Some of you thought the clip on the boat where the lady ran into a pole made the clip not funny. He is a clip where people don't get hurt - is this funny & why?
Is People Not Getting Hurt is Funny? Why or Why Not?
No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: http://www.psychologicalscience.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/1857
I think that a couple of these clips are funny just because they are SO close to getting hurt. But if any of these people actually did get hurt, these accidents would have been seriously bad, so in these cases, I think it's actually funnier that they didn't get hurt. I agree with what the book said about the type of humor where people get hurt in that it has to be a medium amount. It's not as funny if they just get a little hurt, and it's not funny at all (to me any way) if they get seriously hurt. But it's the funniest when it's right in between the two. Kind of like most of the videos we see on shows like America's Funniest Home Videos.
Excellent! I thought the video was hilarious but I think that at least part of my enjoyment from the clip occurred because I was contrasting it to the video last week in which people were getting hurt. With the thought of pain in my head it was easy to find amusement when the people were able to avoid that pain. I think this video is evidence against Gruner's superiority theory. Here we are laughing not because we are above someone on the social ladder, but because we are just happy to see that no one was hurt. Maybe an element that Gruner forgot to consider was human compassion. The last clip with the bank robbers and the police was hilarious. I think it was for a different reason. It was like world's dumbest cops instead of world's dumbest criminals.
I think thought that this video was extremely funny; however, funny in a way that you are anticipating some one to get hurt and are relieved when the person is not hurt. I did not think the video was necessarily laugh out loud funny, except for the last clip of the robbers getting away because I laughed out loud for that one. I suppose the anticipation being felt may have something to do with the nervous energy Herbert Spencer theorized in 1860 that was later adopted by Sigmund Freud for his Psychoanalytic Theory. Even though I do not agree with the overall theories by Spender or Freud, I understand where the two men came up with the idea for supporting this notion of nervous energy. One reason that I think I found this video to be so funny was because I have been in ten car accidents myself, but have never had a scratch on me (knock on wood). I have even totaled a car two different times, so I consider myself to be pretty lucky as well.
I thought this clip was amusing, but most of them weren't really that funny to me. I think the title kind of ruined it for me because there was no element of surprise, you knew that even if it looked like these individuals were going to be hit by a car, fall off a building or be seriously injured other ways,that they would just barely escape this. I did think the last little part of this video was funny, because when I saw the guys jump into the car, and then the cops pulling up, my initial thought was that the cops were going to pull up just in time to catch them, but they ran right past them.
Why I think this video sequence is enjoyable and funny people is based on the incongruity theory. What happens in the situation is unbelievable and unexpected, but in a good way. You think there is no way that this person will be ok, and the surprisingly they are. This sparks good positive reactions from the viewer and thus we find most of the videos to be humorous.
I thought some of the clips were more amazing than funny because they people were not killed in some of these instances. I did laugh at the last one though with the robbers and cops though.
A couple of these segments were funny especially the Robbers jumping in the get away car while the police went inside to find them!!! But I think that sometimes amazing humor can be obtained from people getting extremely hurt because there doing something they had no business doing. This can be seen in this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KpE3lT9uxQ
If you watch this and don't bust out laughing I don't know what to tell ya. Its funny because only BOO BOO THE FOO would do something that dumb!!!! LOL