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Laughter

by Don L. F. Nilsen

and Alleen Pace Nilsen

Laughter

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Modern Man

• Modern man in contrast to primitive man has been called:

• Homo Erectus (upright man)

• Homo Sapiens (thinking man)

• Homo Ridens (laughing man)

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The Id, the Super Ego, and Tendentious Jokes

• “The Id is a pool for desires and drives.

• As society and parental influence (represented in the super ego) do not allow the direct expression of sexual and hostile impulses, gratification can only be achieved in an indirect way.

• There, individuals repressing their sexuality or aggression should show a preference for sexual and aggressive jokes.” (Ruch [2008] 29)

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Traits, States, and BehaviorsSeriousness vs. Playfulness

• TRAITS: A “serious person” wants to function exclusively in the bona fide mode of communication. This is not true for a “playful person.”

• STATES: We can be in a serious or pensive mood, or a silly mood.

• BEHAVIORS: We can tell a joke or clown around. (Ruch [2008] 32)

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States

• Playful Mood– Cheerful mood– Hilarious mood

• Serious Mood– Earnestness– Pensiveness– Soberness

• Bad Mood– Sadness– Melancholy– Ill-Humor (Adapted from Ruch [2008] 34)

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Moods (States)

• “While an ill-humored person, like the serious one, may not want to be involved in humor, the person in a sad mood may not be able to do so even if he or she would like to.”

• “Also, while the sad person is not antagonistic to a cheerful group, the ill-humored one may be.”

• “Bad mood might also be a disposition facilitating certain forms of humor, such as mockery, irony, cynicism, and sarcasm.” (Ruch [2008] 34)

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Types of Humor

• “Affiliative Humor” involves the tendency to say funny things, to tell jokes, and to engage in spontaneous witty banter.

• “Self-Enhancing Humor” is a coping mechanism.• “Aggressive Humor” involves sarcasm, teasing, ridicule,

derision, put downs or disparagement.• “Self-Defeating Humor” is when a person allows himself to be

the butt of other people’s jokes.• (Ruch [2008] 38-39)

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Smiles

• Willibald Ruch indicates that anatomically there are about 20 types of smiles, controlled by five facial muscles:– Zygomatic Major– Zygomatic Minor– Levator Anguli Oris– Buccinator– Risorius (Ruch [2008] 21)

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Enjoyment Smiles

• “When individuals genuinely enjoy humor they show the facial configuration named the Duchenne display, which refers to the joint contraction of the zygomatic major and the orbicularis oculi muscles (pulling the lip corners backwards and upwards and raising the cheeks) causing eye wrinkles, respectively.”

• (Ruch [2008] 21)

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Non-Enjoyment Smiles

• “Smiles not following these definitions are unlikely to reflect genuine enjoyment of humor.”

• “There may be smiling involved in blends of emotions (e.g., when enjoying a disgusting or frightening film), smiles masking negative emotions (e.g., pretending enjoyment when actually sadness or anger is felt), miserable, flirting, sadistic, embarrassment, compliance, coordination, contempt, and phony etc. smiles.”

• (Ruch [2008] 22)

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Humor StylesCraik, Lampert, Nelson, & Ware

Socially Warm

Reflective

Competent

Earthy

Benign

Vs. Socially Cold

Vs. Boorish

Vs. Inept

Vs. Repressed

Vs. Mean-Spirited

(Ruch [2008] 41-42)

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Laughter

• “Most laughter is not a response to jokes or other formal attempts at humor” (Provine [2001] 42).

• Laughter may be caused by all sorts of non-humorous stimuli (tickling, laughing gas, embarrassment) and can be triggered by imitation (watching other people laugh) (Attardo [2007] 117)

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• Giles and Oxford (1970) list seven causes of laughter: humorous, social, ignorance, anxiety, derision, apologetic, and tickling.

• Olbrechts-Tyteca (1974) point out that “laughter largely exceeds humor.”

• Jodi Eisterhold (2006) discussed the “principle of least disruption,” which “enjoins speakers to return to a serious mode as soon as possible.”

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LAUGHTER VS. SMILING

• Because smiles can sometimes evolve into laughs and laughs can taper off into smiles, some people think that laughter is merely a form of exaggerated smiling.

• However, smiles are more likely to express feelings of satisfaction or good will, while laughter comes from surprise or a recognition of an incongruity.

• Furthermore, laughter is basically a public event while smiling is basically a private event.

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Laughter is an Invitation

• “To laugh, or to occasion laughter through humor and wit, is to invite those present to come closer.”

