After reading chapter 4 please respond to the following questions:
Of the various aspects of the cognitive psychology of humor presented in the chapter, which did you find the most interesting? Why? Which did you find least interesting? Why? What are three things you read about in the chapter that you think will be the most useful for you in understanding the psychology of humor? Why?
Which of parts of the cognitive psychology aspects fit best into the Theory "Z" your group came up with (make sure you say what group it was)? Which fit least and why?
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Please use spaces between your paragraphs to make your post easier to read - thanks in advance.
Let me know if you have any questions.
As you may know, I find things most interesting and comprehend things best if they coincide with my life. Because of this, I found the section on irony and sarcasm to be the most enjoyable section to read. I particularly found the last few pages of this section (pg. 99-100) relevant because I use a lot of irony and sarcasm in my everyday life, but have never thought about it in the context of being less/more humorous depending on the sex of the person emitting humor. According to the text, it is cognitively easier to interpret irony and sarcasm when coming from a male, whereas it is cognitively more difficult when coming from a female. After thinking about it, it really is not too surprising that this is the case considering we live in a sexist society. I also thought it was interesting that this concept holds true for certain job titles. The book states that comedians (surprise, surprise) and factory workers are stereotypically more sarcastic than professions that are thought of being more serious (teachers, priests, etc.) and therefore, it takes less time to cognitively “get” a joke from a comedian or factory worker.
In my life, I have run across some contradictions to the above statements. For example, I took some classes two summers ago at the community college in my town and had a priest who taught my Ethics class. Before going to the class, I had a preconceived notion that I would have a rigid teacher who was intolerant of others’ opinions. After arriving to the first of class though, I realized I was wrong in stereotyping him because he acted far different than you would think any priest would. Because he acted nothing like what I thought he should or would act like, I thought he was hilarious because his humor and his social status were incongruous.
This chapter has taught me that humor and creativity are, on some levels, interconnected. I guess it probably requires some degree of creativity in order to think of an incongruous joke as well as cognitively comprehend an incongruous joke. This coincides with the first mechanism thought to link creativity and humor. The other mechanism thought to link creativity and humor is that humor reduces stress, which in turn, fosters creativity.
Another concept I will remember is the link between humor and memory. I have experienced many times in my life where I will remember things based on anything funny that happened at the time. According to the text, humor may help improve memory by heightening one’s awareness causing them to pay more attention and ultimately remember the situation, by eliciting more rehearsal behaviors, and by associating positive emotions with the situation. This section reminded me of the video we watched in class where the drunk guy was trying to recite and retell a historical event. Along with the video, it was brought up that maybe if more professors taught history like this drunk man (without being drunk), people would be able to remember the facts and events. Because humor is somewhat used as a mnemonic device, it may very well be that a humorous teaching style could be effective.
Lastly, I will remember that there are two types of irony: ironic insults and ironic compliments. Ironic insults are statements that are meant to be critical but instead are pleasant in nature. To me, these ironic insults may have underlying aggression described by the psychoanalytic theory of humor. An example of an ironic insult would be saying, “You’re so thoughtful” but really, the person forgot it was your birthday or saying “Great idea!” when really, the idea is completely horrible. The other type of irony, ironic compliments, are statements said negatively but are meant to be positive. An example of a ironic compliment would be saying “Too bad you couldn’t find anything your size today” when really, the person has three bags full of clothes.
Overall, this chapter relates to my group’s PSSC “Z” theory because we think that humor basically does not exist unless you are able to cognitively comprehend and understand the humor at hand. Because this chapter emphasized the cognitive processes that are necessary in order to comprehend incongruous humor (which according to the book, is the “basis of all humor”), I think it ties in well with our idea that cognition is a vital ingredient in the humor process.
I really enjoyed the correlation of humor and memory. The book emphasized four different reasons why humorous material might be remembered more easily than non-humorous material. These reasons are the positive emotion that humor evokes from individuals, the attention that humor draws to the stimuli, the fact that it might be repeated more often than non-humorous material, and because an individual might be more biased to retrieve humorous material before material that is not humorous. One study that the book mentioned used cartoons. People who watched funny cartoons could recall them better later than those who watched weird, not funny versions of pretty much the same cartoon. This is a concept that advertisers use daily, trying to influence us to remember what their product is, making us more likely to purchase it. This is also important in the field of education, because when people learn things and have fun learning this material, it is more likely that they will remember it later on, like during a test. I thought that it was beneficial that the book also covered why people sometimes forget a joke, even though they find it funny and that is because they remember the gist of it, but not the set up as much. I find myself doing this all the time, because when I try and retell a joke, I forget little parts of it and then try to work backwards from the punch line and it ends up taking me forever to tell it, which usually results in ruining the humor behind it.
I was kind of disappointed in the section on Semantic Priming Techniques. I was excited to read it because in a book that I recently read for another class, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, he discussed how when people are primed, sometimes they act in uncharacteristic ways. The study that Gladwell referenced was done by John Bargh, where participants were asked to look at a list of sets of five words and using those words, take four and make them a logical sentence. When Bargh did this study where all the sets of words contained a word that was related to the elderly (sets that contained words like grey, Florida, wrinkled, bingo, old, etc.) he found that after the participants finished the study, they walked slower than they had prior to completing this task. He also modified this study to contain words that either were aggressive (rush, intrude, bold, disturb) and more polite words (such as patient, considerate, respect, and courteous). He then told the participants that they would need to go to a different room where there would be someone with instructions for them to follow. When the participants found this individual, he or she was talking to another individual. Those who had been primed with the more aggressive words interrupted them quickly. Those who had been primed with the polite words not only took longer to interrupt, but in most cases, never interrupted at all. I was hoping that this section of the text would elaborate on how priming might influence what an individual finds funny, but it did not. I don’t think that it really correlated humor and priming at all, except that it did show how long people might take to recognize different schemas. I think that this would be a really interesting field of research for future psychologists to look into.
I think the section on irony and sarcasm was very useful because it is the type that is probably most prevalent in our daily lives. Irony and sarcasm both rely on conveying the opposite of what is actually said, although sarcasm usually depends on personally attacking someone. I thought that it was kind of common sense that ironic compliments might be seen as less polite as literal compliments, but thought it was interesting that ironic insults were more polite than literal insults. I would think those would be about even.
I also really liked the section on the Computational Approaches of Humor. I thought it was interesting how the rules of making a joke, based on alternate meanings and comparisons, could be programmed into the JAPE and it would produce a limitless amount of jokes. Although these jokes weren’t funnier than jokes that humans made, and were only sometimes rated as equally funny, even children age eight to eleven could still identify that these were jokes.
I also thought it was interesting how there was so much research being done about the linguistics of humor, although this section eventually lost me. Those who research the linguistics of humor are focused on many different subfields, like speech sounds, grammar, the meaning of language, and the rules for appropriate social use in certain contexts. The author focused a lot on semantics, which is the language meaning and how there are often different scripts. One example the book gave was where the patient asked the doctor’s wife if the doctor was home. The wife took his sick voice as a whisper and so she whispered to him to come in. The two different scripts here are that of the patient and that of the wife. The joke can be read in both scripts and the fact that they are different is what makes the joke funny.
