Volume 36, Issue 4

This article proposes a cognitive mechanism of humor of general applicability, not restricted to verbal communication. It is indebted to Raskin’s concept of script overlap, and conforms to the incongruity-resolution theoretical framework, but it is built on the notion of constraint, an evoked correspondence between sets of data. Under this view, script overlap is an outcome of a more abstractly described phenomenon, constraint overlap. The important concept of the overlooked argument is introduced to characterize the two overlapping constraints—overt and covert. Their inputs and outputs are not directly encoded in utterances, but implicated by them, and their overlap results in another overlap at the level of the communicated utterances, that the incongruity reveals. Our hypothesis assumes as a given that the evocation of such constraints is a cognitive effect of the inferential process by which a hearer interprets utterances. We base this assumption on Hofstadter’s theory of analogy-making as the essence of human thought. By substituting “stimuli” of any kind for “utterances” in this model, we obtain a mechanism as easily applicable to non-verbal communication—slapstick, cartoons—and we propose it describes the necessary and sufficient conditions for a communicative act in any modality to carry humor.

Driven by the knowledge that how societies remember their past matters in the present, the field of collective memory studies has paid significant attention to the media’s role in contributing to the production of socially shared representations of history. The genre of satire, however, has so far remained largely neglected. My paper addresses this gap and argues that, compared to other forms of media, satire not only adds to the production of memories, but it also offers distinct rhetorical techniques to encourage audiences to reflect on the construction and maintenance of collective memories. I develop the argument about satire’s memory-reflexive function through a case study of how The Simpsons  – by deploying the fictional persona of Jebediah Springfield as a metaphor of the Founding Fathers – critically comments on America’s hyper-polarized “history wars” between conservatives and liberals. I argue that animated satire is a particularly powerful vehicle for reflection on collective memory, not only because it subverts audience expectations, but also because the unlimited storytelling potential of animation makes it possible to imitate the politics of collective remembering with a high degree of realism.

An experiment ( n  = 202; 136 women; 66 men) demonstrated that people use implicit theories about liberals and conservatives to guide their impression of another person based on their humor, specifically, the degree to which their humor violates the individualizing and binding moral foundations described by Moral Foundations Theory (e.g., Graham, Haidt and Nosek 2009. Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(5). 1029–1046). Supporting Hypothesis 1, participants perceived a target person as more conservative when he posted to social media an immigrant-disparaging meme. They perceived him as more liberal when he posted a religion-disparaging meme. Supporting Hypotheses 2, liberals liked the target person more and conservatives less when he posted the religion-disparaging meme. Similarly, in keeping with Hypothesis 3, liberals liked the target person less and conservatives more after he posted the immigrant-disparaging meme.

In this article, we investigated a creative learning process aimed at a shared story with humor in a group of 7- and 8-year-olds. In this integrated learning process, children first created an individual drawing and a guided writing assignment on a character that would make others laugh and then placed these characters in a story. The stories were collected via collaborative storytelling and the activity was a problem-solving assignment on a humorous children’s book. The data were analyzed via theory-driven content analysis using Kyriakou and Loizou’s categories of flexibility and originality, as well as the theories of empowerment and the absurd. The results showed that the children preferred scatological humor, which evolved from non-flexible humor to flexible and original humor during the process. The shared stories were divided into static and dynamic stories: static stories presented a solution to the problem, but the humor did not evolve during the collaborative storytelling. The dynamic stories concentrated on the process of problem solving and contained versatile, flexible and original features. It seems that the structure of the creative learning process supported participation and sharing individual perceptions of humor. Further, humor created an engaging starting point for the process and underlines the pedagogical possibilities of humor.

This paper examines the construct validity of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) – that is, whether scores on the scale adequately reflect adaptive or maladaptive humor use which is causally related to psychosocial well-being, and considers how research on distinct groups of people defined in terms of their style profiles can clarify the nature of the styles. A number of concerns about scale content are raised, including that coverage of relevant issues and wording of some scale items are problematic; rating scales used to assess humor use require revision; the extent of influence of non-humor components of the items is unclear; and the items associated with any style do not accurately indicate its motivation. Findings concerning style profiles indicate the same style can perform different functions for different people (relationship/stimulation seeking, or self-defense) and also differ from those typically observed in studies of HSQ convergent, divergent, and criterion validity. Further research should take into account the methodological issues discussed and focus on the style profiles and humor content and structure preferences of humor users and their audiences. Reasons to view the styles as predictive of but not causally related to psychosocial well-being are also provided.