(The weird and unpredictable workings of humor)
“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process”—E. L. White. Unfortunately, science is largely about rigorous analysis and explaining things, so this may be why science and humor are often seen as mutually exclusive. Despite this, scientific attempts have been made to investigate the brain’s role in humor. Numerous psychological experiments have been detailed throughout this book: IQ tests, word-recitation tests, elaborate food preparations for appetite/taste, and so on. One of the common properties of these experiments, and countless others used in psychology, is that they all adhere to certain types of manipulations, or “variables” to use the technical term.
Psychology experiments incorporate two types of variables: independent and dependent variables. Independent variables are what the experimenter controls (IQ test for intelligence, word lists for memory analysis, all designed and/or supplied by the researcher); dependent variables are what the experimenter measures, based on how the subjects respond (score on IQ test, number of things remembered, bits of brain that light up and so on).
Independent variables need to be reliable in invoking the desired response, for example, the completion of a test. And here’s where a problem arises; in order to study effectively how humor works in the brain, your subjects need to experience humor. So ideally, you’d need something that everyone, no matter who they are, is guaranteed to find funny. Anyone who can come up with such a thing probably won’t be a scientist for very long, as they’d soon be getting vast sums from television companies desperate to exploit this skill. Professional comedians work for years to achieve this, but there’s never been a comedian that everyone likes.
It gets worse, because surprise is a big element of comedy and humor. People will laugh when they first hear a joke they like, but not so much the second, third, fourth or more times they hear it, because now they know it. So any attempt to repeat the experiment# will need yet another 100 percent reliable way to make people laugh.
There’s also the setting to consider. Most laboratories are very sterile, regulated environments, designed to minimize risks and prevent anything from interfering with experiments. This is great for science, but not for encouraging a state of merriment. And if you’re scanning the brain, it’s even harder; MRI scans, for example, involve being confined in a tight chilly tube while a massive magnet makes very weird noises all around you. This isn’t the best way to put someone in the mood for knock-knock jokes.
But still, a number of scientists haven’t let these fairly considerable obstacles stop them investigating the workings of humor, although they’ve had to adopt some odd strategies. Take Professor Sam Shuster, who looked into the workings of humor and how it differs between groups of people.20 He did this by riding a unicycle in busy public areas of Newcastle, England, and recording the types of reactions this provoked. While an innovative form of research, on a list of potential candidates for things everybody finds amusing, “unicycles” is unlikely to be in the top ten.
There’s also a study by Professor Nancy Bell of Washington State University,21 whereby a deliberately bad joke was regularly dropped into casual conversations, in order to determine the nature of people’s reactions to poor attempts at humor. The joke used was: “What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? Nothing. Chimneys can’t talk.”
The responses ranged from awkward to outright hostile. Overall though, it seems nobody actually liked the joke, so whether this even counts as a study into humor is debatable.
These tests technically look at humor indirectly, via reactions and behavior towards people attempting it. Why do we find things funny? What’s going on in the brain to make us respond to certain occurrences with involuntary laughter? Scientists to philosophers have chewed this over. Nietzsche argued that laughter is a reaction to the sense of existential loneliness and mortality that humans feel, although judging by much of his output Nietzsche wasn’t that familiar with laughter. Sigmund Freud theorized that laughter is caused by the release of “psychic energy,” or tension. This approach has developed and been labeled the “relief ” theory of humor.22 The underlying argument is that the brain senses some form of danger or risk (to ourselves or others), and once it is resolved harmlessly, laughter occurs to release the pent-up tension and reinforce the positive outcome. The “danger” can be physical in nature, or something inexplicable or unpredictable like the twisted logic of a joke scenario, or suppression of responses or desires due to social constraints (offensive or taboo jokes often get a potent laugh, possibly because of this). This theory seems particularly relevant when applied to slapstick; someone slipping on a banana skin and ending up dazed is humorous, whereas someone slipping on a banana skin, cracking their skull and dying is certainly not, because the danger is “real.”
A theory by D. Hayworth in the 1920s builds on this,23 arguing that the actual physical process of laughter evolved as a way for humans to let each other know that the danger has passed and all is well. Where this leaves people who claim to “laugh in the face of danger” is anyone’s guess.
Philosophers as far back as Plato suggested that laughter is an expression of superiority. When someone falls over, or does or says something stupid, this pleases us because they have lowered their status compared with ours. We laugh because we enjoy the feeling of superiority and to emphasize the other person’s failings. This would certainly explain the enjoyment of Schadenfreude, but when you see internationally famous comedians strutting about on stage performing to thousands of laughing people in stadiums, it’s unlikely the entire audience is thinking, “That person is stupid. I am better than them!” So again, this isn’t the whole story.