What makes something funny?

Introduction

For years scientists and philosophers have tried to come up with some sort of golden rule about what makes something funny. It sounded quite confusing to me too at first: As E.B. White says: “Humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind”. Then I realised, by theorising about what makes something funny, people would be able to avoid awkward situations where they say something funny and no one laughs. They’d now be able to predict how an audience reacts to certain scenarios and avoid offending people.

Theories about what makes something funny

One theory by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes and Baudelaire suggests that humans experience humour when they are put in situations where they are made to feel superior to others. Another suggested by Sigmund Freud claims that forbidden things can be found funny because as The Atlantic puts it “humour is a pressure valve for repressive psychic energy”. Kant and Schopenhauer think humour arises from incongruity and this theory was confirmed by Henny Youngman.

However, all of the theories mentioned above, have their flaws. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren from the Humour Research Lab (HuRL) of the University of Colorado say that “Unintentionally killing a loved one would be incongruous, assert superiority, and release repressed aggressive tension, but is unlikely to be funny”. This is an example that fits all the requirements of the first 3 theories but still isn’t very funny. The incongruity is in the fact that it would be an unexpected occurrence. It would also assert superiority by being clear that the person dead is inferior thus making the person who killed them, superior. Furthermore, it would release repressed aggressive tension.

So far, the most accurate theory of humour is the “benign-violation” theory—created by Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren. McGraw and Warren suggest that to be funny a situation must be perceived as a ‘violation’ but also as benign. The benign-violation theory explains that humour emerges from 3 crucial circumstances:

• Presence of a moral, social or physical norm violation

• A “benign” context that the violation is in

• The perception of the first two points together so the scenario is interpreted as a harmless violation

A violation is anything that threatens a person's views and beliefs on how the world should be. Scenarios can also be interpreted as “benign” in different ways: a common way that scenarios are found benign is psychological distance. This is similar to the logic behind “comedy = tragedy + time”, and it means that if the violation occurring in the scenarios doesn’t resonate with a member of the audience or affect them, then the violation can be perceived as benign.

Examples of the Benign-Violation Theory

Examples of violations can include things like violations of personal dignity, social norms and moral norms (slapstick, strange behaviour, disrespectful behaviour). All of these can be examples of humour provided they don’t seem threatening.

The benign-violation theory can be proved through the act of tickling. It is a violation because it is physically threatening and an invasion of personal space. Yet tickling is still perceived as benign because it is a harmless attack with no actual consequences. Tickling stops being funny when either the attack stops (completely benign situation) or it becomes too threatening (malign violation). This also proves why you can’t tickle yourself—it is only benign and not a violation.

Another example is humour expressed through double entendre. A double entendre is similar to a pun because it uses wordplay; but unlike a pun, one of the meanings is typically sexual, erotic, or another subject considered morally incorrect. It is a violation because sex isn’t something typically talked about and is considered an obscene and taboo subject. A double entendre is still benign, though, because one of the meanings is completely innocent and if the audience feels too violated, the person can still take it back by saying that they meant the more innocent meaning.

Why not everyone finds everything funny

Oftentimes, someone will crack a joke or do something that they feel will be perceived as funny but the response to it isn’t what they expected and their audience gets offended. So why is it that different people find different things funny? At the end of the day, what someone finds funny is a personal preference and it's just their opinion. But a lot of people’s opinions and tastes can be a result of their circumstances and who they are; things like someone’s age, gender, race, nationality, religion, class, wealth etc. Some people might not find certain things to be a violation but others may not believe that there's anything benign about a situation.

For example, if a wealthy person jokes about spending $400 on shoes in front of a poorer person struggling to pay their bills, chances are that they won’t find it funny. This is because the act of joking about spending that amount of money is seen as a malign violation and there is nothing benign about it. If that same wealthy person makes the same joke to someone who has that much wealth as well then they might find it funny as well because they can relate to it. The act of talking about your wealth can be seen as a violation of social norms because people don’t normally like to discuss how much money they have for fear of embarrassing themselves or others.

Another example would be if someone used a double entendre with a child. The child is too young to understand that level of complexity used when making a double entendre. This makes the joke purely benign and not a violation because they probably don’t understand the concept of sex and how discussing it in front of others is a violation of social norms. If the joke was made to an older audience then it would receive a positive reaction likely to be in the form of a snicker.

A member of a socially marginalized group—like the LGBTQ+ community—would probably also not find homophobic or transphobic jokes funny for the same reason that women aren’t as likely to find sexist jokes funny or racially marginalised groups aren’t going to find racist jokes funny. This reason is that it is too much of a violation to even qualify as dark humour because it is a violation of their personal dignity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, humour is a subject that has been widely explored and researched into for many years as scientists have tried to come up with an explanation for its appearances. However, something that still needs to be remembered is that different people find different things funny and it's okay for people to get offended by certain scenarios designed to elicit a positive reaction.