What's so funny? Modelling incongruity in humour production

Abstract

Finding something humorous is intrinsically rewarding and may facilitate emotion regulation, but what creates humour has been underexplored. The present experimental study examined humour generated under controlled conditions with varying social, affective, and cognitive factors. Participants listed five ways in which a set of concept pairs (e.g. MONEY and CHOCOLATE) were similar or different in either a funny way (intentional humour elicitation) or a "catchy" way (incidental humour elicitation). Results showed that more funny responses were produced under the incidental condition, and particularly more for affectively charged than neutral concepts, for semantically unrelated than related concepts, and for responses highlighting differences rather than similarities between concepts. Further analyses revealed that funny responses showed a relative divergence in output dominance of the properties typically associated with each concept in the pair (that is, funny responses frequently highlighted a property high in output dominance for one concept but simultaneously low in output dominance for the other concept); by contrast, responses judged not funny did not show this pattern. These findings reinforce the centrality of incongruity resolution as a key cognitive ingredient for some pleasurable emotional elements arising from humour and demonstrate how it may operate within the context of humour generation.

Pleasures of the Mind: What Makes Jokes and Insight Problems Enjoyable

“…With reference to the former, in particular, this change in interpretation is the result of the resolution of the incongruity. It has also been demonstrated that this pattern elicits pleasurable emotions in those who are telling the joke (Hull et al, 2016 ).…”

Jangkrik: Taboo Language Use at Comical Interlude in Javanese Shadow Puppet Performance

“…Furthermore, the use of particular obscenity helps to heighten the experience, perspective, and effect of the speaker. There is a quite interesting study in terms of the humour production conducted by Hull, Tosun, & Vaid (2017). This study came up with the statement that surprisingness is the crucial notion in producing humour.…”

Why are you amused: Unveiling multimodal humor from the prototype theoretical perspective

“…Specifically, the incongruity theory holds that the perception of incongruity leads to humour when two normally disparate concepts, schemata, or meanings are juxtaposed in a surprising or unexpected manner (Attardo & Raskin 1991;Coulson 2001;Ruch 2008). It has received considerable empirical support (Deckers & Buttram 1990;Hull et al 2017;etc.). Suls (1972: 85-89) streamlines the humour appreciation process in a three-stage information processing model: a setup stage where a prediction is made for comparison with the most recent text input, an incongruity stage where the input does not match the prediction, and a resolution stage where one engages in figuring out how the punchline is congruent with the preceding text.…”