My “Z” theory group was the Equilibrium group and I think that this chapter relates a lot to the idea of cognitive play. We emphasized that humor happens cognitively and in a social (or pseudo-social) aspect and it is just used as a playful, nonserious way of interacting with each other. Humor brings pleasure to the person who is being humorous because the group is enjoying them and they might feel acceptance within the group and is also pleasurable to those who hear or see these humorous events.
Overall, I found this entire chapter to be really interesting, which made it hard to choose just a few aspects that were interesting. I think this whole chapter was interesting because it tied in all of the previous chapters, making it easier to understand the previous theories and concepts mentioned before. Also, I enjoyed reading about Wyer and Collins’ views of schemas. I found these views interesting because I agreed on many of their concepts. For example, I agree that humor is greatest when an intermediate amount of time and effort is required to identify and apply the concepts necessary to get the joke. I also agree with their idea that jokes that don’t take a long time to process and that are easy to understand aren’t as humorous as funny ones. I feel that the jokes that are easy to interpret don’t leave any room for the imagination. Lastly, I also liked how Wyer and Collin took humor into more of a social context, rather than focusing on just the joke.
I believe that the computational section in this chapter was the least interesting because according to my knowledge we already established in class that it is almost impossible to measure humor. I agree with the book though when it claims that human judges can determine whether the output of the program is humorous; mainly because I don’t think a computer can establish if something is funny or not.
One of the concepts I will remember from the chapter is the difference between ironic insults and ironic compliments. Ironic compliments are statements that are said in a negative manner, but are meant to be positive. Ironic insults are statements that are meant to be critical but instead are pleasant in nature. I think these are useful because they relate to my life, thus making it easier to understand the psychology of humor. I also believe that there is an underlying aggression with these definitions, which relates directly to the psychology of humor.
Another concept I believe is useful is the linguistic section. I enjoyed reading this section and believe it will be useful to the psychology. I thought it was interesting how a lot of the focus was put on semantics, and the goals of the theory. The goal of the theory was to provide a model that was capable of making sense of a humorous text.
My “Z” theory was the anti-freud/evolutionary theory. Out of the aspects listed in the text, the view that humor is a cognitive play is the aspect that agrees most with my “Z” theory. The cognitive play of humor promotes a positive feeling of mirth, therefore promoting individuals to participate in the activity. The cognitive play of humor elicits a positive emotion of mirth, therefore individuals would be able to communicate more freely and be more creative. I also think that the linguistic section relates to my theory because in order for evolution to happen, communication has to be present.
The aspect that I found most interesting in the chapter on cognitive psychology of humor is in reference to schemas. According to the text, cognitive psychologists have conducted a vast amount of research on the way knowledge is represented and organized into our minds. These studies suggest that information is organized in knowledge structures called schemas. A schema is an active mental representation that enables us to build mental models of the world. Specifically, the researcher Mandler states that a schema is “formed on the basis of past experience with objects, scenes, or events and consists of a set of expectations about what things look like and/or the order in which they occur. I find this interesting because of its application to humor. In the text it says that most of the time while hearing a joke being setup a schema or script is activated. This enables us to make sense of the incoming information, perhaps due to our previous experience with the type of information. It seems essential for an individual to have the cognitive capability or previous experience for a joke to be able to understand the joke at hand.
I couldn’t really find any aspect of this chapter to be more uninteresting than the rest, so something else I found interesting was when the text mentions a computer program that has the ability to generate riddles (computational methods of humor section). Two researchers by the name of Binsted and Ritchie developed the JAPE (Joke Analysis and Production Engine) which creates a specific class of jokes known as punning riddles. These are question-answer jokes that are based on a pun; an example from the text, “What do you call a ferocious nude? A grizzly bare!” What’s neat is by programming these rules of this certain type of joke; the program has the possibility to generate a virtually limitless number of original riddles.
One piece of information that will be useful in understanding the psychology of humor would be the information regarding evolutionary theories of emotion. Researchers in this field suggest that the playful cognitive activity involved in humor likely evolved form mammalian rough-and-tumble social play. The purpose of this certain behavior is that it is beneficial for survival and reproduction, avoiding certain situations and approaching others. The associated positive emotion of mirth is what motivates individuals to engage in this activity. Another bit of useful information is in reference to humor and enhanced memory. A researcher by the name of Schmidt conducted an experiment that consists of humorous cartoons (original) and non-humorous cartoons (weird), and the recall ability of the two types of cartoons. Results showed that participants were better able to recall the gist of original cartoon than the weird versions of the same cartoon. The text states these findings propose that humor serves as a sort of mnemonic technique or memory aid, causing greater elaboration of information and therefore enhancing its transfer and storage in long-term memory. One more piece of useful information in understanding the psychology of humor would be to define the cognitive aspect. Cog. Psychology is concerned with mental representations of meaning and the mental processes that operate on those representations. According to the text, to understand humor cognitively then one must take an information processing approach. One must grasp how information is taken through the sensory organs, encoded, stored and retrieved from memory, and used in the comprehension and production of language, problem solving, creativity, decision making, and reasoning.
I feel the best fitting part of the cognitive psychology aspect in regard to our groups Z-theory (Anti-Freud/evolutionary) is that cognitive play of humor elicits the positive emotion of mirth and how this works into our evolution as a social being. This suggests that humor is this sort of flexible, exploratory cognitive behavior. Cognitive play of humor has an adaptive function for the purpose of its benefits to flexible thinking, creativity, and problem solving or as a means of facilitating social interaction and bonding. Our Z-theory sees humor as behavior that exists due to its benefits in our survival and successful relationships leading to reproduction.
The most interesting aspect of this chapter for me was reading about creativity and humor. Prior to reading this chapter, I had not learned or thought about how humor and creativity correlate and play into each other. It was interesting to learn that creativity researchers believe that the same elements that are necessary for humor are also necessary for creativity such as incongruity, surprise, and novelty. Its interesting to read how these two interact with each other yet some researchers believe that humor is a subset of creativity while other researchers believe that humor and creativity should be considered separate domains that overlap. I was especially interested in the experiment Avner Ziv conducted in which he compared scores of tenth graders who underwent one of two different conditions. Ziv had the students either listen to a recording of a popular comedian or participate in a serious activity without humor. After this experiment, he then compared the scores of verbal creativity. The results of the students who listened to the comedian had significantly higher scores of fluency, flexibility, and originality. This experiment was really interesting because it provided results that prove humor enhances creative thinking.
I enjoyed reading about irony and sarcasm and this part of the chapter will further help my understanding of humor. The most helpful and new idea in this section was learning how humor depends on the gender on the joke teller. Since males are perceived to be more likely to be sarcastic than females are, females have a tougher time telling a joke are more likely to be taken as a literal joke rather than sarcastic. This is helpful for me because I have experienced failed attempts of my own at telling a sarcastic joke whereas it seems to be very simple for males to use sarcasm on a daily basis.
