Find a topic that relates to the material covered in chapter 4. Research the topic using at least three internet sites of content (not fluffy sites). These can include a video if used as an example.
After viewing the web sites, please take a moment to synthesize what you read/saw and then integrate it (along with the material from the text) into a quality post of what you read. When you write assume your reader has limited knowledge on the topic. Give the reader detail and background material so they can follow along, read and learn from what you are writing (i.e., explain things). It is OK to have fun and to be creative with this blog post.
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.
When reading the portion of the chapter on the relationship between humor and memory as well as the link between humor and creativity, I immediately thought of how companies use humor in commercials to sell their products. Because almost half of the commercials we see are humorous, it is obvious that humor is a great tool and staple in commercials and if done properly, people will talk about the commercial and it will spread like a wild fire on the internet gaining thousands and some cases millions of views on YouTube. Is there a point though, where humor overtakes the commercial and the audience doesn’t even remember the product being advertized? What type of humor is necessary to get the target audience to consider your product a must buy?
According to the text, there are four ways in which humor can impact one’s recollection of the event, and in this case, the product of interest: 1) by creating positive emotions surrounding the product, the consumer will consequently have positive memories, 2) drawing attention to the product due to the “novelty and surprise” involved, 3) causing the consumer to “rehearse” the commercial which causes the consumer to remember the product, and 4) affecting “retrieval strategies” causing consumers to be drawn towards humorous commercials over nonhumorous commercials.
Keeping these mechanisms in mind, I started my research and found some interesting information!
Almost all of the websites I browsed agreed that when used properly, humor can be very effective. Just as the websites emphasized the effectiveness of humor if used properly, they also emphasized the importance of knowing (sex, ethnicity, age) and targeting the consumers who would most likely be buying the product of interest. It is obvious that ads in general, regardless if they are humorous, target men and women differently. For example, stereotypically, men are likely the ones buying beer therefore causing beer companies to usually include sexy women in bikinis. Women, on the other hand, are likely to buy “family” things like cleaning supplies. Because of this, cleaning supply companies often show women cleaning up after dirty children or unruly pets while of course, overestimating their products ability to tackle such messes.
The same is true about commercials containing humor, they need to take into account the sex of the consumer. For example, in one of my sources, there is a chart describing the difference in men’s and women’s interest in humor involving body parts being detached from someone’s body (maybe some sort of muscle building aids or fitness equipment were being advertised?!). Not surprisingly, men found this type of humor enjoyable while women found it “disturbing, unpleasant, and irritating.” What do women find funny, then? According to my website, 80% of women found it funny when men were the butt of the jokes.
Considering the ethnicity of the consumer is also essential. According to the same website, natives of China do not appreciate sarcastic humor, the English find irony humorous, and consumers from Singapore are offended by sexuality in advertising. (I thought the ethnic differences in humor perception was interesting). Lastly, although children aren’t really “consumers” in the sense that they do not buy their own toys, clothes, etc., they can have a huge impact on what their parents purchase. Because of this, another source pointed out that humorous cartoon caricatures were effective at targeting the youngsters, who in turn, influence adults to buy the product(s).
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a very good answer to my question as to whether or not humor can essentially backfire by distracting the consumer too much. Although I haven’t really found anything to support this, I feel that there IS a point in which humor is just too much. I say this because every year after the Super Bowl, the hot topic is not the outcome of the game, rather, it is the commercials. You could be talking about a commercial that you thought was extremely funny but once someone asks you what the commercial was for, you could have no idea. (This has happened to me!)
Overall, I think it is difficult to really know the boundaries of humor in commercials. We all know it is effective because it continually gets used, but it is important to know the targeted consumer in order to not offend and turn people away and it is important to not “overdo” the humor!
This is my main source of info.
http://www.armi-marketing.com/library/LRE090121.pdf
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Home-Based-Business/4696/How-to-Use-Humor-in-Marketing.html
http://www.myprofessionaladvertising.com/Humor%20in%20Advertising.htm
Some funny commercials that I could think of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEH1omnG77c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0EVSP_6XZA
The topic I chose to research on was schemas, because I find it fascinating how we have schemas for just about everything. For example, we have a schema for ourselves, food, people, and so forth. All the information we receive is organized in knowledge structures known as schemas. According to the text a schemas is a mental representation that allows us to build mental models of the world. Schemas affect how we interpret thing and how we make decisions and act upon them. Basically they are like filters, we classify things and store it in a certain category in which we will always associate a certain event or thing with that schema. For example, police officers, some people might have bad schemas or good schemas toward these people. If someone has a bad schema they are more likely to want to stay far away from the cops from threat of going to jail or getting in a record etc…whereas others’ who think they are good for society, believe that they are here to help protect our safety. Furthermore, there are other types of schemas which include, social (general social knowledge), person (individual), idealized person ( prototypes/any generalized schema), self-schemas (possible selves), role ( proper behaviors in a given situation), and event schemas (scripts about what happens in a specific situation).
Moreover, we associate schemas with brands, such as pop, clothes, food and even “lady products.” Through a process of repetition, our behaviors are learned through schemas. In addition, brand names or designs usually contain strong brand mnemonics which tend to work better than brands that do not. For example, I just love the U by Kotex commercial for tampons, because she is bashing on other commercials which do not resemble what a menstrual cycle is life, so I find it funny how in the end she is like “that’s how its suppose to work.” Every women has a schema about what brand of products she prefers when it is her cycle, which is why I chose this commercial because it is a relatively new brand, therefore, some might like different brands of what there used to and not be up for trying something new unless they change their schema. Overall, schemas are general characteristics of an object or event with past experiences and consist of a set of (usually unconscious) expectations about what things look like and/or the order in whey they should occur.
