Why do we laugh?

I think most of us realise how important humour is in our daily lives. It influences the form of entertainment and media we consume, the people we hang out with, even the people we date. But throughout history humour has often been a very understudied area of philosophy. A lot of reasons were responsible for this, but I guess the main ones were the difficulty and the inherent non-serious nature of the subject. Neuroscience did not shy away from it and hence we have some understanding of the chemical reactions that makes us laugh, but then very little understanding of what may or may not trigger these reactions. Slowly, this tide is shifting and surfing on the waves of some of these theories of humour, in this post, I explore my outlook on it.

Theories of Humour

The Greeks, Plato and Aristotle felt that humour was a form of soft narcissism. It was our mind expressing happiness that the person falling in the manhole was not us, a feeling of superiority at the misfortune of others. While this might explain why roasts and slapstick humour is funny, it fails in all other forms. Relatable funny memes might make you feel superior to the ones whom it does not apply to, but that isn't the source of the comedy. Similarly, we perceive good, funny puns as witty, the sense of superiority is completely absent there.

It's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things, literally.

Then there is the incongruity theory, and Kant's interpretation is the most famous one. He claimed that the comic is "the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." Building up tension and then with a clever ruse dissipating it draaws laughs (which some psychologists claim is just nervous laughter). Knock-knock jokes create suspense, stand up comics weave a story. The entire construct of "punchline" follows some kind of resolution. Most of the humour we have can be interpreted in some form in the framework of this theory. So it is a good one, but a simpler interpretation is also available. 

A woman is sitting at her recently deceased husband’s funeral. A man leans into her and asks, “Do you mind if I say a word?”.

“No, go right ahead”, the woman replies.

The man stands, clears his throat, says “Plethora”, and sits back down.

“Thanks”, the woman says, “that means a lot”.

 One of the newer theories and (in my opinion) a more complete one is the benign violation theory.

It's the brainchild of Dr Peter McGraw and the Humour research lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. In essence, this theory states that for something to be humourous, it has to be perceived as a violation, as well as being benign at the same time. A violation is anything out of the ordinary, a situation that is wrong or threatening or absurd (we can see some parallels here with the incongruity theory). Benign, in the literal sense of the word is something that is not harmful. Something acceptable or okay. When we experience a violation, but also are aware that it is benign, we find it humorous. Take the example of the joke above. The violation is the man just saying one word instead of paying his respects. The play with meaning, the woman's response is all part of the absurd, a violation. What makes it benign is that there is no ill intent, or disrespect, and the whole situation is distant from us mentally. The woman, her dead husband, and the man are characters in a story. The woman, thanking him and replying with "that means a lot" adds to the benign nature of the joke. The balance between benign and violation is often complex, but in anything humourous, it is there.

The appeal of dad jokes

When does a joke become a dad joke?

When it becomes apparent.

Now we might be able to adequately explain why dad jokes work. Dad jokes are identifiable by their over-simplistic humour, often also enticing a negative reaction (I heard your groans after the last one). When dad jokes get affectionately mocked or mockingly appreciated online, they’re often characterized as ultimately harmless but only barely clever. In general, we sometimes find bad jokes funny "because of how bad they are". This is because in modern society humour is plentiful and often complex. In such a setting, simplistic humour is out of place. Yes, simple humour is a violation. The violation aspect increases based on how bad a joke is, and it keeps the benign aspect. That's maybe why memes are getting so absurd and meaningless, the absurdity makes things that were not a violation, a violation. Deep frying probably owes all it's comedic value to this phenomenon. 

Wordplay and puns are the violations, but just words that don't hurt you. They are plays on meanings, something out of the ordinary. For kids who are exposed to a lot of dad jokes, the violation aspect decreases. Also, getting embarrassed in front of others might also take away the benign part of their father's dad jokes. Getting annoyed is also a reduction in benign-ness, which results in the feeling we call "cringe". Hence the dad jokes gain their infamy. But we all enjoy a bit of "Hi hungry, I'm dad" from time to time.

 

Dark Humour

The Buddha walks up to a hotdog stand and says, "make me one with everything".

 What this framework does better than others is that it gives a perspective on dark humour. Dark Humour is characterised by its offensiveness.  What makes it stick to some people and not to others is the very personal nature of what we think is benign. Every person, based on their experiences has a different understanding of what they think is harmless and what they do not. Words are not always harmless, here we have to keep in mind that the harm can be mental as well. So a joke about dead babies can be very harmful to someone who just miscarried.  There is no benign-ness, and the joke loses all humour, it turns into a mean comment. Religious people are a prime example of how this works, a joke about Jesus is not benign to Christians but the Hindus might love it, but then the same Christians might go about cracking jokes on Muslims, which is benign for them, it's harmless for them as it's not about their religion.

There are people, who can handle being roasted and people who can't. It's just because there's a difference between what hurts each individual. The tolerance capacity is different, hence the things they find funny is different too. Liking dark humour does not make you a bad person, and not liking it doesn't mean you are lame. What would make you a bad person, is not considering the tolerance level or the background of the person in front of you before you crack dark jokes. You should understand what things are bound to hurt them, and hence will not be funny to them. But then if misogyny, homophobia and racism are also benign to you, then maybe you should rethink your outlook on life and how unempathetic or unaware you might be to the troubles of other people (privilege might have to do something with that). There's nothing wrong or uncool about not finding hurtful things funny.  Everyone should try to be aware that the joke they are making is benign to their audience.

Trolls, trolling is also a form of modern humour which just involves saying mean things to others with the motive of upsetting them. These are people who do not have empathy, so they can't understand the hurt faced by their 'targets'. This makes their attacks benign to them, they dissociate with the pain felt by others. And of course, it's a violation, hence it's funny. Hence, we have cyber bullying and even regular school bullying. But it's funny only to them and mean in the eyes of everyone else.

It's okay to have a dark sense of humour, as long as you maintain your sense of empathy and understand how your words can make people feel. 

Why humour?

What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?

One of the questions I have always thought about is why we, as a species have humour? What is the evolutionary advantage of it?
Most theories say humour is sexually selected (seems pretty common in the modern age too). Humour might have developed as a sense of what is benign and what is not. Violations were plenty during human evolution, predators, weather, a plethora of problems. And our bodies had reactions to deal with these problems when we felt them coming. But it would have got too resource-intensive to react to every false alarm. Humour, a sense of what threat isn't actually a threat would then have helped our ancestors decide where to put their energy. This might have been the evolutionary advantage of humour. Also, it is social, so being near a person with a good sense of humour would help everyone in the group.

So how to be funnier? If you are a social person, a talkative one, then you would inevitably end up introducing small violations in what you say. To be funny, you have to make sure that these violations are mentally distant in terms of time, space or emotional attachment to the people around you. You have to make them benign. Otherwise, if you're less talkative, try to introduce small violations, find your humour in meta comments on the society and established ideas. I'm no comedy expert and it takes practice to make violations feel benign by the way you frame and present a joke, that is what a stand-up comic and comedy writer gets paid to do.

 

Confession:- This post was actually just an excuse for me to share my favourite jokes with you all.

 Peter McGraw's website with his research papers.
An excellent, but much longer essay on the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
The dadjokes subreddit for all your dadjoke needs.