Another part of this chapter I found to be helpful was learning more about the humors role on enhancing memory. This part of the chapter provided several studies that prove the positive effects humor has on memory. I especially enjoyed Schmidt and Williams study using cartoons because it was a new technique to read about rather than common method of using a comedian, funny jokes, or a funny story for participants. Lastly, this reading finally explained to me why it is so hard for us to recall a joke even when humor is suppose to help our memory. I now understand that humor helps us remember material but not details such as exact wording we struggle to remember in jokes.
The last part of the chapter that is going to help me understand humor is the computational approaches to humor section. I enjoyed this part of the reading and learned more about how the JAPE operates and provides punning riddles. This computer program uses rules about meaning combinations and text forms combined with the large language basis in the lexicon dictionary to generate riddles. The JAPE was interesting to read about and understand how technology can now have an influence on the future of humor
I was part of the "Swarm "Z" Theory" group. The aspect that relates to a view in our theory would be the sarcasm section. As I previously discussed, males have a more accepted role or dominant role when it comes to sarcastic jokes whereas female sarcastic jokes are taken more literal and take a longer time to process. This ties into the Swarm Theory that superiority involves aggression and usually has a dominent role. In this case, males are dominant in the sarcasm aspect of humor because females have a more difficult time using sarcasm.
In this chapter what I found most interesting was that of schemas, frames and scripts. We use schemas in our everyday lives, without even realizing it. Schemas are mental representations that enable us to build mental models of the world (pg.85). An example of this would be a dog, which would include variables such as types of breeds, tails, hair, and size. According to Mandler schemas are formed on the basis of past experience with objects, scenes, or events and consist of a set of (usually unconscious) expectations about what things look like and/or the order in which they occur. Basically schemas describe general characteristics of an event or object and contain variables that can assume a variety or particular instances. Like schemas, scripts and frames are a particular type of schema that relate to knowledge about routine activities and physical environments. A script organizes information about normal events we can characterize with certain activities and so forth…similar to a script except scripts when encoded the second time around doesn’t completely replace the first one, however, the two scripts are activated simultaneously. For example, a movie script…you would organize information and the sequence of events to going to a movie (buying tickets, buying popcorn and pop, finding a seat etc.). If someone were to say a zebra went to the movies, someone would have to rethink their script and associate it with something else for why a zebra was at the movies and so forth.
On the other hand I found computational approaches the least interesting because how can a computer generate or understand humor? That leaves no creativity for individuals, because part of a joke, or punch line has to do with a person’s sense of humor in whether they understand it or not. Another reason is that some people have a dry sense of humor while others do not, and how can a computer measure that. Also, I think a technology is a great thing but not for generating humor. Furthermore, many people encode humor differently.
One of the things I read about in this chapter that will become useful in understanding the psychology of humor is our memory ability. According to the book, “if only humorous material is presented, there is no apparent benefit for memory. However, the recall of humorous material appears to be at the expense of memory for nonhumorous information presented at the same time.” Overall, humorous information will be remembered better than nonhumorous information presented in the same context.
Another thing is linguistics. I never really understood what people with this profession did, but from reading the text it helped. People working in linguistics are interested in issues that concern the way humorous narratives (“texts”) are processed, understood and interpreted to be funny. It will be interesting to see if they do in the future develop a computer program to demonstrate and distinguish between humorous and nonhumorous scripts.
Lastly, but not least I will remember irony and sarcasm. To understand an ironic statement, the listener has to first activate the literal or salient meaning, then activate an unmarked interpretation and both these meaning remain activated in order for them to be prepared (pg. 99). When it comes to irony there are three rules to follow when engaging in conversation (relevance of topic, informative successive messages, and deviation between the two rules should be marked with a semantic corrected as “by the way or after all”).
My “Z” theory group was called PSSC. I think it fits well with this chapter due to the fact that all humor goes through a cognitive process. What we find humorous has to deal with our already developed schemas. Like Kayla stated cognitive processes are a necessity when it comes to comprehending incongruous humor. The only thing that was least fitted for our theory was that of the computational approach because how can a robot or computer distinguish true humor, that leaves no creativity or individuality if everything is computerized to tell us something is humorous…right?
In this chapter which primarily focuses on the role of cognition in humor, I found the section pertaining to memory the most interesting. It makes sense that when presented with lists of humorous and non humorous material that the humorous ones indeed would be better received with increased attention and rehearsal because of their entertainment value. I can’t recall how many times I have gone to tell a joke to someone and then stopped mid-sentence because I could not remember it word for word, and by the time that I do (if even at all) it has lost all humorous intention. Schmidt and Williams (2001) state that this is a phenomenon which occurs from us remembering that the joke is funny, but that we are unable to recall the specific details (exact wording) to re-tell it t someone else. It was interesting that the study conducted containing arousal elements such as sex and aggression in jokes enhanced memory effects. I think it is possible people may find these types of jokes more entertaining because of arousal theory; because the jokes are more “risqué” than simply a “clean, safe” joke may be the reason why they are remembered better.
I didn’t find the section on semantic distance very interesting let alone useful. It seems that this technique has many limitations. Although I did find the within-domain and between-domain process interesting for trying to explain measures of incongruities in jokes, it does not capture the full picture of why something is funny simply because certain words are thrown together. As the text states, “it assumes that cognitive organization is the same in all people, and, because mean ratings are averaged across large numbers of participants, it is difficult to study individual differences” (Martin, 2007). From a social standpoint, it is hard to tell based on word pairing what part is causing the humor to occur.
I can definitely relate to the schemas, frames, and scripts in relation to humor. In order for something to be humorous, we usually base it on a concept that is already familiar to us, not something we are learning for the first time. A topic that we have not encountered before is hard to incorporate with humor because we are centered on learning about the topic at hand, and we wouldn’t understand the joke is funny. I also think that I will take away an understanding of cognitive play and how it ties into positive emotion and adaptation strategies. The link between cognitive play and humor along with positive emotions may help to explain why some people are motivated in creativity and problem solving. Also, if someone is able to engage in humor easily and have positive emotions associated with their attitudes, they are usually dubbed as more “likable” and “fun to be around” thus, they will adapt better in the social environment. I am also able to take away an understanding on ironic humor a little better. It is interesting that the “positive” and “negative” statements are examined as opposites in the way they are seen by the other person, and how it can depend on the type of a relationship (family, close friends, acquaintances) that the statement is viewed. The text states that irony between close friends is more likely to be viewed as “friendly teasing” and less likely to take a toll on the relationship in comparison to an acquaintance, who may view the statement as an insult because they do not understand the person was “only joking.”
The concepts that fit best into the Theory “Z” which in our group’s case is the “Swarm” Theory are the memory, creativity, and humor as cognitive play because although they look at humor from a cognitive standpoint (which our group did not believe had a substantial role in humor), they also try to incorporate a more social aspect of humor, which is the basis for our theory (“birds of a feather flock together”). We also believe that superiority and aggression may play a small role, and the memory concept which relates to individuals being able to recall humor in jokes with sex and aggression more readily plays into this. I do not believe our theory would incorporate the concept of computational approaches to humor because here the human aspect is removed and replaced by means of technology. Using a program such as JAPE does not seem very practical to define how something is humorous. Although human test subjects are used to evaluate the program, it doesn’t seem like a realistic way to measure a concept that is abstract, such as humor, and it definitely does not tap into the social approach which encompasses the bulk of our theory.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this chapter a bit more because there were more approaches and subsets that related to the topic of humor instead of just a structured theory approach.
