Why Crude Comedy Makes People Laugh

Disgusting, crude joke are funny only when people hearing them know that their laughter does not harm others. Even when discussing taboos, beliefs, bestiality or death, those making s joke have a good chance of eliciting laughter if their humor is harmless to others.

For many years, researchers have been trying to make sense of humor, as in determine its components, as well as what precisely makes something funny. Since the Ancient Greeks, philosophers and comedians have been trying to surmise its essence.

Thus far, these efforts have failed, as all theories were lacking in some aspects or others. This is the conclusion of a new investigation, conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder (UCB), The team here was led by experts A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren.

The two explain that jokes are indeed part of humor, but say that the latter domain is a lot wider. They say that, generally, things capable of being incongruous and releasing tension are funny. However, killing someone can also release tension, but it fails to be funny in the eyes of most people.

Researchers at UCB now believe they may have found three of the most important traits underlying humor, as well as why we perceive things as funny. They say that jokes need to be incongruous, benign, and reconcilable.

Incongruous anecdotes for example violate social norms, by implying for example that a person is having intercourse with a dead chicken. This was the example the research team itself used. Moral norms are also oftentimes under attack.

Listening to a good joke, the team adds, means being totally disgusted by its content and the mudding of social and moral norms it attacks, while at the same time interpreting the entire thing as benign. The latter criteria is essential to labeling something as funny.

McGraw puts things into perspective. “We laugh when Moe hits Larry, because we know that Larry's not really being hurt. It's a violation of social norms. You don't hit people, especially a friend. But it's okay because it's not real,” he explains.

“It's hard to find a comedy that's funny cross-culturally, because the ways that violations can be benign differ from culture to culture. The comedy that is funny cross-culturally tends to involve a lot of physical humor. The violations are clear no matter who you are,” McGraw adds.

Details of the new investigation will appear in an upcoming issue of the esteemed scientific journal Psychological Science, LiveScience reports.