Psychology of humor

Willibald Ruch

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Psychology of humor

Willibald Ruch
Willibald Ruch

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This chapter is in the book The Primer of Humor Research

Psychology of humorWillibald RuchIntroductionPsychology is about people� Hence the psychology of humor refers to the study of humor and people, not humor of humorous material only� We don’t consider psy chology to be the science of the psyche or soul, as those latter terms are rather vague� Definitions these days typically refer to psychology as being the science of the behavior of living organisms, its causes and con-sequences� Behavior refers to activities and processes that can be objective-ly assessed and recorded� They may be visible externally (like walking, or talking), or via a recording device (such as the action of a particular mus-cle)� Behavior may also refer to internal processes and what the mind does, like sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, motives, emotional feelings, and other subjective experiences� Causes of behavior may be inter-nal (like personality) or external (like the social situation), and so may be the consequences� Psychology wants to describe (e�g�, how is it?), explain (e�g�, why do we do it?), predict (e�g�, who will do it?) and control (e�g�, can we change it?) behavior�For a psychology of humor then we need to be precise in describing the behav iors and phenomena involved, like the cognitive processes involved in the creation of a funny remark, or the many levels of the emotional response to a brilliant joke� When explaining humor behavior we ideally want to arrive at laws, such as “per ceived funniness of a joke varies in an inverted u-form as a function of the degree of incongruity”, and when we study whether extra-verted individuals smile more at a clowning experimenter than introverts we predict humor� When we ultimately are able to make humorless people funny entertainers, or turn sarcastic types into be nevolent whimsical jesters, we have ultimate proof that we control humor behavior�Psychology has its roots in both philosophy and physiology and intersects with, or is informed by many other academic disciplines� Not surprisingly, early psy chological studies were in the tradition of either two� Following the early accounts of laughter by Darwin (1872) and Spencer (1860), the empir-ical study of various physiological components of laughter, like respiration,

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Psychology of humorWillibald RuchIntroductionPsychology is about people� Hence the psychology of humor refers to the study of humor and people, not humor of humorous material only� We don’t consider psy chology to be the science of the psyche or soul, as those latter terms are rather vague� Definitions these days typically refer to psychology as being the science of the behavior of living organisms, its causes and con-sequences� Behavior refers to activities and processes that can be objective-ly assessed and recorded� They may be visible externally (like walking, or talking), or via a recording device (such as the action of a particular mus-cle)� Behavior may also refer to internal processes and what the mind does, like sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, motives, emotional feelings, and other subjective experiences� Causes of behavior may be inter-nal (like personality) or external (like the social situation), and so may be the consequences� Psychology wants to describe (e�g�, how is it?), explain (e�g�, why do we do it?), predict (e�g�, who will do it?) and control (e�g�, can we change it?) behavior�For a psychology of humor then we need to be precise in describing the behav iors and phenomena involved, like the cognitive processes involved in the creation of a funny remark, or the many levels of the emotional response to a brilliant joke� When explaining humor behavior we ideally want to arrive at laws, such as “per ceived funniness of a joke varies in an inverted u-form as a function of the degree of incongruity”, and when we study whether extra-verted individuals smile more at a clowning experimenter than introverts we predict humor� When we ultimately are able to make humorless people funny entertainers, or turn sarcastic types into be nevolent whimsical jesters, we have ultimate proof that we control humor behavior�Psychology has its roots in both philosophy and physiology and intersects with, or is informed by many other academic disciplines� Not surprisingly, early psy chological studies were in the tradition of either two� Following the early accounts of laughter by Darwin (1872) and Spencer (1860), the empir-ical study of various physiological components of laughter, like respiration,

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