I found most interesting the first part of the chapter, which talked about schemas, scripts and frames. I already knew that schemas are a mental process which enables us to build mental models of the world, yet contain variables so that they can be pretty general. Frames and scripts, however, are a new concept. Frames are schemas that relate to the physical environment while scripts are routine activities and tell what is appropriate and evaluate people’s actions. I had never imagined that schemas would be such a broad term before. And the theory by Wyler and Collins fits in best with what we’ve been learning and my own personal idea of what is behind humor, based on what we’ve learned so far. Their theory stated that a joke activates to incongruent schemas. The idea that an intermediate time is needed to process also makes sense to me. The jokes on the back of a laffy taffy wrapper would be a minimal amount of processing time, and while I personally think those jokes are wonderful my friends are always somehow less amused by them. Also, I have always heard “if you have to explain the joke, its not funny.” So for me, everything in this theory checks out.
For me, what didn’t work so well was the linguistic approach. The script-based semantic theory did not seem to be very well developed, in my opinion. Again we’re dealing with the idea of two scripts being activated, and it gives the three categories of opposite scripts 1) Actual vs. Nonactual 2) Normal vs. Abnormal and 3) Possible vs. Impossible. While I still agree with the two scripts activated, I just felt like everything was a little vague and I would’ve liked there to be more to the theory. At this point it is everything that I’ve heard before and there were no new points, or interesting angles for me to look from, so I was unimpressed.
One new thing I learned was semantic distance. The three dimensions that people organize things by (generally) were 1) Activity (active-passive) 2) Evaluative (good/bad) and 3) Potency (strong-weak). These dimensions helped me to understand that semantic distances are things with similar meanings or ratings on this scale. Which helps judge how funny things are going to be according to the Linguistic Approach, which, coincidentally I didn’t like, but at least I understand it now.
Another new thing I learned, which was also a new angle for me to look from was about creativity. I had never associated it with humor, but the idea that they both involve a switch in perspective and that humor enhances creativity. This part I am a bit unsure about, because most of the jokes I tell I do not make up myself. I hear them from other people and pass them on to anyone who will listen. How does this make me more creative? I’m having trouble buying that point, but I think it is an interesting one.
I don’t suppose that humor as cognitive play is something newly learned, but I am interested, and already forming my own theories about how emotion and cognition both combine in humor. So cognitive play as a framework for integrating them is a very interesting topic for me that I hope we delve into more in this class!
My ‘Z’ theory is the “Swarm Theory” and I believe there are different pieces from this chapter that fit into our theory. A big part of our theory is social interaction, and humor by itself is social interaction. Scripts are one thing that evaluate social interaction, or behavior in social situations. Another social aspect is sarcasm. This was defined in the book as “bitter”…” and other ironic language usually directed toward an individual.” In this section was also Giora's Theory, which was compiled of three rules about conversation:
1) Relativeness Requirement
2) Graded Informativeness Requirement
3) Deviation should be ‘marked’ with “by the way” or other phrases
All these things are innately very social. The other part of our theory that ties in with the chapter is the superiority aspect, as Talee03 and bsue07 said earlier; sarcasm is mostly aggressive, even when shared in a friendly manner. It exudes a feeling of being superior every time it is said.
There were many parts of the chapter that have no place in our theory, such as schema, the semantics, and cognition. For the most part, there just wasn’t a category in our theory in which they could fit, and as far as cognition, there just isn’t much to the cognition aspect of our theory (It might be our theories fatal flaw).
Of all the aspects of cognitive humor that were talked about in this chapter, I enjoyed the section about cognitive processes in conversational humor on irony and sarcasm. I liked this section the most because I agree with what the book says that a lot of humor that we run into everyday isn’t usually in the form of jokes—it’s spontaneous, conversational, or accidental humor. When I think of things that make me laugh, there aren’t very many specific jokes that come to my mind, it’s different things that happen when I’m with family or friends.
The example that the book gave for irony was when someone says “What a beautiful day,” when it’s really not a nice day. I thought that would be an example of sarcasm. But the book makes a distinction between the two by saying that sarcasm is usually directed at someone in a negative way. Rachel Giora came up with a Salience Theory that focuses on irony and rules that people generally follow when talking to one another: “(1) all messages should be relevant to the topic of conversation; (2) successive messages should be gradually more informative, and not less informative than preceding ones; (3) any deviation from the first two rules should be ‘marked’ with an explicitly semantic connector such as ‘by the way’” (pg 98). If someone says something ironic during a conversation, we notice that the literal meaning doesn’t make any sense so then we compare the two meanings that the statement has. The irony is funny because the two meanings are unrelated or incongruent.
Another thing I found interesting about this part was how Albert Katz did research how things such as gender and occupation of the person talking affects how we process sarcastic statements. According to Katz’s Constraint-Satisfaction theory, “the social context in which ironic or sarcastic statements are mad plays an important role in determining how efficiently they are interpreted,” (pg 100). And I completely agree with that. I also agree with the findings that individuals find ironic and sarcastic comments to be funnier if they’re with friends rather than with just an acquaintance. I also agree with the fact that social dynamics play an important role when it comes to ironic/sarcastic humor.
I think I found the section on “Psychological Approaches to the Study of Schemas in Humor” more specifically, “Semantic Distance” the least interesting. To be honest, it was really scientific and tedious to read, and I had to read through a lot of it twice just to semi-understand it (I’m still not so sure I get it). I thought that it was overanalyzed—just looking at one single sentence or statement that closely is a little much for me. I much more agree with Richie and what he says towards the end of the chapter that broader theories to try and explain why things are funny is more suitable than breaking it down into tiny pieces.
I don’t doubt that what they studied and the results they found were important. It makes sense that concepts we have in our minds are stored by similarity. And I think this concept actually goes into further detail of how the incongruity theory works. If one word is said, but it’s unexpected to a word not similar paired together with the first word. The thing that I didn’t like about this concept was the way they did empirical testing with domain-distinguishing, domain-intensive, within-domain distance, and between-domain distance. When we say sentences in day-to-day conversation, and we’re trying to say something funny, I don’t think we think about structuring them in a specific way like this. But maybe when doing an experiment like this one, it’s necessary to think about specific sentence structure like this.
What are three things you read about in the chapter that you think will be the most useful for you in understanding the psychology of humor? Why?
I thought it was interesting what Katz found about the social context and the way we process sarcastic comments. The information we already have about the individual making the comment makes a difference in how fast we process it. For example, it’s mentioned in the text that sarcastic comments made by males take less time to process than those made by females because men are thought to be more sarcastic than woman, or as the book says, they’re more likely to USE sarcasm more than women. Processing time is also affected by the occupation of the person saying the comment. The book says sarcasm took longer to processes if the speaker was a priest or a teacher and they were faster to process if the statements came from a comedian or factory worker. Katz called this the constraint-satisfaction model.
