Humor with backgrounded incongruity: Does more required suspension of disbelief affect humor perception? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Is the Concept of Incongruity Still a Useful Construct for the Advancement of Humor Research?
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 2008
The perception of incongruity is considered to be a necessary, though not sufficient, component of the humor experience. Incongruity has been investigated in the philosophical tradition for centuries, and it goes back as far as Aristotle's definition of the comic as based on a particular form of απάτη (surprise and deception). In modern times, many theoretical models, as well as empirical works, are based on this concept. The question is here raised whether the concept of incongruity has already been examined and exploited to its full potential, and nothing new, of theoretical or experimental usefulness, may be drawn from it. It is proposed to conceptualize incongruity as follows: a stimulus is perceived as incongruous when it diverts from the cognitive model of reference. In this perspective, a number of observations are advanced which point to a heuristic property of incongruity still open to interesting developments, both for theory and for applications.
From perception of contraries to humorous incongruities
Topics in humor research, 2013
According to the cognitive approach to humour, the understanding of jokes implies the recognition of an incongruity followed by its resolution. Through our work, we aim to contribute to this strand of research by investigating the link between cognitive processes and the understanding of humour. In particular, we will explore the distinction between the three different types of contrariety (global, intermediate and additive) that has emerged from the research on the psychology of perception and is characterised by different perceptual evidence, and how it applies to the concept of incongruity. We will also discuss what a reading of humorous incongruity in terms of perceptual patterns may add to previous definitions of incongruity and how it helps to contribute to the further operationalisation thereof.
The Incongruity of Incongruity Theories of Humor
Organon F, 2007
The article critically reviews the Incongruity Theory of Humor reaching the conclusion that it has to be essentially restructured. Leaving aside the question of scope, it is shown that the theory is inadequate even for those cases for which it is thought to be especially well suited-that it cannot account either for the pleasurable effect of jokes or for aesthetic pleasure. I argue that it is the resolution of the incongruity rather than its mere apprehension, which is that source of the amusement or aesthetic delight. Once the theory is thus restructured, the Superiority Theory of Humor and the Relief Theory can be seen as supplementary to it.
From perception of contrarieties to humorous incongruities.
In: Dynel, Marta (ed.), Developments in Linguistic Humour Theory. 2013. xiv, 425 pp. (pp. 3–24)
According to the cognitive approach to humour, the understanding of jokes implies the recognition of an incongruity followed by its resolution. Through our work, we aim to contribute to this strand of research by investigating the link between cognitive processes and the understanding of humour. In particular, we will explore the distinction between the three different types of contrariety (global, intermediate and additive) that has emerged from the research on the psychology of perception and is characterised by different perceptual evidence, and how it applies to the concept of incongruity. We will also discuss what a reading of humorous incongruity in terms of perceptual patterns may add to previous definitions of incongruity and how it helps to contribute to the further operationalisation thereof.
Perception of Contrariety in Jokes
Discourse Processes, 2012
According to the cognitive approach to humor, the comprehension of humorous texts implies recognizing an incongruity and resolving it. This article studies whether the cognitive process involved in the recognition of incongruity is affected by the conditions that make contrariety evident or only analytically recognizable in the perceptual domain. In study 1, participants were asked to choose (condition 1) or rank (condition 2) the best humorous text among three variations of the same jokes in which the critical incongruity was a global, additive, or intermediate contrariety. In studies 2 and 3, they were asked to recognize the critical property on which these three versions of the jokes played. The findings confirmed that the perception of humor and recognition of the critical element was easier when the elements involved in the jokes were opposite in terms of global contrariety (which is the type of contrariety that is perceptually more evident and more easily perceivable).
Incongruity as a Universal Component of Humor Appreciation: Some Hong Kong Data
Australian Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology
The development of a humor measure was described in a brief report in this journal. In that report, a series of suitable congruous and incongruous pictures were developed with a community sample of children. The findings of that study were consistent with those reported by others Schultz, 1972), indicating that incongruity is an essential component of humor appreciation. With a larger (n=140) and more representative sample, we embarked on a follow-up validation study. The findings of the present study provide further support for the universality of the incongruity as an essential component of humor appreciation across age and cultures.
What's so funny? Modelling incongruity in humor production.
Abstract Finding something humorous is intrinsically rewarding and may facilitate emotion regulation, but what creates humor has been underexplored. The present experimental study examined humor generated under controlled conditions with varying social, affective, and cognitive factors. Participants listed 5 ways in which a set of concept pairs (e.g, MONEY and CHOCOLATE) were similar or different in either a funny way (intentional humor elicitation) or a “catchy” way (incidental humor 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 humor and demonstrate how it may operate within the context of humor generation.
Incongruity in humor: Root cause or epiphenomenon?
Humor-international Journal of Humor Research, 2004
Humour and incongruity appear to be constant bedfellows, for at the heart of every joke one can point to some degree of absurdity, illogicality or violation of expectation. This observation has lead many theories of humour to base themselves around some notion of incongruity or opposition, most notably the semantic-script theory (or SSTH) of Raskin and the subsequent general theory (or GTVH) of Attardo and Raskin. But correlation does not imply causality (a reality used to good effect in many successful examples of humour), and one should question whether incongruity serves a causal role in the workings and appreciation of humour or merely an epiphenomenal one.
Motivation and Emotion, 1994
The domains-interaction approach, originally developed in metaphor research, was used to model humor processing. Using 'yokes" of the structure "A is the B of A's domain" (e.g., "John Candy is the hamburger of actors"), this approach allows for precise operationalizations of incongruity and resolution in terms of between-domain and within-domain semantic distance, respectively. Distances between 26 terms used in 250 of these simple jokes were derived from semantic differential ratings. As predicted, humor ratings of the jokes were positively correlated with incongruity (between-domain distance) but not with resolution (within-domain distance). Also as predicted, a significant interaction revealed that jokes with both incongruity and resolution were rated as most humorous. These findings were replicated in a second study. A third study indicated that humor perception differs from metaphor appreciation, showing main effects for both types of semantic distance, but no interaction, when the sentences were presented as metaphors instead of jokes and rated for aptness.
The role of secondary incongruities in cartoon appreciation
The European Journal of Humour Research, 2020
Failed humour in conversational exchanges has received increasing attention in humour research (see Bell 2015; Bell & Attardo 2010). However, tensions between what constitutes successful and failed humour have yet to be fully explored outside conversational humour. Drawing on Hay's (2001) classification of humour stages and using a socio-cognitive approach to pragmatics to examine responses from Spanish L1 and L2 users to differing combinations of structural and content features in cartoons, the present study aims to explore what factors contribute to successful and failed responses to multimodal humour. Previous research has predominantly investigated the role of caricature as one of the prototypical features of cartoons affecting humour communication, suggesting that this feature plays an active role in the recognition of the humoristic genre (Padilla & Gironzetti 2012). Findings from the present study indicate that caricature operates not only in the recognition, but also in the understanding and appreciation stages. In particular, our results point to two other roles of caricature as a secondary incongruity and as a factor that can trigger appreciation through empathy and/or a sense of superiority. Importantly, this investigation indicates that the presence of secondary incongruities can compensate for a partial lack of understanding, highlighting the relevance that this type of incongruity has in humour appreciation.