Why do we laugh?

Communication World, Oct-Nov, 1998 by James P.T. Fatt

It's healthy to laugh. By laughing we discharge built-up energy that can't be used because of socially imposed inhibitions. But why do we laugh at times and at other times remain sombre?

Types of Humour

Humour can be categorised into three basic types: verbal, visual and physical. Verbal humour uses words such as puns and jokes. Visual humour uses images as in cartoons and in the physical appearance of some comedians. Physical humour uses actions, as in "slapstick" comedy that includes pie fights or chase scenes. In humour, verbal, visual or physical things alone are not funny. Other conditions contribute to the verbal, visual or physical stimuli that make humour possible. To understand what is involved in humour and why some things are funny and others are not, we will to turn to how some psychologists and sociologists explain humour.

Explaining Humour

Humour can be explained in three ways:

1. Things are humorous when they make a person feel superior.

2. Things become humorous when there is incongruity, or the juxtaposition of things not normally associated with one another.

3. Humour occurs when tension is released.

For humour to be effective, it must also stimulate laughter.

The first explanation that humour relates to feelings of superiority has existed since ancient times. Plato, for example, believed that all humour could be explained in this way. People laugh whenever something or someone is degraded, thus making them superior. Most often, the feelings of superiority and degradation work hand-in-hand. Thus, this type of humour consists of giving "yourself a sense of superiority by deriding lesser mortals," according to Peter Marsh in "Raising a Smile" from The Marshall Cavendish Encyclopedia of Personal Relationships: Human Behaviour.

Examples of verbal humour involve derision and include ethnic jokes and "put-downs". These give people the opportunity to assert their superiority over others. A derisive form of visual humour can be found in caricatures that emphasise the unusual features of people. Sometimes, even when the visual image is of someone we respect, we laugh because the caricature makes him or her look comical or ugly.

A derisive form of physical humour can be found, for example, in the antics of the Three Stooges, an early U.S. comedy team. In this type of humour, people laugh when they see the misfortunes of three men who are obviously inferior to them. When a person in a slapstick comedy slips on a banana peel, or is otherwise hurt, people laugh because they identify with their superiority over the situation.

However, despite these various examples of derisive humour, the explanation that humour relates to feelings of superiority is not always enough to explain why people laugh.

For example, sometimes we do not laugh, but rather feel pity for someone's inferiority and suffering. The second explanation of humour is that people laugh when they see incongruity, that is, two things side-by-side that normally do not belong together. Incongruity also can relate to humour that sets up a person to expect one type of outcome, and is surprised by a completely different outcome.

Many humour experts believe that incongruity is the key to explaining humour. For example, Marsh claims that for humour to exist, there must be an essential incongruity such as an unexpected conflict or inconsistency between two ideas that is resolved as a joke. Nico Frijda, author of "The Emotions: Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction," also sees the main element of humour to be the presentation of some opposition, contradiction, or difficulty that is subsequently resolved.

An example of verbal incongruity can be a joke where the person is expecting to hear one outcome, but is surprised by a different one, thus, verbal incongruity occurs when the punch line bears an unexpected relationship to the opening part of the story. Incongruity can be found in visual humour as well. For example, Laurel and Hardy made people laugh simply because one of them was very fat and the other was very thin. Similarly, in Singapore, comedians Wang Sa and Yeh Fong are well-received by the audience partly because one is short and fat and the other is tall and thin. It is funny for people to think that two people who are so completely different from one another would ever become friends. Marsh believes that visual forms of incongruity are among the most humorous. Thus, cartoons without any captions are often the most humorous of all, because they rely on visual puns or unusual juxtapositions.

An example of incongruity in physical humour can be seen in the famous play and television series known as "The Odd Couple." People automatically laugh at this situation that shows two men forced to live as roommates with one another - one of them being obsessively neat and the other being a total slob. In addition, people laugh at the physical actions and reactions that come from these two characters with opposing personalities. As with Laurel and Hardy, one of the keys to incongruous humour in "The Odd Couple" is the fact that the two characters are completely opposite from one another. It seems that the more extreme the incongruity is, the funnier it is. As with Marsh and Frijda, A. J. Chapman, who wrote in Humour., The Encyclopedia Dictionary of Psychology, agrees that incongruity is important in explaining why some things are funny and others are not, but stresses that incongruity alone is not enough to explain humour in all cases. The perception of something unexpected might lead to laughter but, if there is no playful mood, it may lead instead to fear, curiosity, problem-solving or concept learning. Thus, funny things are sometimes incongruous; however, incongruous things are not necessarily funny.