This semester I’m taking the class Memory and Language, and so I thought that some of the effects that humor can have on memory was pretty interesting. I thought the results of the experiments done by Schmidt was interesting in that “ humorous sentences were recalled better than non-humorous sentences when presented in lists containing both types of sentences,” (pg 103). I thought it made sense that humor can be thought of as a mnemonic technique or a memory aid of some kind.
Towards the beginning of the chapter on page 87, it says that Wyer and Collins said that “elicited humor is greatest when an intermediate amount of time and effort is required to identify and apply the concepts necessary to activate the alternative schema.” I think this goes along with a lot of the other theories that we’ve read about so far where we see a “medium” amount or an “intermediate” amount or “not too little and not too much.” I can see a pattern starting to emerge that with a lot of concepts concerning humor, moderation is best.
My Z Theory group was the Equilibrium Theory and I would say that Cognitive Processes in Conversational Humor probably fit best into our theory since we kind of focused more on the social aspect of things, as humor is an attempt to keep things on a socially even keel. I think it especially fits in with the Salience Theory and the three rules that people follow while participating in social conversations.
I think the theory that probably fit the least into our z theory was Semantic Distance. And the reason is similar to what I said before in that, when we’re talking to one another in a common social setting, I don’t think we explicitly try very often to structure our sentences so tediously in this way, to make sure that certain words or phrases are paired with one another in a specific way. I think this theory applies more to the way that jokes are structured rather than in a typical social setting.
I found the aspects of humor on cognitions to be the most interesting. These topics were fun to read and presented interesting information that can be used in daily life.
I found it interesting that humor can enhance creativity. Many experiments found that after being exposed to humorous stimuli people performed better on different creative tasks compared to the control. Also it has been found that a relationship between creativity and humor such that a person with a greater sense of humor also tends to be more creative. This is interesting to me because I’m not that creative so when I want to do something creative maybe I’ll take this piece of knowledge and expose myself to some humorous stimuli in hopes to boost my creativity.
I also found the material about why humor might be expected to enhance memory interesting. The four ways that were described in the text were
1. Positive emotion (mirth) mirth may have positive effects on memory
2. Humor may enhance attention to stimuli due to novelty and surprise elements
3. Humorous material may involve more rehearsal resulting in higher retention
4. Humor may affect retrieval strategies, biasing subjects to recall humorous material before non-humorous.
Numerous of experiments have been conducted some producing mixed results. Overall humorous materials tends to obtain increased attention and rehearsal compared to non-humorous material although its suggested that humor enhances memory for the gist of material and not so much for details. It’s important to understand that humor may enhance memory for humorous material but lower memory for other information.
I found the area of psychological approaches to the study of schemas in humor to be the least interesting. The schematic distances approach seemed to me a little bit common sense. Of course and adjective-noun pair that was further apart in sematic distance would be found to be funnier. I just didn’t enjoy reading this area of the book. Some of it was confusing such as the Lexical Decision Semantic Priming Task used to study humor comprehension.
Something I found that will be useful to me in understanding the psychology of humor is the model presented by Katz and colleagues the constraint-satisfaction model. This theory provides support for findings regarding the time required to interpret sarcasm. The constraint-satisfaction model suggests that there are different sources of information needed about the social context in determining how efficiently sarcasm is interpreted. I found it interesting that statements that were made by a male did not take people any difference in time to read then a literal statement but if told the statements were made by a female it took them longer to recognize the sarcasm in a statement. I think this is important because it demonstrates that humor can depend on the context of a situation.
Another piece of information that I found helpful in understanding the psychology of humor is the idea that humor is more than just a luxury. Intelligent robots might even require a sense of humor in order to cope with incongruous and inconsistent perspectives that confront other intelligent beings. Intelligent robots need a sense of humor to interact with intelligent beings living in today’s world. Our text discusses that a computer program implementation is difficult because theories are too vague. Ritchie makes a good point that most theories regarding humor are trying to explain too many different types of humor. Ritichie suggest that by developing a program that applies one given theory to generate a humorous text and having humans judging the material and the behavior of the program can lead to discovering weaknesses of the underlying theory. I think this information is important and useful because it’s suggesting exactly what this domain of psychology needs a more sufficient way to define the different aspects that make up humor.
As discussed in the book viewing humor as cognitive play provides a framework for thinking about the interaction of cognitive, emotional, and social elements. We play with language and ideas similarly to how kids play with physical objects. Viewing humor as cognitive play helps me understand previous theories we have discussed and I’m sure will be beneficial as we continue to learn about the psychology of humor.
My groups Z theory was anti-Freud. I think that the aspect that best fits in with our theory is the idea that humor as cognitive play is evolutionary. The suggestion that mirth can lead to beneficial things such as creativity, flexible thinking, problem solving, promotes social interaction, and bonding fits with our idea that humor is necessary to interact and survive in our world.
I found the section on irony and sarcasm to be the most interesting section in chapter 4. I thought this section was the most interesting because I use it numerous times in my everyday life. The book stated that irony is a figure of speech that means that opposite of what is said. The weather is always a good example of how irony can be used. If I were to refer to this past weekend I might say, “This weekend was warm, beautiful weekend!” Obviously this weekend the weather was really crappy and cold! Therefore, the statement made was the opposite of how the weather truly was. I also often use sarcasm and irony when referring to my emotions. Some days when it appears I’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed and am crabby, I’ll describe myself and being very happy. I found it interesting that Giora stated in order to understand and ironic statement the listener first activates salient (literal) meaning. When it doesn’t make sense, they then activate an “unmarked” interpretation. The incongruity activates meanings which causes the irony to be humorous. I also found it interesting that males are perceived to use sarcasm more than females. According to the text, because males use sarcasm more, it is easier to detect than it is to realize females using sarcasm.
The part of the chapter that I found to be least interesting included the section on semantic distance. Osgood had participants’ rate words and concepts on ratings scales that represented a dimension between a pair of adjectives with opposite meanings. Examples include hot and cold, and fast and slow. Osgood and his team found three basic factors that he labeled activity, evaluative, and potency. These are believed to be dimensions that people mentally organize the meanings they attach to a variety of concepts. I liked this section the least when I first read it because I had trouble really grasping the concept. Therefore, I reread it a couple times and slowly picked up the idea. I at first thought I didn’t like this section because I had trouble getting it but after reading it I also found it to be a section of the chapter that I will remember. I still have a hard time relating the concept to understanding humor.
I will remember the section on schema theory as it relates to humor. This theory suggested that while we are hearing the setup to a joke, a schema script is activated to help us make sense of incoming information. When we don’t find it fits with the schema we have to search for another schema that will help it make better sense. I found this information to be very interesting and a compelling argument.
I will also remember the connection of creativity with humor. I had never really made that connection before reading this chapter. I never realized the commonalities that they both have. This includes the ability to switch perspective and have a new look at things. The text stated that experiments have shown that exposure to humor produces an increase in people’s creative potential. I wish I was more creative maybe I need more humor in my life!
Lastly, memory and humor was something I will take away from this chapter. I truly believe that humor helps me remember things therefore this section got my attention. I agree that positive emotion associated with humor can have positive effects on memory. I found it interesting that the question was posed that why it was so hard to remember jokes if humor aids memory. I would agree with the text that we typically can remember the general idea of the joke but would have trouble with the correct wording.