Here is a little test to see if your schemas can match what these brands are
1. http://www.codezeta.com/hosting/cds/store/images/Bud_crown_red_6w.jpg
2. http://www.gameguru.in/images/mcdonalds.jpg
3. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_m-edxtXrhiQ/SL4dAo39TlI/AAAAAAAAAV4/lIykNXzvaeg/s400/Pepsi_logo_sm.jpg
1. Budweiser Bud
2. McDonalds
3. Pepsi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf35wCmzWw
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/schema.htm
http://www.shopperinsights.com/schema-research.htm
so I tried so show picture, it wouldn't let me, so I provided the links and the answers below for the test.
Topic: Humor Enhances Memory
The positive health benefits from humor & laughter have been to most interesting for me to read and learn about throughout this class. I enjoy learning about how this 'free medicine' can relieve stress, boost our immune systems, and much more. The idea of humor enhancing our memory was a topic I wanted to further research and learn how once again humor contributes to our health.
Humor has been proven to enhance our memory based on several studies comparing humorous vs non-humorous variables. Within our text, Schmidt conducted a study looking at the effects of humor on sentence memory. He used humorous and non-humorous versions of the same sentences and presented them to his participants. The results showed that the humorous sentences were recalled better than the non-humorous sentences. Another study comes from my internet research. Dr. Carlson is a psychology professor from Valparaiso University. Like Schmidt, he wanted to test the effects of humor on memory. Dr.Carlson created posters with the same image and keywords but had different phrases- one humorous & the other inspirational. After presenting the posters to participants, they were asked to recall the image and keyword. The results of Dr.Carlson's study supported Schmidt's study in which the subjects recalled the humorous more easily and readily than the inspirational poster. These are only two of the many studies that have shown the positive effects that humor has on our memory.
If our memory is enhanced by humor than why do many people have a difficult time recalling jokes? Within our text it is described that humor enhances our memory for the basic material, but not for every detail such as the exact wording we struggle to recall in joke telling. We can remember what a joke is about based of the 'funniness,' however many of us don't remember the wording and details that lead to the punch line. One of my internet sources describes this phenomenon by explaining that funny jokes work opposite than that of music. With this idea, it's suggested that it is easier to remember a song because of the rhyme or rhythm. However, with a joke there usually is not a guideline such as rhyme or rhythm to help us recall at a later time.
Humorous information is recalled better than non-humorous information, even when both are presented in the same context. As a current student, I have a much easier time remembering discussions and class material if it is presented in a fun or humorous atmosphere, which rarely happens! Our text suggests when using humor for education it needs to be integrated with course content and used to illustrate important concepts. An internet source I researched supports the idea of humor in the classroom to boost memory. This website suggests that Making humorous connections to new material in a lesson causes a student's body to physically react in a positive manner. Since the students are then relaxed and happy, they are more likely to retain the information. Humor can be brought into the classroom simply by bringing up funny points about history, connections to strange events or even turning facts and figures into rhymes. All of these ways can engage students and help them remember the important concepts.
URLS:
http://www.valpo.edu/news/news.php?releaseId=3358
http://www.enotalone.com/article/19433.html
http://www.suite101.com/content/using-humor-as-a-learning-tool-a114237
I’ve always thought that ironic humor and sarcastic humor to be really funny. There are two websites that have a lot of content about sarcastic humor. One of which is actually the Sarcasm Society Website and right there under the title of the site it says, “We’d LOVE to hear what you think.” And the word “love” is written in orange, striking some emphasis. So I think it’s appropriate to say that you could take that sarcastically.
An interesting fact that both of these websites mention is that the sarcastic form of humor and the ability to understand it takes place in the right side of the brain. According to Meredith Small, author of my posted article, and the Sarcasm Society website, if an individual has suffered damage to their parahippocampal gyrus on the right side of their brain, their ability to understand irony and sarcasm is compromised. I’ve heard it said that sarcasm is a low form of humor or just kind of base humor, but I think that it takes a certain amount of intelligence to pick it up or to be aware of it and even more intelligence to dish it out. In the Sarcasm Society website and the article that I looked up, “Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill,” both mention intelligence when it comes to sarcastic humor. Humans are intelligent beings and so we understand this type of humor. In a social setting, I think those who are good at making sarcastic comments are quick on their feet and can come up with those comments fairly quickly, usually anyway. And I think that can be part of why it’s funny is when a sarcastic comment is made right away. The book mentions a couple different theories about how we comprehend sarcastic and ironic humor. Giora’s theory implies that ironic statements should take longer to comprehend than statements that are not ironic because our brain has to trigger two meanings of the statement and “both meanings should remain activated after the ‘true’ meaning of the ironic statement has been understood.” But there’s another theory called the Processing Equivalence Hypothesis that says if we are given enough and the correct framework of information, irony and sarcasm should be processed in the same manner as statements we are suppose to take literally. And also according to this, ironic statements should not take any longer to process than non-ironic statements; and instead of two meanings remaining activated, only the ironic meaning will be activiated.
At the very end of her article, Meredith Small mentions that a sense of humor is important to our social relationships. Our social relationships have evolved over time and our humor styles along with us. And I think that kind of fits in with my groups Z Theory (Equilibrium Theory). Our theory put a pretty big emphasis on the social aspect of humor. Even though sarcasm can be kind of a mean type of humor, Small says, “it would be just as disconcerting if a friend didn’t get your snide remarks.” And I think that has to do with the balance of humor in social situations. It’s okay to make sarcastic and kind of snide comments when you’re with your friends because they know that you’re just trying to be funny, and maybe it’s the kind of relationship that you have with your friends. You say something, then they fire something right back at you. It’s all an aspect of your relationships and how your and your friends’ humor fits into it.
One specific piece of information that I found kind of interesting came from the Sarcasm Society in the link “How to Recognize Irony.” This is how they explain the difference between sarcasm and irony: “One main difference between irony and sarcasm is that irony is generally observed and sarcasm is generally created (i.e. spoken, written). People don't usually go about actively pursuing the creation of irony.” The text actually explains it a little differently, by saying that irony is saying something that’s the opposite of what something really is. And sarcasm is closely related to irony only sarcasm is usually aimed at a certain individual in a negative way. And before reading the text, I always thought that the difference between irony and sarcasm was more along the lines of what the website is trying to say.