• “Laughter and humor are indeed like an invitation, be it an invitation for dinner, or an invitation to start a conversation: it aims at decreasing social distance.”

• (Coser 172)• (Kuipers (2008): 366)

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• Laughter is a social phenomenon. That’s why “getting the giggles” never happens when we are alone.

• In contrast, people often smile when they are reading or even when they are having private thoughts.

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• Smiling is not contagious, but laughter is contagious.

• That’s why radio and television comedy performances often have a laugh track.

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PHILOSOPHERS’ STATEMENTS ABOUT LAUGHTER

• Throughout time, philosophers have made many statements about laughter that are not true of smiling.

• These philosophers include Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, William Hazlitt, Arthur Schopenhauer, Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud.

• Each of these philosophers defined laughter in a different way:

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THOMAS HOBBES

• Laughter is “the sudden glory arising from the sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others.”

• (Leviathan, 1651)

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IMMANUEL KANT

• “Laughter is an affection arising from a strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing.”

• (The Critique of Judgment, 1790)

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WILLIAM HAZLITT

• “The essence of the laughable is the incongruous, the disconnecting one idea from another, or the jostling of one feeling against another.”• (Lecturers on the Comic Writers,

Etc. of Great Britain, 1819)

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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

• “The phenomenon of laughter always signifies the sudden apprehension of an incongruity between a conception and the real object.”• (The World as Will and Idea 1844)

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HENRI BERGSON

• “Something mechanical encrusted on the living causes laughter.”

• (Laughter 1900)

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SIGMUND FREUD

• Laughter arises from “the release of previously existing static energy.”

• (Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 1905)

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THE PARADOXES OF LAUGHTER

• Although laughter is usually associated with mirth and joy, perpetrators of violent acts have also been known to exhibit menacing smiles, or to laugh demonically.

• The paradoxes of laughter have been addressed by many laughter scholars:

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JAMES AGEE

• James Agee classified the laughter of screen comedians into four categories: the titter, the yowl, the belly laugh, and the buffo.

• “which he organized into six categories ranging from the incipient or ‘inner and inaudible’ laugh (the simper and smirk) to the loud and unrestrained howl, yowl, shriek, and Olympian laugh.”

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GARY ALAN FINE

• Gary Alan Fine has explained that a smile in one society may portray friendliness, in another embarrassment, while in still another it may be a warning of hostilities and attack if tension is not reduced.

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JACOB LEVINE

• “No pattern of human behavior is so full of paradoxes.”

• “We may laugh in sympathy, from anxiety or relief, from anger or affection, and from joy or frustration.”

• “Conditions that can evoke laughter include shyness, triumph, surprise, tickling, a funny story, an incongruous situation, a sense of well-being associated with good health, and a desire to conceal one’s inner thoughts.”

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D. G. KEHL CITING JAMES THURBER

• There are a dozen different kinds of laughter, from the inner and inaudible to the guffaw, taking in such variants as the laughter of shock, embarrassment, the “she-laughed-so-I-Iaughed-too,” and even the “he-laughed-so-I-didn’t” laugh.

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Del Kehl went on to divide laughter into ascending degrees of intensity:

• There is the simper or smirk, the snicker or snigger, the titter, the giggle, the chuckle, the simple laugh, the cackle, the cachinnation, the chortle, the belly laugh, the horse laugh, the Olympian or Homeric laugh, the guffaw, the boff or boffo, the crack up, the roar, the yowl or howl, the bellow, the hoot, and the shriek.

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TICKLING

• People who laugh from being tickled are not necessarily put in a more receptive mood for enjoying the humor in jokes.

• This is because laughing from being tickled occurs in a part of the brain different from where laughter that is intellectually stimulated occurs.

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• Furthermore, people cannot tickle themselves because the cerebelum in the lower back of the brain somehow sends an interfering message to the part of the brain that controls laughter.

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FINAL CONTRAST OF HUMOR AND SMILING

– Anthony Chapman did a study in which he compared the actions of a group of children who knew they were being observed with a group who did not know they were being observed.

– The children who knew they were being watched laughed four times as often as did those in the other group.

– However, they smiled only half as much.

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PARADOXICAL CONCLUSION

• Anthony Chapman concluded not only that laughter can be good or bad, depending on the situation.

• But he also concluded that humor is both the cause for laughter, and the result of laughter.

• That’s why humor and laughter are so closely associated.

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LAUGHTER WEB SITESColor-Changing Card Trick:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asxUtX8Hyd4&feature=related

The Happiness Machine:http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=lqT_dPApj9U

Selective Attention Test:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo