After 2.5 millennia of philosophical deliberation and psychological experimentation, most scholars have concluded that humor arises from incongruity. We highlight 2 limitations of incongruity theories of humor. First, incongruity is not consistently defined. The literature describes incongruity in at least 4 ways: surprise, juxtaposition, atypicality, and a violation. Second, regardless of definition, incongruity alone does not adequately differentiate humorous from nonhumorous experiences. We suggest revising incongruity theory by proposing that humor arises from a benign violation: something that threatens a person's well-being, identity, or normative belief structure but that simultaneously seems okay. Six studies, which use entertainment, consumer products, and social interaction as stimuli, reveal that the benign violation hypothesis better differentiates humorous from nonhumorous experiences than common conceptualizations of incongruity. A benign violation conceptualization of humor improves accuracy by reducing the likelihood that joyous, amazing, and tragic situations are inaccurately predicted to be humorous. (PsycINFO Database Record

background

Taking laughter seriously

Differentiating what is humorous from what is not.

https://www.tau.ac.il/~giorar/files/Giora91_Cognitive_aspect_of_Joke.pdf

On the cognitive aspects of the joke

Shared laughter is a powerful way to reinforce learning, and it helps to make tasks less laborious and threatening. When students and teach ers are questioned about what elements make learning exciting and effective, a "sense of humor" appears high on the list with other democratic, humanistic characteristics (Bryant, Comisky, Crane, and Zillman 1980). The sense of humor is an elusive, seemingly inborn affective trait; its association with learning ap pears more linked with anecdote, myth, and naive optimism than with experi mental findings. Yet, research does exist in which humor has been empirically and descriptively explored in childhood education and psychology literature. Humor as a diagnostic and facilitating strategy for college teaching and learn ing is only now being investigated. Stu dents and teachers with a sense of humor

Humor in the Classroom: Considerations and Strategies.

The book contains a preface and an introduction, and then the rest is divided into three sections: Part 1, 'How we laugh', Part 2, 'Why we laugh', and Part 3, 'Pulling things together'. The volume closes with references and a combined index of both names and subjects. In his introduction, C relates laughter to a feeling of nonseriousness often elicited by a percep- tion of pseudo-plausibility in a state of affairs, which we ultimately exclude from our (serious) vision of how things are. Pseudo-plausibility has been called 'local logic', 'sense in nonsense', or 'appropriate inappropriateness' by other writers on humor. In Part 1, C concerns himself with the articulatory and acoustic phonetics of laughter, with special sections on varieties of laughter and laughing while speaking. His findings are based on recordings from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. Audio samples of the data analyzed are available at C's website. By contrast, with questionable claims by Provine (2000) about the sounds of laughter, C demonstrates, in consonance with Bachorowski, Smoski, and Owren (2001), that the vowels of laughter are within the mid-central range, or very close to schwa. C finds no phonetic basis for the folk tradition of distinguishing laughs like heehee, haha, hoho and the like, and similar transcriptions of laughter, especially those following Jefferson 1985 and others in the conversational analysis tradition. By contrast with past writers, C demonstrates the phonetic complexity and individual character of laughter along with the significance of the final inhalation to replenish air in the lungs. His description of laughing while speaking breaks new ground in focusing on specific features of laughter like tremolo and creaky voice. Still, it seems odd that C spends so much time on the phonetics of laughter in such a relatively brief book, given that his purpose is to investigate the feeling behind laughter and humor. It would have served his theoretical purpose simply to have shown that laughter is physically disabling and that laughter prevents us from acting in serious ways—just as the psychological state of nonseriousness prevents us from thinking in serious ways. The rest of the discussion simply serves to fill in the picture of how human laughter works, sounds, and interacts with speech. C further relates laughter to smiling, and discusses internal changes in the body during laughter, interaction with the brain, and the often-claimed positive effect of laughter on health. The second part of the book focuses on the feeling behind laughter and humor. C discusses emotions and their description, and the evolution of the feeling of nonseriousness in a Darwinian vein, just as one might speculate why humans developed a behavior like crying or why cats developed purring. Then there is a long consideration of nonseriousness without humor. On the one hand, laughter is not the only possible reaction to the feeling of nonseriousness; on the other

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/toc/z2009_44.pdf

The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling Behind Laughter and Humor

Humor, a communicative tactic used to engender support, is often employed, but rarely understood. Literature in the field of humor has attempted to define situations where humor could be beneficial. Even today few definitive answers exist relating humor to effective leadership communicative behavior. Thus, the purpose of this research is to present current research findings about the symbolic nature of leadership as enacted through humor.Initially, this research details the important symbolic realm within which leaders work. Next, some of the relevant literature dealing with humor is discussed. Specifically, humor is defined and the purposes of humor are elaborated. This research also reviews contemporary leadership literature dealing with humor. Finally, this research evaluates the appropriateness of each form of humor and specific guidelines for effective humor are discussed.

Taking laughter seriously

Citations

Differentiating what is humorous from what is not.

On the cognitive aspects of the joke

Humor in the Classroom: Considerations and Strategies.

The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling Behind Laughter and Humor

Theory and Implications Regarding the Utilization of Strategic Humor by Leaders

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