionally engaged with their problems, comic protagonists show emotional disengagement. They think, rather than feel, their way through difficulties. By presenting such characters as role models, comedy has implicitly valorized the benefits of humor that are now being empirically verified, such as that it is psychologically and physically healthy, it fosters mental flexibility, and it serves as a social lubricant. With a few exceptions like Aquinas, philosophers have ignored these benefits.

If philosophers wanted to undo the traditional prejudices against humor, they might consider the affinities between one contemporary genre of comedy—standup comedy—and philosophy itself. There are at least seven. (Morreall 2009, ch. 7). First, standup comedy and philosophy are conversational: like the dialogue format that started with Plato, standup routines are interactive. Second, both reflect on familiar experiences, especially puzzling ones. We wake from a vivid dream, for example, not sure what has happened and what is happening. Third, like philosophers, standup comics often approach puzzling experiences with questions. “If I thought that dream was real, how do I know that I’m not dreaming right now?” The most basic starting point in both philosophy and standup comedy is “X—what’s up with that ?” Fourth, as they think about familiar experiences, both philosophers and comics step back emotionally from them. Henri Bergson (1900 [1911]) spoke of the “momentary anesthesia of the heart” in laughter. Emotional disengagement long ago became a meaning of “philosophical”—“rational, sensibly composed, calm, as in a difficult situation.” Fifth, philosophers and standup comics think critically. They ask whether familiar ideas make sense, and they refuse to defer to authority and tradition. It was for his critical thinking that Socrates was executed. So were cabaret comics in Germany who mocked the Third Reich. Sixth, in thinking critically, philosophers and standup comics pay careful attention to language. Attacking sloppy and illogical uses of words is standard in both, and so is finding exactly the right words to express an idea. Seventh, the pleasure of standup comedy is often like the pleasure of doing philosophy. In both we relish new ways of looking at things and delight in surprising thoughts. Cleverness is prized. William James (1911 [1979], 11) said that philosophy “sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar.” The same is true of standup comedy. Simon Critchley has written that both ask us to “look at things as if you had just landed from another planet” (2002, 1).

One recent philosopher attuned to the affinity between comedy and philosophy was Bertrand Russell. “The point of philosophy,” he said, “is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it” (1918, 53). In the middle of an argument, he once observed, “This seems plainly absurd: but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities” (2008 [1912], 17).

Often writing for popular audiences, Russell had many quips that would fit nicely into a comedy routine:

The fundamental cause of trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt“ (1998, 28).
Most people would die sooner than think—in fact they do so” (1925a, 166).
Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents“ (1950, 71).
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true” (1925b, 75).

For more examples of the affinities between comedy and philosophy, there is a series of books on philosophy and popular culture from Open Court Publishing that includes: Seinfeld and Philosophy (2002), The Simpsons and Philosophy (2001), Woody Allen and Philosophy (2004), and Monty Python and Philosophy (2006). Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein have written Plato and a Platypus Walked into a Bar … : Understanding Philosophy through Jokes (2008), and Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between (2009). In philosophy of mind, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams (2011) have used humor to explain the development of the human mind. In aesthetics, Noël Carroll (1999, 2003, 2007, 2013) has written about philosophical implications of comedy and humor, and about their relationships with the genre of horror. The journals Philosophy East and West (1989), the Monist (2005), and Educational Philosophy and Theory (2014) have published special issues on humor. The ancient prejudices against humor that started with Plato are finally starting to crumble.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Humor , article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
Noël Carroll on humor , in Philosophy Bites .
Philosophical Humour , links on Philosophy Now website.
The Philosophy of Laughter and Smiling , by George Vasey, 1875; a Victorian attack on laughter. (There are also links to William Hazlitt’s “On Wit and Humour” (1818) and Benjamin Franklin’s Fart Proudly (1781).).

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Humor / The Benefits of Humor: A Research

The Benefits of Humor: A Research

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