The parts of the cognitive theory of humor that would fit into the “Z” theory (Playdoh) would include memory and creativity being associated with humor. The parts of the theory that would fit the least would include semantic distance and computational approaches to humor because measuring humor is a very difficult thing to do.
Chapter 3 of the book use incongruity within humorous situations and jokes to explain the cognition behind jokes. That two incompatible interpretations or “frames of reference” come together to form humor within our mind. Where do this interpretations and “frames of reference” come from..? The answer lays in Cognitive psychology popular idea of “schemas”. We organize objects, events, and ideas within our world with schemas in our mind. The book states that when we receive information, we can make predictions about the info based on our schemas. Studies suggested that we find a situation joke less funny too complex or take too much time to process, however other studies suggest that if there is a “curvilinear relationship”, jokes that are too simple are also not funny.
In Chapter 4, the book applies this idea of schemas to conversation. We all have what the book refers to as “scripts” of conversations with others. In our everyday conversations, we have a script of how the conversation will go. It is always pretty funny when a conversation gets sidetracked to something random, or like a “Freudian” slip which takes the dialogue in an interesting direction. The book calls this unexpected event “switching scripts”. The book also states that this is difficult to empirically study such sources of humor, because much of this everyday humor is spontaneous. How Irony and sarcastic fits into this interests me the most. A lot of people, including myself, call themselves sarcastic, however what does that really mean within a conversation. How does sarcastic work between two people. First, the other person has to understand the ironic statement. The book explains that first the literal or the “salient” meaning must be registered by the listener. Then noting that it does not make sense within the conversation, the “unmarked” interpretation must be recognized. The incongruity must be humorous to the listener. The book also discusses ways in which sarcastic remarks can be taken positively or negatively. First, the social context that a mark is made is important. Furthermore, the relationship between the people is significant. If it is a close, compared to just casual acquaintances then the ironic statement and sarcastic will be viewed more as friendly banter. The book also points out that overall sarcasm and ironic statement are taken more negatively then literal statements. Which I thought was interesting and very true.
Furthermore, the book also states the within our organization of concepts in our mind, we ordered words based on their meanings. There is “semantic distance” between each word. Thus, word and concepts that have similar meaning are closer together than word which are further apart (this made me think of that game in every basic psychology class which we are given a bunch of words and then asked to reproduce them, and inevitably we include a similar word which is not on that list). The amount of humor measured within this study was correlated to the “the semantic distance” which was measured.
The book talks about the effects that Creativity and Memory have on humor. I think to generate humor takes a lot of creativity. You can see this in stand up comedians. Not everyone can land jokes in front of an audience. Also has an audience, you must have a sense of humor to understand the jokes or get humor. However the book points out two different circumstances in which humor can affect creativity. First, when you have an active sense of humor (similar to the one who gets irony and sarcastic talked about above) you have to be able to make connections between different schemas, ideas in conversations, and words, which is a lot like creative thinking or “outside the box thinking”. Second, the book points out that humor helps relaxes us, which in turn helps and enhances creativity. Memory, research has found that humor does improve memory, not detailed orientated, but bigger picture memory in four ways. The positive emotion of humor has positive effects of memory, there is a heighten attention to stimuli, humorous material may be more rehearsed, and humor “may affect retrieval strategies”. Lastly the chapter addresses what makes humor cognitively enjoyable. The book has made it clear that there are obvious emotional and social reasons why humor is enjoyable. However there is a cognitive side and with the surprise of incongruity between schemas and scripts. This is a perfect transition point to our “swarm theory”, since we have already discussed the emotional and social parts of the theory. Cognitively if you think about a single bird, what would make it fly away is if a stimuli surprised it. Something happen…maybe an unexpected interaction with another bird..and the bird flew away. If you think about this like a person laughing, a laugh is sparked from an incongruity or surprising event (in this case humorous). Furthemore, the event which actually which spooks the bird into flight will be remembered by the bird. Similarly we will remember this that cause us to laugh.
I that the most useful things that I took from this chapter were first, thinking about our organization or cognitive space within our brain and how we organize. Similar concepts are placed near which other. It takes a clever and creative mind to pull together two separate concepts. I think this is why I think it is funny when people pull movie lines into everyone conversation and make them apply. Also I learned a lot about sarcasm. I think what is really important is that to understand that the other person, they need to get both the literal and the joke interpretation of the comment. Least, I understand better why memory affects humor, or vice-verse. That we might not remember details about the joke or the concept we are learning. But we will remember the big picture of the situation, which I think applies prefectly in my life.
So this is my one free joke post because this chapter bored me to sleep and I couldn't finish reading it to save my life.
So I'm posting YouTube videos of clips with great songs that I find completely hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TywmpMQYojs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdVHxkv4UDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RmO6fc-FdE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCsXFKrxJw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhwbxEfy7fg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEHnC7l9tGI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuUsNtNBOCo
I can't remember if there were guidelines for this but if I have to explain why they are funny let me know and I'll reply later.
My favorite part of this chapter was the section on irony and sarcasm. I found this section interesting because I use sarcasm all the time in my everyday life. The book states that doesn’t usually occur in “canned” jokes but instead in normal conversations. While reading the section I tended to agree with Giora’s theory that irony will take longer to process that literal language. According to the text there are studies that support this idea and show that both the ironic and literal meaning are activated. I found the section about relationships and irony/sarcasm interesting. It was also interesting that ironic compliments were looked at as being less polite than literal compliments but ironic insults were more polite than literal insults.
My least favorite part of the chapter was the section on Raskin’s script based theory of humor. The idea that a computer program could be designed to process humor based on linguistics doesn’t sit well with me. In previous chapters we talked about humor having a social context, where a person’s memories have a big impact on what is or is not funny. I think this is very true and therefore I don’t understand how a computer program could be developed to make something funny. I don’t agree that certain words put together are funny without a personal reason.
One idea from this chapter that I feel will stick with me is the section on schemas. I’ve learned about schemas in several classes that I’ve taken and it makes sense to me that the idea can be applied to humor as well.
I also liked the idea of humor and creativity. The book states that “both humor and creativity involve a switch of perspective, a new way of looking at things”. I really like this way of looking at things. I think this explains why everyone thinks different things are funny. Just as some people express creativity one way and someone else doesn’t understand it.
The third thing I think will stay with me is the idea that sarcasm is more easily understood when coming from a male. I use sarcasm a lot and some people don’t get it, maybe that is because I am female.
I was part of the playdoh group. I think every theory has a place in our group. The whole idea of our group was that it’s a mixture of several different ideas; basically taking the best of each idea and squishing it all together. The idea that I think fits the least is Raskins idea. We talked a lot about how our theory was mostly a mixture of the cognitive and social theories put together and I don’t feel like Raskin’s ideas fit well. But overall every idea has a small place.
The information on schema's and schema theory were the most interesting parts of this chapter for me. Schema's are 'knowledge structures" we use to organize information. In order to avoid processing every single aspect of every single scene we store chunks of relevant information together in schemas. The text describes them as 'unconscious expectations' about different situations. The introduction of frames and scripts was new for me. These are subcategories of schemas that include information (or expectations) regarding the 'physical environment' itself (frames) as well as 'activities' (scripts) commonly associated with the situation. So far I find these to be the best explanation of the various incongruity theories. Schema theory suggests that during the setup for a joke a schema is activated, creating certain expectations about how the joke ought to proceed. At some point during the joke a second schema is activated and it is recognition of this incongruity that causes the humor. I'll discuss more about this towards the end of the post.
