Influence of emotional states on incongruity-resolution and nonsense humour processing

Humour processing is complex and may be influenced by an individual's emotional state. This study explores the differences in incongruity-resolution and nonsense joke humour processing between three groups with different emotional states (positive, neutral and negative). Each group consisted of 32 participants. The positive and negative emotion groups were asked to elicit positive and negative emotions, respectively, through autobiographical recall. In contrast, the neutral emotion group was asked to answer questions unrelated to emotions. Participants were also asked to rate their emotional valence, arousal and conformity with the provided emotion words. Subsequently, they were directed to rate their humour appreciation, humour comprehension and level of surprise at the jokes. The results indicate that these variables interacted with the level of amusement derived from the two humour types. The positive emotion group perceived nonsense jokes as funnier than the negative emotion group, while the negative emotion group perceived nonsense jokes as less amusing than incongruity-resolution jokes. No significant difference was found between the three emotion groups in terms of humour comprehension and surprise at the jokes. The results deepen the understanding of the correlation between emotional states and processing of different humour types.

Funny? Think About It! Selective effect of cognitive mechanisms of humour on insight problems

The present study aims to elucidate whether insight problem solving could be facilitated by the cognitive component of humour. The authors take interest in whether the logical mechanisms of humour can affect how fast insight problems are solved. To that end, the authors conducted two experiments where participants solved insight problems after watching visual humorous stimuli such as videos and slideshows. The first experiment demonstrated the overall impact of facilitation by humour on insight problem solving; however, it did not show any difference in how particular logical mechanisms of humour affect the solution time of insight problems. The second experiment showed that the cognitive component of humour could selectively affect insight problems whose difficulty stems from different sources. These results suggest that the cognitive component of humour, when operationalised as logical mechanisms and schema switching, contributes to solving insight problems.

Harnessing Children's Picture Books to Socialize Children About Pain and Injury: A Qualitative Study

Pain experiences are common during childhood (eg, "everyday" pain, vaccine injections) and are powerful opportunities for children to learn about pain and injury. These experiences likely inform fundamental and life-long beliefs about pain. There is scant research investigating the sociocultural contexts in which children learn about pain and injury. One unexplored context is the shared reading of picture books (eg, between parents/caregivers and children). In this study, we investigated whether shared reading of picture books that included depictions of pain and/or injury prompted parent/caregiver-child interactions. If interactions were observed, we explored what those interactions entailed. Twenty parents/caregivers (8 men, 12 women) and their children (n = 27; 10 boys, 17 girls) were recruited from libraries in South Australia. Parent/caregiver-child families chose from 8 books (7 fiction, 1 nonfiction) with varying amounts of pain/injury-related content. Shared reading interactions were video recorded, transcribed, and analyzed alongside analysis of the picture books using reflexive thematic analysis. Pain/injury-related interactions were observed between parents/caregivers and children during shared reading of picture books. Qualitative analyses generated 1 main theme and 3 subthemes. Findings identified that shared reading presented an opportunity for children's understanding of pain and injury to be socialized through discussion of characters' experiences. This included teaching children about pain and injury, as well as promoting empathy and emotional attunement toward characters who were depicted as being in pain. Finally, parents/caregivers often responded with observable/expressed amusement if pain/injury was depicted in a light-hearted or unrealistic way. Overall, shared reading of picture books presents an untapped opportunity to socialize children about pain and injury. PERSPECTIVE: Shared reading of picture books that have depictions of pain and/or injury can prompt parent/caregiver-child interactions about pain and injury. These interactions present critical opportunities that can be harnessed to promote children's learning of adaptive pain-related concepts and behaviors during a critical developmental period.

How funny is ChatGPT? A comparison of human- and A.I.-produced jokes

Can a large language model produce humor? Past research has focused on anecdotal examples of large language models succeeding or failing at producing humor. These examples, while interesting, do not examine ChatGPT's humor production abilities in ways comparable to humans' abilities, nor do they shed light on how funny ChatGPT is to the general public. To provide a systematic test, we asked ChatGPT 3.5 and laypeople to respond to the same humor prompts (Study 1). We also asked ChatGPT 3.5 to generate humorous satirical headlines in the style of The Onion and compared them to published headlines of the satirical magazine, written by professional comedy writers (Study 2). In both studies, human participants rated the funniness of the human and A.I.-produced responses without being aware of their source. ChatGPT 3.5-produced jokes were rated as equally funny or funnier than human-produced jokes regardless of the comedic task and the expertise of the human comedy writer.

Comedy, consensus, and conflict framework: Comedy as a norm violation can build consensus or escalate conflict in negotiations

In this work, we propose that humor violates norms that can build consensus or escalate conflict in negotiations. Drawing on social identity theory, we propose that humor commits norm violations that are more likely to be perceived as benign among ingroup observers in negotiations, but perceived as offensive to outgroup observers in negotiations. We introduce the Comedy, Consensus, and Conflict Framework to shed light on the interpersonal effect of humor on negotiations. When humor is expressed to an ingroup observer, relative to neutral communication, humor is more likely to violate weak norms that govern social group membership resulting in the violation as being perceived as benign, which promotes cooperative behaviors in negotiations such as concessions and collaborative problem-solving. By contrast, when humor is expressed to an outgroup observer, relative to neutral communication, humor is more likely to violate strong norms that define social group membership resulting in the violation as being interpreted as offensive, which triggers competitive behaviors in negotiations such as aggressive offers and hardened positions. Furthermore, we suggest that humor not only generates appraisals of social identity threats, but also affective responses that influence negotiation behavior. Finally, we expand our theoretical model about humor to consider key relational factors that influence norm strength, which motivates whether negotiators appraise norm violations as offensive or benign.

First They Scream, Then They Laugh: The Cognitive Intersections of Humor and Fear

On the surface, fear and humor seem like polar opposite states of mind, yet throughout our lives they continually interact. In this paper, we synthesize neurobiological, psychological, and evolutionary research on fear and humor, arguing that the two are deeply connected. The evolutionary origins of humor reside in play, a medium through which animals benignly explore situations and practice strategies, such as fight or flight, which would normally be accompanied by fear. Cognitively, humor retains the structure of play. Adopting a view of humor as requiring two appraisals, a violation appraisal and a benign appraisal, we describe how fear-inducing stimuli can be rendered benignly humorous through contextual cues, psychological distance, reframing, and cognitive reappraisal. The antagonistic relationship between humor and fear in terms of their neurochemistry and physiological effects in turn makes humor ideal for managing fear in many circumstances. We review five real-world examples of humor and fear intersecting, presenting new data in support of our account along the way. Finally, we discuss the possible therapeutic relevance of the deep connection between humor and fear.

Is laughter the best marketing? Why this is the wrong question

Humor is often described as a miracle pill for marketers, yet the effects of humor on advertising, content marketing, service, and other marketing functions are wildly inconsistent. Before scholars can know whether a pun, prank, meme, or laugh will attract sales, clicks, or five-star reviews, they need to understand why the effects of humor appear to vary. Humor has different effects because scholars have treated humor as different constructs while studying how it influences different marketing outcomes with different types of stimuli in different of situations on different types of people. Only by recognizing these differences can scholars begin to understand when, why, and how humor can benefit marketers. To navigate this complexity, researchers need to develop a theory of humor that can help explain how different attempts to be humorous influence different consumers in different situations.

Humor research in management: Humor as Social Information (HASI)

Humor research is flourishing in Management. Diverse theories have been adopted and diverse factors have been used in research. Nonetheless, these disconnected efforts pose challenges to the development of a coherent body of knowledge on humor in organizational life. I propose the Humor-as-Social-Information (HASI) framework regarding the social effects of humor, and use it to guide my review on recent humor research in Management. Humor evokes affective and inferential processes leading to perceivers' cognitions and behaviors, and these processes are moderated by two sets of factors, including (1) information-processing motivation/ability and (2) humor inappropriateness. The proposed HASI framework highlights how humor exerts social influence within organizations, and paves new avenues for future research that will help further develop "humor science."

Funny Date, Creative Mate? Unpacking the Effect of Humor on Romantic Attraction

Extensive research shows that people are attracted to funny dating partners, with several competing, sometimes conflicting, explanations for why humor is strongly desired in a mate. The present research asks whether humor is interpreted as a reliable, hard-to-fake indicator of some other, valuable trait. Across six experiments, we manipulated humor in a hypothetical date, online dating profile, or video profile and asked which of several traits statistically linked to humor are reliably inferred about funny partners. Humor-specifically partners producing humor-consistently led to higher ratings of partner creative ingenuity. This effect was not moderated by gender, and mediated desirability for different types of partnership. Results further revealed stronger preference for a first-date activity requiring creative ingenuity with a funny versus non-funny partner. Humor may signal that a potential partner is skilled at creative problem-solving, which may be particularly important when considering various forms of partnership.

The Impact of Culture and Social Distance on Humor Appreciation, Sharing, and Production

Building on the benign violation theory and self-construal theory, we conducted four studies to examine how culture and social distance would influence humor appreciation, sharing, and production. Study 1 found that Chinese participants appreciated and intended to share a joke involving distant others more than that involving close others. They also generated funnier titles for a joke involving distant others than close others. Studies 2a and 2b compared Chinese and Americans using various types of jokes, replicating the social distance effect among Chinese but finding little effect of social distance among Americans. In Study 3, interdependence-primed participants generated more humorous titles for a joke involving distant than close others, whereas independence-primed participants showed no effect of social distance. The research provides further support to the benign violation theory from a cultural perspective and has important implications for cross-cultural communications.

Troll story: The dark tetrad and online trolling revisited with a glance at humor

Internet trolling is considered a negative form of online interaction that can have detrimental effects on people's well-being. This pre-registered, experimental study had three aims: first, to replicate the association between internet users' online trolling behavior and the Dark Tetrad of personality (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism) established in prior research; second, to investigate the effect of experiencing social exclusion on people's motivation to engage in trolling behavior; and third, to explore the link between humor styles and trolling behavior. In this online study, participants were initially assessed on their personality, humor styles, and global trolling behavior. Next, respondents were randomly assigned to a social inclusion or exclusion condition. Thereafter, we measured participants' immediate trolling motivation. Results drawn from 1,026 German-speaking participants indicate a clear correlation between global trolling and all facets of the Dark Tetrad as well as with aggressive and self-defeating humor styles. However, no significant relationship between experiencing exclusion/inclusion and trolling motivation emerged. Our quantile regression findings suggest that psychopathy and sadism scores have a significant positive effect on immediate trolling motivation after the experimental manipulation, whereas Machiavellianism and narcissism did not explain variation in trolling motivation. Moreover, being socially excluded had generally no effect on immediate trolling motivation, apart from participants with higher immediate trolling motivation, for whom the experience of social exclusion actually reduced trolling motivation. We show that not all facets of the Dark Tetrad are of equal importance for predicting immediate trolling motivation and that research should perhaps focus more on psychopathy and sadism. Moreover, our results emphasize the relevance of quantile regression in personality research and suggest that even psychopathy and sadism may not be suitable predictors for low levels of trolling behavior.

Robert Provine: the critical human importance of laughter, connections and contagion

Robert Provine made several critically important contributions to science, and in this paper, we will elaborate some of his research into laughter and behavioural contagion. To do this, we will employ Provine's observational methods and use a recorded example of naturalistic laughter to frame our discussion of Provine's work. The laughter is from a cricket commentary broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1991, in which Jonathan Agnew and Brian Johnston attempted to summarize that day's play, at one point becoming overwhelmed by laughter. We will use this laughter to demonstrate some of Provine's key points about laughter and contagious behaviour, and we will finish with some observations about the importance and implications of the differences between humans and other mammals in their use of contagious laughter.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cracking the laugh code: laughter through the lens of biology, psychology and neuroscience’.

The Relative Importance of Joke and Audience Characteristics in Eliciting Amusement

The current work estimated the relative importance of joke and audience characteristics for the occurrence of amusement. Much psychological research has focused on stimulus characteristics when searching for sources of funniness. Some researchers have instead highlighted the importance of perceiver characteristics, such as dispositional cheerfulness. Across five preregistered studies (Ns = 118-54,905) with varied stimuli and perceiver samples (website visitors, students, Mechanical Turk and Prolific users), variance-decomposition analyses found that perceiver characteristics account for more variance in funniness ratings than stimulus characteristics. Thus, psychological theories focusing on between-persons differences have a relatively high potential for explaining and predicting humor appreciation (here, funniness ratings). Crucially, perceiver-by-stimulus interactions explained the largest amount of variance, highlighting the importance of fit between joke and audience characteristics when predicting amusement. Implications for humor-appreciation theories and applications are discussed.

Humour Against Binge Drinking During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cartoon-Based Anti-Alcohol Health Campaign Targeting Women-Who-Have-Sex-With-Women

This study focuses on the role of humour in health and well-being of women-who-have-sex-with-women (WSW) during COVID-19. This group has been shown to be vulnerable to alcohol abuse, especially as self-medication coping with social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated the potential usefulness of WSW-inclusive (i.e., depicting a female-female romantic couple) versus hetero-normative (i.e., depicting a male-female romantic couple) humorous cartoons in an anti-alcohol health campaign against excessive drinking among WSW. One-hundred-and-twenty-seven self-categorized WSW of diverse genders (woman, non-binary) and sexual orientations (e.g., lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, queer, heterosexual) participated in a 2 × 2 factorial between-participants design. Data were collected during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in The Netherlands. Humorous cartoons explicitly referring to lockdown measures systematically varied the humour subject (punchline about excessive drinking versus staying sober) and the couple (male-female, female-female) that were depicted. Although the (very brief) health message did not influence binge drinking determinants, the humorous health campaign depicting a female-female couple was perceived as more inclusive and evoked more amusement and less anger than when the cartoons depicted a male-female couple. High WSW identifiers were less amused about the health campaign text (but not the cartoons), less likely to share campaign materials offline (but not online), and had more positive binge drinking attitudes but lower binge drinking intentions than low identifiers. Implications are discussed.

Humor and Personality: Temperament and Character Have Different Roles

This study aimed to test how sense of humor is dependent on the complex and dynamic interactions between the emotional (temperament) and sociocognitive (character) components of personality. Specifically, we examined the relationship of temperament and/or character profiles to overall humor potential and comic style. In total, 665 adults responded to Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and the Comic Style Markers. Temperament profiles were associated with overall humor potential but not comic styles. People with positive development of all three character traits had the highest levels of fun, benevolent humor, and wit. Sense of humor depended on integrated profiles of both temperament and character. We conclude that temperament energizes overall humor potential while character shapes the comic styles. This study advances research by directing focus to the causal within-person psychobiological processes that underlie sense of humor.

Humor and power

Although humor significantly shapes interpersonal perception and behavior, it historically has been surprisingly absent from much of the psychology literature. However, there have been recent advances in humor research which have provided us with two key insights. First, humor is intricately linked with power. Individuals who use humor well can elevate, maintain, and solidify their position in the social hierarchy. Second, attempting to use humor is risky. Individuals whose humor attempts are perceived as offensive and inappropriate can lose status and their ability to influence others effectively. This review provides theoretical and practical insights on how humor shapes the social hierarchy, while outlining important areas for future research.