When I think about sarcastic humor some of the first things I think about are two of my favorite shows: The Office, and most of all, Friends. Matthew Perry, who plays Chandler on Friends, has not only countless sarcastic comments on the show, but some of the funniest that I’ve ever heard. I used the clip where the group is together playing poker, and they guys are trying to teach the girls how to play. Already you can probably tell this situation is ample ammo for some sarcastic humor! The Office also has some really good sarcastic moments, particularly from Jim, but I found a really good clip of Dwight—ultimate sarcasm when he finds out that Jim is gone. It’s short, but really funny. And in these shows you can really understand the social relationship aspect that Meredith Small was talking about in her article. If you’ve seen The Office, you know what Dwight and Jim’s relationship is like and there’s a lot of teasing and mocking sarcastic comments that they give back and forth to each other—that’s their relationship. Same with the show Friends; Chandler is very sarcastic and witty when he’s with his friends, and it creates a sort-of balance in the group’s dynamic relationship.
I also included another You Tube video of clips from one of my all-time favorite movies, The Departed. I included this clip because this movie isn’t a comedy at all and it’s interesting to see how some forms of sarcasm can be blatantly comical like on TV sitcoms such as Friends and The Office. But sarcasm also works very well for Mark Wahlberg’s character Stg. Dignam. The comments that he makes aren’t really meant to be funny in the movies context, but when I watch them I laugh. It’s kind of more of a dark humor, I guess you could say.
Sarcasm Society Website
http://www.sarcasmsociety.com/
Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill Article
http://www.livescience.com/history/080620-hn-sarcasm.html
Friends – Poker Scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szwqkXsaMaU&feature=related
The Office – Dwight Misses Jim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeaCGHoTqJo
The Departed – Mark Wahlberg as Dignam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLnDjoQISAM
I thought that the whole concept of a computational approach to humor is very interesting. For a computer to be truly intelligent, it must need to be able to identify humor. By accomplishing this, we can more fully understand the theories of humor, as well as being able to process information of any type more adequately. This might be needed in the future as a better way for computers to communicate with humans, even though it is not necessary for the computer itself because it does not feel that feelings that we do that might provoke us to use humor, such as aggression or incongruent events.
The Joke Analysis and Production Engine, or JAPE (a synonym for the verb joke or quip) was created by Km Binsted and Graeme Ritchie in 1996. This program is able to generate puns such as “What kind of rain brings presents? A Bridal Shower” and “What do you call a quirky quantity? An odd number” using a basic riddle structure. The little kids who write in jokes for Laffy Taffy better watch out. The JAPE can come up with literally millions of these riddles, but can’t weed out the not funny ones from those that might elicit a laugh. This is a step for Artificial Intelligence because humor is tricky. Despite having access to all the knowledge that computers have, this process to make humorous jokes is very difficult for a computer, whereas for humans it comes much easier. Puns are thought to be one of the simpler forms of jokes, and don’t require much knowledge. For the JAPE to create a joke it programs words into a specific ‘formula’ and follows rules about the combination of words and symbols into what could potentially be funny. This is basically a three step process that involves first making a new word or a set of words that could mean something alternative to what it means. Then it determines the definition of this new word or a literal definition of a common phrase. It then arranges this relationship between the word(s) and their definition in the form of a question and answer. Take for example, the word spectacles. This might sound like “spook-tacles”. This word might mean glasses for ghosts. It would then be asked as a question, like “What do near sighted ghosts wear? Spook-tacles.”
The JAPE has opened the doors to a few different application of computational humor. One is called the System to Augment Non-Speaker’s Dialogue Using Puns, or STANDUP. This is a program where children who have speech impairments interact with a computer for them to help learn language. The computer and child chat back and forth, and the computer will incorporate jokes to make the process a little more engaging and enjoyable. Each week the child will have a topic to discuss, and based on this topic, jokes are generated based on the words they use. Since the same children do it on a weekly basis, the computer stores information that a child might share to use later in humor to get the child a more personal feel and so they open up. For example, if a child mentions that they are tall, later the computer might crack a joke that they heard that giraffes look up to them. The hope is that by using this program those children with speech impairments might be inspired to talk more because they find joy in entertaining others with their jokes.
Another program based off the JAPE is called the Witty Idiomatic Sentence Creation Revealing Ambiguity In Context or the WISCRAIC for short. This program is largely based on creating jokes by using homonyms. An example would be “The friendly gardener had thyme for women.”
To come up with the long names and clever acronyms, like STANDP and WISCRAIC, two men, Oliviero Stock and Carlo Stapparava came up with their own program to generate funny acronyms based on knowing just two pieces of information, the main concept and an attribute. Similar to this, Craig McDonough came up with the Mnemonic Sentence Generator which takes random letters from a password or other sequence and converts it into a sentence. This is similar to how when learning the order of operations in math we might have learned the phrase “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” to remember that the order went parentheses , exponents, multiply, divide, add, and subtract.
Computational humor is a challenging field, but has a promising future. Humor is constantly present in human to human interactions and for human to computer interactions to evolve, humor must be present. Binsted is still interested in the future of Computational Humor, and recently wrote a paper on the future of this technology and how the next step is creating ‘scalar’ jokes. These are jokes based on exaggeration, aka “Your mom” jokes.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Weekend/FJ30Jp06.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article500202.ece
http://www.aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2006/AAAI06-278.pdf
The topic I choose to do more research on is sarcasm. I choose this topic because I’m surrounded by sarcasm on a daily basis and use it quite often myself. I also find it interesting that some people use sarcasm more than others and that some people have a harder time picking up sarcasm. This was a topic that was discussed in this chapter of the textbook. The textbook describes sarcasm as aggressive humor that targets an individual rather than an institution. A great example from the text comes from Winston Churchill who is told by a woman that he’s drunk. Churchill replies, “Yes, and you are ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you shall still be ugly.” This statement is an aggressive form of humor directed at the lady. This example leads the first article I found while researching sarcasm.
The article is entitled Field Guide: Sarcastic Masters discusses the fine line of sarcasm in regards to the way it is used. Sarcasm can be used to honestly state the emotions someone is feeling in a specific situation and feel like they have an “out.” They were trying to be funny or make a joke. There seems to be a fine line. When hearing a sarcastic remark one has to decide whether what they just heard is devaluing and if so who is it devaluing? Sarcasm can also affect relationships. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve used sarcasm when talking with my fiancé. I’ve used it when trying to get the point across that I feel like he could help me with the dishes once in awhile. My sarcastic comments have also lead to bigger arguments that wouldn’t have started in the first place had I not used sarcasm. I think I’m being funny and yet I feel like I’m being able to say how I’m feeling. On the flip side, he doesn’t think it’s funny and takes it literally.
I came across a list of four different steps someone can use when deciding to use sarcasm.
1. Know your audience- some people are more sensitive and have a harder time picking up on sarcastic remarks.
2. Scan before you send- emailing and texting make it very hard to pick up on sarcastic remarks so keep that in mind since sarcasm is dependent on tone of voice.
3. Examine your motivations- don’t use sarcasm to hide behind.
4. Error on the side of caution- if you are ever unsure of how people will respond, then don’t use sarcasm.
Sarcasm is so often misused or misunderstood. One study found that 55 percent of the people who gave an example of sarcasm actually did not give a correct example of sarcasm. Sarcasm is most often used against another person rather than in regards to the person using the sarcasm. Sarcasm is also a form of teasing one another. In one article you can learn how to be sarcastic. The easiest way to learn is to surround yourself with people who use sarcasm. Comedians are usually well versed in the ways of using sarcasm. It has been shown that understanding sarcasm requires social intelligence. People who have suffered head trauma and damages in specific regions are less able to determine sarcasm.
The textbook also discusses the close relationship that sarcasm has with irony. Irony is when the speaker expresses a statement in which the literal meaning is opposite to the intended meaning. Irony and sarcasm can easily be confused with one another in everyday life. Sarcasm tends to be slightly more harsh and targets an individual. Irony and sarcasm aren’t always funny but in some cases they can be.
Sarcasm is a very interesting form of humor. Some people really like it and some people would rather never use it. Personally, I love sarcasm and never go a day without using it in some form. I never realized how much information is out there on sarcasm.
http://www.sarcasmsociety.com/sarcasm
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200706/field-guide-sarcastic-masters
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/08/18/would-you-even-recognize-sarcasm/
The topic I am going to focus on in relation to this chapter is Irony. According to the text, Irony is a figure of speech that communicates the opposite of what is said. For instance, someone might say “What a beautiful day!” during a bleak and miserable day is actually communicating “What an awful day”. While ironic remarks are not always funny, it is a source of humor. The text states irony is also closely related to sarcasm, which depends for its effect on “bitter, caustic, and other ironic language that is usually directed against an individual”. A great example of irony being directed against an individual would be if one person said, “You’re a fine friend” to another who has been unkind; this is an ironic statement that is also sarcastic. While researching the topic of irony I was able to locate three awesome websites that provide pictures, sentences, and basic information conveying irony in everyday life.
One of my sources is a site called Friends of Irony, which provides numerous instances of irony captured by people in everyday life through pictures. Visiting the site is really the best way to get the full effect and understand irony, but there are a couple pictures I will mention due to their perfect definition of this humor. One of the photos consists of a news article that provides an incredibly ironic title. The title reads, “City council runs out of time to discuss shorter meetings”. I am sure one can see the irony in this, but for clarification the article’s title is ironic because it states the reason for not discussing and getting shorter meetings is due to running out of time, which wouldn’t happen if they had shorter meetings (Duh!). Another one worth mentioning is picture that shows a advertising banner that says, “Sale, NEW Historic Homes”. I’m sure one wonders how a history home (a home with at least several decades of existence) can be at the same time referred to as new (newly constructed). Well, I suppose a house can’t be brand new while also having a robust history, but there lies the irony in the statement.
My second source I am using for understanding the concept of irony is a website titled Is It Ironic. This site provides many more examples of irony through the form of basic sentences. These ironic statements are just like the pictures from the previous site mentioned, but I thought it was interesting to see this humor in specific sentences involving common circumstances. Just to state a few of the sentences and their obvious irony; one says, “I know what irony is, yet I’m using this site”. Another ironic sentence was, “The fire safety lectures were cancelled due to the screen catching fire” and one other one stated, “A boy dressed up as a vampire for Halloween dies of blood loss”. All of these and the many other examples provided on by this source are clearly conveying the meaning of irony.
This last source in researching irony is an information site that provides great information and an overall understanding of irony. According to this site, “Irony is a part of speech that we often use in our day-to-day lives, especially when it comes to passing a sarcastic remark to someone we don't like. An irony definition states that a statement is ironic when it has two meanings. To be more specific, there is a difference between what the statement means and what the speaker wants to convey. In other words the statement has a double meaning that is actually uncovering the truth. Irony examples are also described as witty remarks, often have hidden meanings that one can understand after reading the statement.” The site goes on to clarify the meaning of irony through a statement and its purpose or meaning. When a person says that the water is as pure and transparent as the mud, what he wants to signal is the degree of impurity in the water. Looking at the statement, one can say that the person has seen sewage water or is asked to make a humorous remark on the clarity of drinking water. While irony is not always funny, it is a type of humor.
http://friendsofirony.com/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.isitironic.com/ironiqs.htm
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/examples-of-irony.html
The blog “Sarcasm punctuation mark? Who needs it:-)” written by Matthew Moore introduces the “SarcMark”, the new sarcasm punctuation mark. This punctuation mark can be used mark sarcasm within an emails, Twitter accounts, Facebooking or texts. The article states that people view this as a progressive thing, however the author argues that we already have tachniques to emphasize sarcastic, the use of “haha” and “lol” or emotions like smiley faces, as with the title of the article.
I also find it interesting that the British author call out American society to be “irony-blind”. The book states that this social context is important, if the sarcasm is a relief to a negative situation, than the sarcastic comment will be viewed as positive. However on the other hand, if the comment is negative sarcasm in a positive situation it will unwanted. The book also states that sarcasm and irony within this context can often be taken more negatively then literal statement in these kinds of situations.
This second article from Psychology Today, talks about this negative side of sarcasm. That sarcasm combines humor, aggression towards others, and insecurity. The website recommends to know your audience, what kind of relationship between the audience (just associates or closer) and know why you are making the comment to them. Is it insecurity and need to feel superior that motivates these comments?Finally this website also states that you should read through your emails and texts before you send them, to make sure your message is clear and is not taken the wrong way.
Furthermore, Psychology Today states that research has shown that sarcasm is not related to intelligence and humor within people. What sarcasm and humor seems to be related to the understanding of social situations and facial expressions. This website, as stated before, has an negative outlook on the use of sarcasm. However I tend to enjoy sarcasm and believe that people who are sarcastic and witty are creative people.
The book states that people with an "active sense of humor" are able to number one, put together different ideas and meanings to make irony work. Secondly, to use humor to relax and defuse negative or stressful situations. In the last article from Selfgrowth.com, the author also talks about the negative effects of sarcasm. This article is interesting in that it states that teasing and hurtful sarcasm comments can stay with a person for a long time. This echoes what the book said about memory and humor. Possibly because the comments are surprising..
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/matthewmoore/100022414/sarcasm-punctuation-mark-who-needs-it/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200706/field-guide-sarcastic-masters
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/teasing-sarcasm-and-emotional-scarring-in-adults
I decided to look into the effects of memory on humor. I struggled finding what I believed were quality websites so I narrowed my field and decided to try and look into what’s known as a memory bias. A humor memory bias basically means that when given information along with something humorous you are more likely to remember what is funny but less likely to remember the rest of the information.
The textbook talks a little about this when speaking about Schmidt’s (1994) experiment. The findings showed that “enhanced recall of the humorous sentences was found at the expense of the nonhumorous sentences in the same clip”. Christi Collins (1997) conducted a very similar study on the effects of humor on sentence memory. Collins introduces three hypothesis when speaking about why humorous sentences are better recalled. One, “the effects of humor are a result of a physiological response or arousal. Arousal has a positive effect on memory”. Collins actually use Schmidt’s study to give the second hypothesis which is “there is a difference between the attention given to humorous material and non-humorous material”. The third hypothesis is “the effects of memory is that participants rehearse humorous material more than non-humorous material”. Collins study was very basic and the results showed that there was a significant difference between the memory for humorous sentences and non-humorous sentences. So basically the study shows the memory bias.
Another study on the effects of humor on memory showed the same memory bias. In this study Dr. Keith Carlson (2008) used posters to test whether humorous information was more easily recalled. Carlson created posters including the same image and keyword but made one humorous and one inspiration by changing the phrases. Again the results showed that the humorous posters were more easily recalled than the inspirational posters. In the article Carlson warns that when using humor you must make sure the humorous message is closely related to the information you’re trying to give. Carlson noted that in commercials that use humor people often remember the funny part of the commercial but can’t tell you what product the commercial is for because the two are not related to each other.
The memory bias that these articles show has come to be known as the humor effect. According to “Using Eye Tracking to Study the “Humor Effect” information that you find funny is “marked” in your brain which makes it easier to retrieve later. In a study conducted at Radboud University Nijmegen in Holland used eye tracking technology to monitor a subjects visual attention to humorous, non-humorous and neutral texts. The study showed that “humor already receives enhanced attention at encoding”.
I found the information on memory bias extremely interesting. I experience this all the time and in fact did while looking for a video clip to use in this blog. I can remember funny clips from different tv shows that met my criteria for this blog, however I was unable to remember anything else from the episodes because all of my focus was on the one small funny scene.
http://www.valpo.edu/news/news.php?releaseId=3358
http://eyetrackingupdate.com/2010/03/29/eye-tracking-study-humor-effect/
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/psychology/research/psy302/spring97/christi_collins.html
Humor: Learning, Memory, and Intelligence
Susan J. Jones says play, as a skill, decreases almost completely throughout the schooling process. I would have to disagree. In my experience, even through high school, I had many teachers who encouraged us to laugh and have fun. I do not feel like I was robbed of play by the schools. I feel like I am still very playful and part of the reason is due to great teachers I’ve had who made learning fun. Although I disagree with this aspect of Jones’s view, I do believe that humor and fun are very important in learning.
Humor is a way of engaging the class which helps build relationships and create trust among the students with the teacher. Also, laughing together is a way of bonding with each other.
It can help reduce stress and get students excited about learning. Humor can be especially helpful when used in math which often is an area of anxiety for many students .This relaxed alertness that humor can create is conducive to learning. Students will focus more easily on the material being presented and because humor is an attention getter, the associated information is easier to retrieve from memory later. As the text says, humor is a great memory aid for the general information accompanied by humor.
There have been studies that have shown this effect of humor on learning. Students were found more likely to recall material presented with humorous examples.
Humor is a great cue for memory. This may be because humorous information is encoded into the long term memory easier than serious material or this may be due to a greater amount of rehearsal for humorous information.
Visual humor, such as cartoons, may be especially helpful to certain students. It is commonly known that some children learn better when the material is presented in a visual rather than linguistic way. Adding the element of humor may enhance that aspect of learning even more.
Musical humor combined with visual can be very, very powerful. I can personally attest to this. It seems like it is so much easier to remember the words to a song than to remember specific events, dates, or equations. I still remember every word of the preamble to the Constitution that I learned my junior year of high school. The reason I remember it is because my Government teacher made us watch the “School House Rocks” version and learn the song. I will never, ever forget that song and video. With that being said, there are many things I have forgotten since my junior year of high school. This is personal proof to me that music along with humorous images is a very powerful learning and retaining tool.
I’m glad I did this web divergence activity on learning, memory, and intelligence. I like most of what the text has to say but it is limited information. The text says that humor does not have a big effect on retention when used constantly. I would have to agree and disagree depending on what is meant by constant. I think that incorporating humor into a class is important to do on a daily basis. I believe it does help retention is the sense that it helps the encoding of the information into memory in the first place. I think that humor is a great attention getter and memory cue. It stands out from other information. So if humor is used in every other sentence, I do not think it would be useful. It needs to be kept in the context of standing out. I think it should definitely be used as an attention getter, like in the middle of a seemingly dry topic, or to get the class involved, like learning a song to accompany the information.
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/psychology/research/psy302/spring97/christi_collins.html
http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/mi/dickinson_humor_mi.htm
http://www.susanjjones.com/growbrain8.html
After reading chapter 4 I was also interested in the concept of schemas and scripts and how they apply to humor. As described in the text, schemas relate to how information is organized in a knowledge structure (Bartlett, 1932; Mandler, 1979; Rumelhart and Ortony, 1977). Schemas and scripts allow us to take information based on knowledge we are familiar with, for example if we see a picture of an elephant's trunk, a schema will allow us to associate it with gray wrinkled skin, a giant body, and so forth. If we see a entire picture of the elephant, a script may allow is to relate this to a circus, or the country of Africa. We are only able to relate these schemas and scripts with the elephant, however, if we have previous knowledge about the animal. Humor formulates around a schema when there is incongruity present and if something is out of line with the schema we are familiar with. The text, for example, uses a norm to demonstrate this; a nude man sitting in the middle of a restaurant. The incongruity is that according to societal norms, we would not generally see someone sitting at a public restaurant nude, and that is what makes the situation funny.
The first site I investigated to learn more about schemas and how they relate to humor was on organization of knowledge and how a "network model" is used to describe how a schema works. The author describes how a collection of concepts is needed in order to create a schema, and if we do not have the necessary components, the schema will fail to work. While reading about this, I thought about schemas I am familiar with and it occurred to me that many schemas I have been familiar with since a very young age. I have never traveled to a foreign country, and it became apparent to me while reading about the model theory that if I were to travel somewhere outside the U.S. (which I hope to at some point) that although some schemas may be universal (through gestures and signs) I'm sure I would encounter unfamiliar schemas through culture differences. Being in a foreign country surrounded by these opposing schemas, I'm sure others would find it funny if I behaved in a way contrary to how they would because of being unfamiliar with certain schemas and scripts, and because of this incongruity, they would probably laugh at me. I am not looking forward to encountering this process upon traveling, but it will probably happen!
The second article I read involving the concept of schemas related to marketing and why consumers are more likely to choose products based on a schema that is interesting, but not too outlandish. The article goes on to describe the "foundational truth" or, the truth an individual holds about an issue in their mind and how this relates to disruption, or how far an individual will stretch from their knowledge about the topic before they reject it. The article uses the example of an advertisement for Las Vegas. If the listener is given the message to travel to Las Vegas because it is a "fun family place" they are most likely to reject the message because it strays too far from the "foundational truth" which is that Las Vegas is more of an "adult playground". Thus, if the goal is to engage a consumer, they must try an approach that is appealing, but not too far from the truth. Instead, they might try to appeal to a more adult audience than to a family one. This makes sense because I have encountered many ads and television commercials where I wouldn't buy a product because of how it is advertised and how far things are stretched from my own "truths". An example might be an advertisement for sport clothing (such as Nike) and the individuals in the ad are competitive, knocking each other over and getting dirty, I would not find it appealing. However, if the clothing is represented in a cleaner manner, such as someone running down a street in their Nike sneakers with a peaceful background, I would be more persuaded to purchase the clothing because my "truths" are not compromised as much. It all depends on the scenario present to the consumer and how they relate the ad to themselves.
I also watched a video on you-tube pertaining to a pouring schema. The young boy in the video is pouring what looks like pancake batter from a larger container to a bowl, then back to the container and then onto a plate. It is funny because the boy represents "pouring" with transferring a substance from one container to another and when he pours the substance onto the plate, of course it goes everywhere. The schema as adults that we would associate with pouring a liquid substance is that it must be poured into a round container instead of on a flat surface to avoid spilling everywhere. The incongruity is that he pours it onto the plate and then tries to pour the little of what is remaining back into the bigger containers, and he is surprised that it is all over the floor instead. The funny part is the little boy's reaction to what he has done because he associates the schema of "pouring" in general and doesn't associate this with a flat surface that is the plate.
Overall, from the concept of schemas, I have learned that it is critical to have a knowledge base to establish new concepts and scripts to build upon, and that things will continue to be funny if incongruities exist and do not stay constant in regards to things we already know.
http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow/StrategicReader/StratKwlge.html
http://www.tremor.com/Newsroom/Articles/Why-Effective-Word-of-Mouth-Disrupts-Schemas/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPAqmP_m0g
I decided to research the cognitive evolution of humor, or how the cognitive components of humor may have evolved over time. The chapter specifically discusses the 'cognitive play' aspect of humor which lends itself well to an evolutionary explanation. But other cognitive aspects of humor also relate to an evolutionary interpretation including the effects of humor on memory and creativity.
Evolution is a theory regarding the development of life on earth. In essence evolution suggests that human development is driven by natural selection, which is the process by which certain traits, tendencies, dispositions, etc., are favored based on their ability to increase or decrease reproductive success. Most often traits that are not helpful to the organism will decrease that organisms reproductive success (by way of death prior to reproduction or decreasing their mate selection and opportunities) and so these traits will not be passed on to another generation, eventually dying out entirely.
Early research on humor suggested that it had evolved as a way to release tension after a battle in order to get our bodies back to a comfortable state. Laughter was another form of a lion's roar in this regard (this is basically Gruner's theory). These theories were in line with the historical interpretation of humor as being a type of liquid in the body (like the vitrious and aquies humours in our eye).
As the scientific understanding of humor developed so too did the evolutionary explanations of it. Humor quickly came to be viewed as a recognition of some kind of incongruity. Pattern recognition (which is key in the recognition of incongruity) has been a very dominant psychological concept since the beginnings of psychology, but it was really brought to the front of research by the Gestalt psychologists. There are many evolutionary explanations regarding the development of sophisticated pattern recognition abilities in humans. It's not too much of an exaggeration to credit pattern recognition as the source for the creation of short and long term memory, consciousness, and many other human faculties.
Now almost every theory of humor involves the idea of incongruity in some way; and cognitive explanations rely on it almost exclusively. Throughout the class we've heard (and sometimes complained) about how the psychology of humor isn't very funny. Now I can talk about some o the psychology of humor that I actually do find funny. The chapter discussed the idea of computational humor. This topic is important because research in both fields (psychology of humor, and computer science of humor) help each other out, they tend to help explain things about the other field.
One large difference between humans and computers has been that computers have a very difficult time processing the subtle differences and the more complex dynamic processing that is required for survival. Humans developed these powerful pattern recognition abilities that computers lack. In attempting to develop artificial intelligence in computers one of the first tests developed was called the Turing Test. If a computer can pass itself off as a human, that is, if it can trick a human into thinking it's a human and not a computer, it has passed the Turing Test and is said to have artificial intelligence.
The importance of dynamic language processing becomes clear when you see a computer program attempt to pass a 'turing test.' One comical example included in the comedy skit I watched was when a person asked the chess computer program Deep Blue "How would an Australian man ask for money?" Deep Blue responded "Check Mate." Aside from being hillarious, we see that although this is in fact a good answer there were relatively few questions that Deep Blue could be asked that this phrase "checkmate" would have been acceptable.
This joke was probably funny because we might expect checkmate to be a response from Deep Blue yet it is initially incongruent with the question asked. It's only when we are able to separate the two words into 'check' and 'mate' that we see this is an acceptable response to the question asked.
I'm quite skeptical of evolutionary psychology. I think it is a fantastic field, but one that requires an incredible amount of careful thought and consideration in order to produce worthwhile insights. It seems as though any good theory of humor must include the evolutionary determinants or influences. It may be that humor has taken over where aggressive expresion used to be (e.g. in Gruner's release of anger like a lion's roar) or it may be a more sophisticated evolutionary development due to the creation of sophisticated pattern recognition systems (e.g. in cognitive incongruity theories). It seems likely that cognitive incongruity theories will remain dominant in the near future, and that advances in computational humor will continue to reveal how these processes work.
Articles:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/06/30/the-evolution-of-humor/2523.html
http://www.sexandphilosophy.co.uk/humour.htm
Turing Tests:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq0ELhpKevY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyGYasf5rKc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGLijjU_Qlw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT1du8zHVy8
http://www.psychegames.com/psychology_humor.php
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/snow-white-doesnt-live-here-anymore/200910/your-humor-your-strength-your-creativity-your-intell
In this chapter, the point was made that Creativity is an essential factor for something to appear as hilarious. Once this creativity aspect is in place it could branch off and be used in ironic statement which can be another route to take applying it to humorous situation. This also plays a role in conversational humor as well because it allows you to incorporate incongruity, surprises, and novelty. By applying schemas frames and scripts, it provides the nature of incongruity in humor. We should be able to view humor as a way of making our feelings and responses available to others without offending the listeners. When we can frame a difficult matter with humor, we can often reach someone who would otherwise withdraw from the situation.
I found a couple clips that did an excellent job throwing these concepts and ideas out there. Joe Blunt used a great sense of creativity with this act. Firstly creativity involves a switch of perceptive or a new way of looking at things. He led with say What if a white comedian would come up here and talk crap about yall?” They wouldn’t like it lol!! The way he used simultaneous activation was brilliant as well because it triggered surprise and incongruity in which the people were dying laughing. He told a joke about Black people in Vietnam that displayed irony.
JJ’s clip was hysterical as well. He used more of conversational approach by talking about some things he was going throw with this living situation and family. Cognitive play is seen as playing with language and ideas like schemas and scripts by exploring new and unusual ways of using them. An example of this would be when he was talking about being drafted into the service! Another one was the stuff about his daughter and talking to her about sex.
IN spontaneous conversational humor anecdotes play a major part because it gives something that people can relate to directly or they know somebody that relates to a particular situation discussed. Both comedians used this heavily in their routines as well as world play. They changed up some words and meanings in order for the audience to find them funny. This connected with the irony factor because the meaning is totally different than the intended meaning.
Chapter 4 discusses the cognitive psychology involved in humor. One of the more interesting topics from chapter 4 was the section on humor, incongruity, and schemas. The typical advancement of humor begins with one interpretation of a situation, and then suddenly a second contradictory interpretation is activated. There is a standing debate among theorists about whether incongruity alone results in humor or whether the incongruity must be resolved in some way to produce humor. The interpretation one has of incongruous events is based on one’s schema. As stated in our textbook, a schema is a dynamic mental representation based on past events that enables us to build mental models of the world. Similarly, frames and scripts are particular types of schemas that relate to knowledge about the physical environment and routine activities. In other words, concepts of schemas, frames, and scripts are activated in order for a person to make sense of incoming incongruous information in order to cognitively process something as humorous. Understanding the concepts of schemas, frames, and scripts are important for understanding the application of schema theories in order to resolve the incongruity involved in humor.
