What is Humor? Why Do We Laugh?

You should know that I am a serious YouTube addict.  I'll watch a tutorial video "How To Do a Waterfall Braid" and end up watching a video of  "Spider VS Scorpion."  It happens.  Yes, I have YouTube accounts (Themediversion and TheAccutaneDiary) and I subscribe to my favorite YouTube users.  One of my favorite YouTube stars is Michael Stevens, better known as Vsauce.  He answers interesting topics like the one I'm about to discuss.  He also shares information on items one can buy online and interesting stories.  I highly recommend subscribing to him! Vsauce Channel

Just know that most of what I'll share comes from him and that I don't claim any of these information :)  I'm just spreading the knowledge because it's free!  Well...not like we are spending thousands of dollars for college classes or anything.

Anyways, think of this as SparkNotes or Cliffnotes for videos, your welcome.

So back to the question: What makes something funny?  Why do we laugh in response to something funny?

There are people who study this phenomenon called Gelotologist.  It's said that you are 30 times more likely to laugh when in a group of people because it acts as a social and bonding function.  There are two parts to laughing: the good where "laughing with" is conforming to a new idea or the bad where "laughing at" is a way to cast away the person.  

Laughing can be thought as a form of language.  We don't have to learn it because it occurs unconsciously meaning we were born with the capacity to laugh.  Take babies for example.  Babies laugh just as Swahili men or Portuguese women would.  So I guess we all laugh in the same way to some sort of "trigger."

Our brains are looking for patterns in understanding what is happening and predicts what will happen next.  This particular function of our brain is considered to be our evolutionary advantage.  So when we expect something to occur and all the sudden it changes, we often react with laughter.  We have just learned something that is a logical order.

This theory is called The Incongruity Theory of Humor.  This theory says that things are funny because there is a consistency between what we expect and what happened.  For example, a chicken dressed as a French man holding wine or clever memes. 

  

 

Comedy is a form of learning.  Once you learn the new logical order of the joke it ceases to be funny.  That's why jokes are funny the first time but not every other time after that.  You already learned something from it so you don't laugh.  Did you know that we laugh to ourselves even less than we talk to ourselves?  

Let's see if I can use my school knowledge to good use.  In chemistry, elements can be represented in many ways.  The elements in the periodic table are complicated but lets face it they are fascinating.  Some transition elements, like iron, have two or more commonly occurring charges due to oxidation states.  In other words, there are different "versions" of the element to balance the rest of the formula.  Iron can be expressed as Fe2+ or Fe3+.  So with different chemical compositions comes different names.  Ferrous (Fe2+) indicates a divalent iron compound while ferric (Fe3+) indicates a trivalent iron compound.    

So even though this may be new information to you, it's not funny because it falls in line with the logic of the iron element.  However, if I show you a picture of a "ferrous wheel" depicting the Fe2+ then it should surprise you.  The two dots you see around the Fe represents the 2+ charge in ferrous.

         

This is also why shows like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show are successful.  That's why more people learn politics better when the information presented to them is comical than in a classroom setting.  Let's stay away from this controversial topic, I only brought it up to prove a point :)

But we don't only laugh when something is funny.  We also laugh and smile when we are tickled, but we don't even like it.  Why is this the case?  Tickling helps teach children at a young age proper defensive behaviors.  Think about it, the most ticklish areas are the most vulnerable and the ones we cover when startled.  That's why you can't tickle yourself because you know it is coming so you aren't learning anything from it.  

Physically, laughing involves the epiglottis (a flap that prevents us from swallowing unwanted things into our lungs) because it constricts the larynx.  There are taste buds on the epiglottis which means comedy is a matter of taste.  Ding!   

I hope you find this to be interesting!  I certainly did.  Now you won't laugh the same way again, whoops!  I need to start doing productive things now, sigh.  

    

 “I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.” ― Woody Allen