What is a Laugh? What Makes Things Funny?

Question

When you see a comedian, or a friend simply tells you a joke, why do you laugh? What makes things funny?

Answer 1

A number of competing theories have been written. For Aristotle, we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at being superior to them. Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterised by a display of self-ignorance. Schopenhauer wrote that it results from an incongruity between a concept and the real object it represents. Hegel shared almost exactly the same view, but saw the concept as an "appearance" and believed that laughter then totally negates that appearance. For Freud, laughter is an "economical phenomenon" whose function is to release "psychic energy" that had been wrongly mobilised by incorrect or false expectations.

Philosopher John Morreall theorises that human laughter may have its biological origins as a kind of shared expression of relief at the passing of danger. The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) proposed by Victor Raskin and S. Attardo identifies a semantic model capable of expressing incongruities between semantic scripts in verbal humor; this has been seen as an important recent development in the theory of laughter. Recently Peter Marteinson theorised that laughter is our response to the perception that social being is not real in the same sense that factual states of affairs are true, and that we subconsciously blur the distinctions between cultural and natural truth types, so that we do not normally notice their differing criteria for truth and falsehood. This is an ontic-epistemic theory of the comic (OETC).

Robert A. Heinlein's view of why people laugh is explained in one of his most praised novels, Stranger in a Strange Land, "because it hurts", is empathic but also a release of tension.

In modern times, the tendency is toward acceptance of incongruity as the probable of laughter, and incongruity-based theories are slowly gaining ground, other schools of thought still hold some favor.

This is the basis of the cognitive model of humor: the joke creates an inconsistency, the sentence appears to be not relevant, and we automatically try to understand what the sentence says, supposes, doesn't say, and implies; if we are successful in solving this 'cognitive riddle', and we find out what is hidden within the sentence, and what is the underlying thought, and we bring foreground what was in the background, and we realize that the surprise wasn't dangerous, we eventually laugh with relief. Otherwise, if the inconsistency is not resolved, there is no laugh, as Mack Sennett pointed out: "when the audience is confused, it doesn't laugh" (this is the one of the basic laws of a comedian, called "exactness"). This explanation is also confirmed by modern neurophysiology

Answer 2

A laugh or laughing is a positive cry. The difference between laughing and crying is a 'line' or point of difference on one scale for measurement for anxiety or agony of tension. The other between is the difference between inner and outer or internality and externality of the person expressing their Spirit that way. In both there is a similarity and it is unexpectedly identified, i.e. there is an identification of the persons internal mental process and the external joke or comedians action description. This identification may be elicited or stimulated through agreat number of symbolic phenomenological presentations. Of course not all laughing and crying is unintentionally instantaneous; sometimes those expressions are counterfeited or forged or falsified for one reason or another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour

Answer 3

Laughter is the physical reaction to a situation that places a stress on the brain. When the conflict can not be resolved, the cognitive dissonance cause a burst of neural activity that resolves itself physically. Namely, laughter and tears, or sometimes a combination of the two, release endorphins to return the brain to a state of normalcy amidst the confusion.

After you've heard a joke too many times, you don't laugh because there is no more cognitive dissonance - you have no more response to it. Six months (or weeks or days, depending on the person) after a relationshiop, you no longer cry because it's no longer causing a "just doesn't make sense" reaction anymore. Even now, years after, I don't cry although it still doesn't make any sense. Women are that way.

Answer 4

I think most humor is defined as the gap between what we expect and what the language or images telling the joke effect.

here's a decent article that explains this penomenon pretty well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor

Answer 5

Here's a joke that I felt quite funny : • A man travels to Spain and goes to a Madrid restaurant for a late dinner. He orders the house special and he is brought a plate with potatoes, corn, and two large meaty objects. "What's this?" he asks. "Cojones, senor," the waiter replies. "What are cojones?" the man asks. "Cojones," the waiter explains, "they are, how you say the ... testicles of the bull who lost at the arena this afternoon." At first the man is disgusted, but being the adventurous type, he decides to try this local delicacy. To his amazement, it is quite delicious. In fact, it is so good that he decides to come back again the next night and order it again. This time, the waiter brings out the plate, but the meaty objects are much smaller. "What's this?" he asks the waiter. "Cojones, senor," the waiter replies. "No, no," the man objects. "I had cojones yesterday and they were much bigger than these." "Si, Senor," replies the waiter, "You see...the bull, he does not always lose."

Answer 6

Either the image they conjurer is funny or the surprize (punch line) is funny.

Answer 7

What makes things funny? definitely not wikipedia!

Answer 8

What makes them is there timing,and some ppl just because it cheers up your day