The Cognitive Basis of Incongruity in Verbal Humor is a research study that sought to develop an operationalization of the construct of incongruity to empirically examine the influences of the production and perception of humorous text (2001). The results found that incongruity enhances the humorousness of text and provided empirical support consistent with a schema-based model of cognitive representation. These results help support Martin’s notion that simultaneous activation of two incompatible scripts is the essence of humorous incongruity and is experienced as enjoyable and amusing. However, these results do not help the debate as to whether the resolution of incongruity is essential in order for something to be perceived as funny.
An alternative type of schema theory is a Raskin’s Semantic Script-based Theory of Humor. Raskin’s theory is said to be one of the most popular and influential incongruity-resolution theories today. According to the theory, humor is the result of activating two opposing scripts. As stated in the cited blog, humor arises when one of two opposing scripts is activated, followed by a second script, causing ambiguity. There are three stages for Raskin’s theory. The first stage is where the first script, or schema, is activated. In the second stage, information that is incongruent with the previous schema is activated, creating ambiguity. In the third stage, the ambiguity is resolved. Raskin’s theory supports the opposing side of the debate as to whether humor requires the resolution of incongruity in order to be perceived as humorous. However, a certain level of cognition is required to understand the resolution involved in the joke.
In a study titled, “Strategic Aspects of Cultural Schema: A Key for Examining How Cultural Values Are Practiced in Real-Life Settings (2010),” the strategic aspects of cultural schema were explored. The study focused on Self-denigrating Humor Schema (SHS). SHS refers to a knowledge structure that guides a person to produce laughter and present that laughter to the deprecated self, so that the person can construct friendly relationships with others (2010). The results supported the hypotheses by suggesting that strategic aspects of cultural schema are a key for investigating how people engage differently in culturally valued behavior in different daily contexts. In other words, these results demonstrate the importance of schema theories in explaining the reason for the different people to have different interpretations of the world around them. This is important for understanding humor based schema theories because it further explains how and why different people have different reactions to incongruent aspects of humor and which personalities appreciate different types of humor.
In conclusion, it is obvious why schema based theories are important for understanding different interpretations of incongruent events. Although there is still a long-lasting debate as to whether resolution of incongruent events is necessary in order to produce humor, there is evidence to support both sides. However, what is known is that understanding the concepts of schemas, frames, and scripts are important for understanding the application of schema theories in order to resolve the incongruity involved in humor.
http://www.jsecjournal.com/articles/volume4/issue2/niwafinal.pdf
http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/12/cognitive_science_of_humor.php
http://people.tamu.edu/~jvaid/jvpapers2002/TextandDiscourse01.pdf
Memory is a complex system, or more likely many systems, and humor can tap into several principles of information storage. The book discusses arousal as factor in humor's effect on memory. A heightened emotional state can affect memory and humor has a way of arousing an emotional response. I found what seems to be like a poster presentation from a student at Missouri Western State college. In her study she asked participants to read a list of sentences for 5-7 minutes. Some she considered humorous, and others were neutral. She then gave a distractor task of arithmetic problems. After she provided the first couple words to the sentences and asked participants to fill in the rest. She found that her participants showed a significantly higher rate of recall for humorous sentences than for non-humorous ones. This is a pretty simple study but it illustrates that a lot of the time we do indeed remember humorous things probably better than things without humor involved. I believe its because humor implies a deeper or more levels of processing. We hear a normal sentence and decide whether it pertains to us or not, and the processing is done for that sentence, but we hear something funny and we must go through the cognitive effort to "get" the joke, and many jokes tap into knowledge and associations that are not explicitly referenced in the joke. So our brain must recall from memory the necessary information, then apply this information to the joke, then it must go through a sort of social screening process to determine how to react to the joke. If we are trying to make a good impression with the person telling it we will probably laugh or if it is an inappropriate time or if the content violates what we see as acceptable we won't laugh. The point is humor is created because the brain must put forth more effort.
The book is big on incongruity. Why is so much humor based on incongruity? When our brain in given information that is incongruous there is a sense of tension. You can feel this tension as you listen to a joke. When you hear the punchline the incongruity, and the cognitive tension are at a peak. Then the information is interpreted, the connections are made and we "get" the joke. The tension is resolved. If we don't get the joke we feel uncomfortable because the tension has not be resolved and the brain is still trying to synthesize incongruous information. For example this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_8HKroOPjc, is apparently a bunch of inside jokes. I don't get any of it so I am left with this unresolved uncomfortable tension. The arousal theory holds that it is purely the release of the tension that causes us to find a positive emotional response, but I disagree because we encounter incongruity all the time with things that are not humorous.
I think cognitively incongruity is the key to many forms of humor, and many forms rely on something to resolve the incongruity. But several new comedy movements have explored just creating this sense of incongruity and not resolving it. So you literally "get" none of the jokes. Now we are free to explore what about this stimuli is funny. Facial expressions, noises, awkward moments are funny not because we have a resolved cognitive process and clear satisfaction of connecting a punchline to a joke. Tim and Eric Awesome Show is a fairly new show that is pretty out there to say the lea,st. It is da da -esque, it just assaults you with sounds images and short video bursts. http://video.adultswim.com/tim-and-eric-awesome-show-great-job/corbs.html The show is hilarious to some people, so maybe to them the incongruity is funnier without resolution.
Humor many times is funny because it violates our expectations. When we are surprised there is a surge in the sympathetic nervous system, we become more aroused. Endorphins are released which are associated with positive emotions. So when we have a cognitive format for a type of joke or a situation successful humor really plays into that and then violates our expectations. It usually doesn't even matter what exactly they introduce when they breach expectations, as long as its unexpected it will probably be considered funny to a lot of people, the Scary Movie series is a great example of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3zLybNBmtY
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/psychology/research/psy302/spring97/christi_collins.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_8HKroOPjc