Processing Humor

C.P. Snow was right in 1959 when he talked about the "two cultures"--it's a shame that as fields get more specialized, well-ranging knowledge falls by the wayside. Let it never be said that Spit Takes widened that divide (in fact, we've talked science here before).

So--with that in mind, let's visit an awesome article from earlier this month on the New Scientist site. The Comedy Circuit: When Your Brain Gets the Joke is a brief but in-depth exploration of what researchers learn when applying fMRI scans to people on the receiving end of humor (watching sitcoms, reading cartoons, etc.). 


I won't go in to all their discoveries, because they already have (and it truly is worth your time), but here are some highlights that I appreciated: 

No two brains are the same, however, and how these differences are reflected in our sense of humour is the subject of much research. Men and women, for example, seem to process jokes slightly differently. Although both sexes laugh at roughly the same number of jokes, women show greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex than men (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 102, p 16496). "This suggests a greater degree of executive processing and language-based decoding," says Mobbs. As a result, women take significantly longer than men to decide whether they find something funny, though that doesn't seem to spoil their enjoyment of the joke. Indeed, women show a greater response in the limbic system than men, suggesting they feel a greater sense of reward.

How gratifying to see these results talked about in an elevated and fair way, as opposed to some other ridiculous treatments I've seen.

The researchers hope that pinning down the brain processes involved in understanding jokes could shed light on a number of medical conditions. Mobbs, for example, hopes that studying humour will provide insights into depression. "It is believed that the reward system is disrupted in depression and it would be interesting to see if this deficit extends to more complex social processes such as humour," he says.

Samson, meanwhile, hopes it could contribute to our understanding of autism. Previous research has suggested that people with autism have difficulty understanding comedy, but her work shows that they can understand and appreciate certain types of jokes as well as anyone...This could change the way we interact with autistic children, she says.

They make a point of showing that while volunteers with Asperger's had difficulty with processing so-called "theory-of-mind" jokes (those that require empathizing with characters--i.e., when one character doesn't get what the other is talking about), they enjoy visual puns as much as other control groups.  I'm glad there is support for my belief that puns are the most accessible form of comedy, and not the lowest, unless lowest happens to be used as a the fruit-hanging descriptor, for example, puns are low-hanging fruit that everyone can reach, in which case...never mind, I guess I am fine with that verbage.

The Problem with the Write-In Option

Remember when that guy decided to take Stephen Colbert's digitized DNA with him to the International Space Station?

In more ISS/Stephen Colbert news, the AP reports today that the written-in name "Colbert" beat out NASA's other suggested names for the planned new module of the space station. NASA-generated names included "Serenity" and "Venture," either of which would be acceptable in my eyes because of the Joss and Venture Bros. references, respectively (perhaps I'm projecting?). The arm of the Colbert Nation is mighty and far-reaching, though, and write-ins for "Colbert" constituted nearly twenty percent of the final vote.

NASA, of course, is reserving the right to make the final choice themselves. NASA spokesperson John Yembrick said the decision will be made in April, but that NASA will give top vote-getters "the most consideration." Fingers crossed!

Here is Stephen's plea to the nation from March 8, 2009:

Catastrophe!

Friend-of-the-blog Patty sent Spit Takes a link to an article in today's Telegraph about people who laugh at bad jokes. According to scientists* at WSU, four in ten people laugh when told a bad joke. Of course, their sample size is small, but for the purposes of their argument, we'll assume that extrapolating from it is kosher. Their experiment consisted of telling almost 200 people this joke:

"What did the big chimney say to the little chimney?"
"Nothing! Chimneys can't talk!"

Of course, they probably could have done better if they had used a funnier "bad joke." I didn't even laugh at the chimney joke, and if I don't laugh at a bad joke, it is a baaaad joke. There are no puns, no subverted expectations, no offensive jabs--it's as if a three-year-old who has just begun to understand the concept of "joke" had tried to come up with something on her own. Off the top of my head, here are set-ups to three examples (answers at the end of the post, to heighten the suspense!) that come to mind as better bad jokes than the chimney one:

1) "What's brown and sticky?"

2) "Two muffins were sitting in a oven. The first one turned to the second and said, 'Man, it is hot in here!'"

3) "Did you hear about the fire at the circus?"

All of those are stupid, yes, but at least they require at least a little brainpower. 1 and 3 are built on wordplay, and 2 is built on the idea of setting up presumptions and then immediately tearing them down. It can be hard to pull those off, but arguably, the king of that is Steve Martin. Here's an excerpt from an SNL monologue he did in 1977. Unfortunately, I can't find it on YouTube so you'll have to project your own version of his enunciation onto the transcript (it was his smarmy, stylized-eagerness phase); my bolds are there for your convenience:

Okay! Hey, does anybody know where I can get some cat handcuffs? I've gotta get a pair of cat handcuffs. Either two little ones like this, to go around the little paws...or a big one that hooks onto my arm and then hooks onto the cat. I found out my cat was embezzling from me, so I've gotta get a little pair...of cat handcuffs, so...Well, I found out that when I'm away, he goes to the mailbox, picks up the checks, take them down to the bank and cashes them. The way I caught him, I went out to his little house, where he sleeps at night, and there was like $3,000 worth of cat toys out there. And you can't return them, because they have spit all over them. I don't know where he is now, I guess he went out to Catalina, or something like that, I don't know... [ audience groans slightly ] No. He bought a catamaran, and went out... [ audience groans again ] No, he got it out of a catalog... [ groans ] This is a catastrophe!

Ah, jeez! Terrible, but funny. This was back when Steve Martin could do both of those adjectives together, of course, instead of just one or the other...for the love of Pete(r Sellers), please let the Pink Panther franchise rest in peace.

The Telegraph article concludes with a quick explanation of why people laugh at bad jokes ("because they [are] surprised at receiving such a bad punchline"), but then, they put a little English spin on it by discussing Christmas crackers, and listing some terrible jokes compiled by a psychologist at Hertfordshire University. My favorite was

"Why were the rabbits eating the motorway?"
"It was a dual cabbageway!"

because I had to stare at it for a bit before I remembered that the British use weird words like "carriageway" in everyday speech. Har!

Got a good bad joke? Share it in the comments!

1) A stick.
2) Holy shit, a talking muffin!
3) It was in tents.

* "Scientists," really. It was a bunch of assistant English professors. No wonder this story didn't make the papers over here.

Boys Don't Make Passes at Girls Who...Don't Laugh At Their Jokes

In the Seattle Times this week, there is an article called, “When it comes to dating, show her the funny” by Nicole Tsong. Blech to that title, but it’s the Seattle Times. They always pull shenanigans like that. Double blech, however, to the tone of the article, which I will excerpt below. It addresses straight relationships and relies on exploring "traditional" male/female roles, and how each gender uses (or doesn't use) humor in romance. The article leaves gay relationships entirely out of the equation, unsurprisingly.

To begin and to keep things balanced, let's start with a good quote:

"If you think of any social relationship, shared laughter is one of the markers of success," said humor expert John Morreall, a professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "A person who tries to be funny and doesn't get a response from the other person, that's real failure."

True. But that little gem of common sense is followed by this nauseating chunk a bit later:

Boys and girls are socialized early with distinct approaches to humor, said humor expert Morreall. Boys are encouraged to entertain and act out, while girls learn to appreciate a joke, not put on the show.

That dynamic is prevalent in dating. To put it bluntly, men want someone who laughs at their punch lines, while women look for someone who makes them giggle.

There are exceptions, of course, with the rise of female comics who have appropriated male humor, like the brash Sarah Silverman. Others have succeeded with a more feminine style, like funny but gentle Ellen DeGeneres. But in general, men are expected to be the funny ones.

Oh, where to start...I’m going to leave that first paragraph alone, as making declarative, sweeping generalizations about gender relations isn’t really my scene. So, going down the list: doesn’t EVERYONE want someone to laugh at their jokes and then make them laugh in return? Isn’t that how friendly communication works? Most properly socialized women I know want men not to amuse them like dancing monkeys but to engage them in discussion. And that bit about “appropriated male humor” manages to both be condescending and faux-women’s libbish all at the same time, which is quite a feat.

So how do we approach this cognitive dissonance? I like to solve problems with rudimentary evolutionary biology (seriously, I do), and it turns out people who experiment on grad students do, too:

In a study published in the academic journal "Evolution and Human Behavior," psychologists Eric Bressler and Sigal Balshine tested graduate students with pictures attached to funny and nonfunny statements and evaluated the way it affected how men and women viewed each other.

They found that humor makes men more desirable to women but does not affect men's view of women.

"We found no evidence that men prefer humorous women as partners," they wrote in the article "The Influence of Humor on Desirability." But "women preferred humorous men as relationship partners, even when the humor they used was unsophisticated."

Men tend to like women who respond to their humor and banter easily, but do not necessarily want the woman to be aggressively funny, Morreall said. Which also means women can get away with being unfunny far easier than a man.

Ooh, lucky us. We don’t have to turn in our comedy homework.

I’ve always found funny men more attractive than non-funny men, as have most of my similarly picky lady friends. You are attracted to potential mates that espouse qualities you desire for your future self and your offspring, should you elect to have any, and if you would like happiness and friendly communication to come your way, well...you develop a junior high crush on Jon Stewart that will never go away.

I’d argue that a good radar and appreciation for humor IS the same thing as a sense of humor. Think about it--people you know who appreciate funny things tend to be funny in their lives, and are able to share jokes with other like-minded folks. When was the last time a conversation you were having devolved into a series of quotes from “The Simpsons” or “The Office”? That might just be aping someone else’s material, but appreciating and celebrating it together is a shared humorous experience.

Between this Seattle Times article and the recent underwhelming feature in Vanity Fair, “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” I’m beginning to despair that this tendency to overanalyze gender relations through humor isn’t going the way of phrenology any time soon.

So I’ll guess just shrug it off and close by aping a line from “Futurama:”

It’s true what they say. Men are from Omicron Persei 7, women are from Omicron Persei 9.

Fatal Hilarity

This week in "The Stranger," the column Dear Science tackles the subject of why laughter makes you weak. Cataplexy, or the "sudden physical collapse caused by experiencing strong emotions or laughter," is only fully present in subjects when they are truly laughing--not just exhaling or fake laughing.

Besides teaching me a new word, the column reminded me of the Monty Python "killer joke" sketch.* Michael Palin plays an early twentieth century joke-writer, who comes up with a joke so funny that it kills him. It then kills a handful of other people ("No one could read it...and live"), until the British translate it (one person doing one word at a time, of course) and use it as a weapon against the Germans, to great success. The joke itself is gibberish, of course, but that's what makes the concept so funny.

Turns out the idea of "fatal hilarity" has been around a while. Generally, it involves death by asphyxiation or some kind of cardiac arrest, which makes sense because laughter both elevates the heart rate and expands and contracts the thoracic diaphragm. For instance, the Greek stoic philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter in the 3rd century B.C., after giving his donkey wine and attempting to feed it figs...purportedly, anyway. It all seems very mythological, but think back to the last time you laughed so hard you could barely breathe. Creepy, right?

* This is the longer version from the episode "Whither Canada" on "Flying Circus," not the shorter version from the movie "And Now For Something Completely Different." The longer one is funnier but the shorter one is more beautiful (strangely enough).