Regarding some of the less interesting aspects of the chapter nothing stands out except perhaps the linguistic section. I could tell it was very important, and for the most part follows logically from schema theory, I just found it particularly boring. Towards the end of the chapter computer programs capable of creating humorous text was discussed and I did find this very interesting; and naturally these programs will stem from developments in linguistics. In discussing Attardo's general theory of verbal humor the text explains that here the incongruity 'resolution' happens prior to the incongruity being experienced. I'm still quite confused as to what they mean by resolution though. The GTVM suggests that during the setup a script is activated. Sometime during the joke-telling but prior to the punch-line incongruity (in the language of the joke itself) is resolved through the activation of a second script. These two scripts being simultaneously activated creates a (different?) kind of incongruity that gives rise to the humor. I feel like resolution ought to be similar to solution, meaning that it is some how removed from the situation. Here it seems to mean that when you recognize that something may mean one thing given one schema, and another thing given another schema this is resolution. But isn't this just the same as recognition of incongruity, which is what those antagonistic to resolution theories believe?
One thing I know I'll remember is the discussion about the 'semantic space' and how this relates to humor. I don't know a lot about factor analysis but I find it very interesting. The idea is that they had participants rate a bunch of words according to a bunch of different polar scales (like/dislike, fast/slow, active/passive, etc.). Then this factor analysis process must find a small subset of scales which are representative of the variance between the scores. In this way they can compare very obscure words to one another. I actually laughed out-loud when they gave their example that 'happy-child' does not make people laugh much because these are relatively similar words within the 'semantic space' whereas 'hot poet' (insert laughter here) is funny to more people due to how far apart the words are. I was actually in awe after reading this section about just how many different and unique ways there are to study various phenomena.
There was some information about how humor relates to important areas of cognitive psychology that I'll likely remember as well. That humor can act as a memory aid for basic ideas and that people who have a good sense of humor tend to be more creative. It was interesting to learn that research suggests that increases in creativity probably result because of the positive effects of mirth on cognitive abilities rather than the idea that having a good sense of humor creates some super ability to enact multiple schemas whenever you want.
Our theory 'Z' was equilibrium theory though I'm almost sure this theory is incorrect now. I doubt very highly that any one theory will account for all aspects of humor. The term equilibrium was mean to simply suggest a state of normalcy, a base-line, or something along these lines. It explained the social aspects of humor similar to Apter's reversal theory in that the paratelic state of playfulness allowed for things to be taken in a non-serious manner; our theory was suggesting that this playful state maintains or creates equilibrium by allowing the group to take something as less serious or to avoid violence or aggression. In this way the paratelic state is a kind of schema. In humorous situations we often expect (because of the schema) to hear and experience things that involve taboo topics and we expect that the person is not serious so we do not over act (usually).
Similarly the equilibrium theory relates to different cognitive incongruity theories of humor as well. One problem with incongruity theories is the question of whether humor comes from resolution or experience of incongruity. In equilibrium theory we can see (metaphorically anyway) how these two happen at the same time. When someone is telling a joke as per schema theory, it is the simultaneous activation of multiple scripts which causes the incongruity. The humor schema creates the expectation of incongruity (in essence: be prepared for the activation of incongruent scripts), thus when the incongruity (between two other schemas/scripts) is created (causing laughter or mirth) equilibrium is maintained because of the expectation and acceptance of incongruity being congruent with the schema.
This was a very intriguing chapter to read about!! I think the pieces of this chapter I found the most interesting were the effects on humor and cognition. The creativity and memory aspect grasp my attention due to the fact that they enormous pieces of the puzzle we call humor!! People don’t think about how much creativity actually goes into humor. This aspect proposes that a person much look at things in a new and unique way. There was a few correlational studies done that indicated that a people who have a great sense of humor also tend to be creative in multiple areas. This can actually effect on critical thinking in maybe business areas or it can assist students with learning required material. A unique thought process and activation of a variety of schemas involved in obtaining incongruities may in fact be the reason for unique and divergent thinking which are essential for creativity.
This leads into how humor enhances memory. I watch a lot of movies and television programs and for some reason I can serious remember 95 % of the humorous parts associated with the different programs. Over the years I’ve had a few teachers who would actually teach or break down the material in a hilarious way in which I found more beneficial to me in retaining the information given. There were a few reasons he book used to support this theory. Humor is said to enhance attention to stimuli because novelty and surprise are involved in different humorous incongruities. After conducting a study on this hypothesis Schmidt found this to be inconsistent with the arousal and the surprise part of the study. Also humorous material can in fact be rehearsed more than non-humorous material which causes us to have a better retention rate of information. This was actually supported by the findings of that study. I think that overall humor serves as a guide for a person to remember a certain idea which causes an increase of transfer and storage of the long term memory. This can also be and advocate for creativity as well.
Some people found computational approaches to humor less interesting because it’s kind of boring thinking about riddles while a robot generates them for you. This section talked about how researchers are thinking that in order for robots to communicate and interact with humans more effectively, it’s important that they are able to generate and understand humor. This section actually reminds me of a true story. About a couple of months ago my brother and I went to Chicago to visit some friends and family. We went to the steppers club and met these girls. They told us to come over later that night. So Mike called them later and they couldn’t give us directions so mike got the address to put it into his GPS system. So you know how the lady tells you what to do and what turns to make. I think me must have went to a extremely Ghetto part of Chicago cause they lady said PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!! LOL and our dumbs selves couldn’t follow directions.!! Then we must have really messed up because she came back on a few blocks later and said, ABORT MISSION!!!!HAHA She must have pulled a HUDENNIE cause she never came back on and the GPS shut the Hell off!!!! Haha So Mike and I said BUMP THIS WERE OUTTA HERE. The funny part related to this story is that the researchers think that robots need to generate and understand humor. Well that heifer sure generated some unintentional humor because we have never had a GPS talk to us like that then turn around and abandon us by shutting off.!!! That was some effective communication used if you asked me.
Three things I found in the chapter to be most useful in understanding the psychology of humor would be cognitive processes in conversational humor dealing with two main forms of humor which were irony and sarcasm. The graded salience theory proposed by Giora helped me understand the graded salience principle. This principle helps determine the common familiar, and prototypical meanings if a salient meaning doesn’t make since the less salient meanings are activated. To understand irony, a person must first activate the literal meaning which can’t make sense in the context Then they must activate the “implicture” There the incongruity of the two activated meanings inject a positive feeling of mirth which happens when something is perceived to be humorous. Also Schemas, Frames, and Scripts help me understand humor as well. Schemas are actually mental representations which allow us to build mental models of the world. Frames and scripts are different kinds of Schemas.
In theory PSSC, the cognitive aspects of this chapter fit right into our theory because in order for humor to occur the must process different incompatible scripts of incongruity for something to be perceived as humorous. Also our processed schemas have an effect on what is or isn’t in fact humorous as well.
I think something that would be interesting to find out world be to see how the linguistic approaches to humor apply to conversational and unintentional humor versus just mainly focusing on jokes. I promise you the way Black people make up words a majority of people with find it quite hysterical.
Chapter 4 discusses the Cognitive Psychology of Humor. Our text defines cognitive psychology as being concerned with mental representations of meaning and the mental processes that operate on those representations. This chapter discussed different cognitive approaches involved in understanding and researching humor. There were interesting topics discussed such as the cognitive processes involved in conversational humor, which dealt with irony and sarcasm an in contrast, there were topics, such as memory, that seemed to have less convincing research. This chapter was interesting because it covered a lot of important information that may be beneficial in understanding the psychology of humor. However, it is in my opinion that the discussion on irony and sarcasm was the most interesting.
As stated in the text, much of everyday humor arises from spontaneous intentional and unintentional behaviors of people interacting with one another. One type of conversational humor that has sparked sudden interest is irony. Irony has an opposite meaning of a statement and correlates with sarcasm. As stated in our text, Psycholinguist Rachael Giora proposed a graded salience theory of humor based on pragmatics that focuses primarily on irony. Giora suggests that there are implicit rules for engaging in conversation. According to Giora, an ironic statement in a conversation conforms to the relevance requirement, since it introduces information about the current topic of conversation; however, it violates the graded informativeness requirement by introducing an improbable message whose salient meaning either has too much or not enough information. In order to understand the ironic statement, the listener must activate the ironic statement’s salient (literal) meaning and then activate an “unmarked” interpretation (the “implicature”). Both meanings must remain active in order for the two meanings to compare and so that the listener may come to a conclusive idea about the ironic statement.
There is some speculation of Giora’s theory because she claims ironic statements should take longer to process than nonironic statements and both meanings should remain active after understanding the “true” meaning of the ironic statement. However, the Processing Equivalence Hypothesis states, given the contextual information, irony should use the same process as literal language and should take the same amount of time to understand. Recent research suggests that the conflict between the two theories may be resolved by considering the social context. Studies have shown that the speed with which people recognize sarcasm depends on the listener’s prior information about the context.
The most interesting part of the study of irony and sarcasm was the results of a study that compared the reaction of subjects to predict the use of sarcasm between males and females. When told that a male made a statement, the subjects took no longer to read sarcastic statements versus literal statements, supporting the Processing Equivalence Hypothesis. However, when a female made the statement, the sarcastic statements took longer to read than the literal statements, supporting the Graded Salience Hypothesis. Results suggest males are more likely to use sarcasm than females, and because of this, the sarcastic meaning of a statement by a male is more readily available during the comprehension process. These results are interesting because they show how the social context of an ironic or sarcastic statement plays an important role in its interpretation. If all statements indicate a humorous interpretation from the beginning, the incongruity of humor should have a quick interpretation. Additionally, I found it interesting that males use sarcasm more generally than females. I had never thought of either gender to use sarcasm more than the other gender. I assumed the use of sarcasm depended on one’s personality type, not their gender.
Martin states that there are several reasons why humor might enhance memory. First, he explains that positive emotion associated with humor may have positive effects on memory in a way that is similar to the demonstrated effects of nonhumorous emotional arousal. Second, humor may enhance attention to stimuli. Third, humorous versus nonhumorous material causes people to rehearse it more frequently. Lastly, humor may affect retrieval strategies, biasing subjects to retrieve humorous material before nonhumorous material. Our text cited a series of six experiments conducted by Schmidt (1994). Schmidt examined the effects of humor on sentence memory by presenting participants with lists of humorous and nonhumorous sentences. The results found that the humorous sentences are recalled more than nonhumorous sentences when they were presented in lists containing both types of sentences. Schmidt and Williams (2001) went further to examine the effects of humor on memory using cartoons instead of humorous sentences. Results of the second study suggest that humor serves as a sort of mnemonic technique or memory aid, causing greater elaboration of information and therefore enhancing its transfer and storage into long-term memory.
Although the studies previously mentioned provide support for the idea that humorous material is easier to remember, I do not agree. I believe that what one remembers to be funny depends on that person’s personality and intelligence. If a person with a remedial intelligence level experiences a humorous event or hears a funny joke, it will be hard for that person to reiterate that humorous story or joke later. Similarly, experiments were based in lab settings, where a person would be concentrating on memorizing lists. In an everyday situation, the chances of a person remembering that information would be less likely. Furthermore, it requires a certain personality type to remember a joke or funny event after the fact. It requires a personality that easily remembers events or conversations for long periods. Similarly, I do not agree with Schmidt and Williams’ (2001) study that humor may act as a memory aid enhancing the transfer and storage into one’s long-term memory.
Three ideas I found to be beneficial for studying the psychology of humor includes understanding the importance of schemas, realizing some creativity is required for humor, and the idea that human cognition requires a basic understanding of the role of emotion. Our text defines schemas as general characteristics of an objects or events that contain variables or slots that assume different values in particular instances. Having a basic understanding of schemas is important because when a schema (or script) activates, it allows us to make sense of incoming information. Furthermore, the simultaneous activation of two incompatible scripts is the essence of humorous incongruity experienced as enjoyable or amusing. In a sense, schemas are the basis of how one finds something to be humorous. Some researchers believe creativity and humor are two independent, but overlapping domains. Both humor and creativity involve a switch of perspective to produce a new way of looking at things. Therefore, it is important to understand that in the same way that creativity requires an “out of the box” perspective on the world, so does humor. A comedian is required to be creative in order to develop new jokes, skits, or stand-up shows. Lastly, it is important for a person to have a complete understanding of human cognition and the role that is has for emotion. The view of humor as cognitive play may provide a framework for thinking about the interaction of cognitive, emotional, and social elements. All three of these elements are important for understanding the role humor has in life. Humor affects all parts of life in both positive and negative ways.
One aspect from this chapter than fit best into my group’s Playdoh Theory is the idea that humor involves an understanding of cognition, emotion, and social elements. Our group agreed that the cognitive and social theories from Chapter 3 were the most important elements for our Playdoh Theory. We believed that without a cognitive knowledge and certain intelligence level, one would not understand how something is funny. Similarly, without the social aspect of humor, humor would not exist. All humor is a form of social communication. One aspect from Chapter 4 that did not fit into my group’s Playdoh Theory is the idea that humor evolved in humans as a mode of interpersonal communication for dealing with conflicting issues and as a cognitive coping mechanism. Our group entirely refuted the Psychoanalytic Theory by Freud and the Superiority/Disparagement Theory by Gerner. Therefore, our group disagreed with the idea by Freud that humor can be a coping mechanism. Although it is true that humor is also a coping mechanism, that idea is not included in my group’s Playdoh Theory.
This chapter covered many different and interesting topics relating to the cognitive psychology of humor. Although I do not support all of the ideas presented in this chapter, a number of theories and ideas would assist in the studying of the psychology of humor. In the future, more research is necessary to expand the knowledge for the cognitive psychology of humor. There is still a lot of work necessary to develop a universal idea about the applications of schemas and search for a “grand theory of humor.”