For Kant, that’s also the essence of a joke. At the core of this evolutionary rationale for laughter-call it the “false alarm” hypothesis-is incongruity: a seemingly grave threat revealing itself to be trivial. To communicate that the threat is spurious, you emit a stereotyped vocalisation-one that is amplified as it contagiously passes through the band, so everyone gets the message. But then you spot that the enemy “hominids” are actually monkeys. You and your comrades tense up into fight-or-flight mode. Suddenly a threat appears: you hear another hominid band rustling around nearby. Imagine you’re ranging through the jungle with your hominid pals. The neuroscientist VS Ramachandran offers this one for the origins of laughter. But he did not live to see the advent of evolutionary psychology, which can find an explanation for anything. Koestler called laughter a “luxury reflex,” since it doesn’t seem to serve any evolutionary purpose. The incongruity theory of humour, being the most intellectual of the three, should have the toughest time with physical laughter. In reality it’s the least repressed who guffaw the loudest. If Freud is right, the most inhibited people should be the ones who laugh the hardest at a raunchy joke, since they have the most repressed energy to discharge. Not bad in theory, but there’s a problem. According to Freud, keeping forbidden impulses down takes an expenditure of nervous energy when those impulses are liberated by a joke, this now-superfluous energy gets discharged through the facial and respiratory muscles. The relief theory at least gives it a try. The superiority theory doesn’t really answer this question. As Arthur Koestler said, “Humour is the only domain of creative activity where a stimulus on a high level of complexity produces a… sharply defined response on the level of physiological reflexes.” Why the spasmodic chest-heaving, the strangulated respiratory gasps so pleasant when issuing from oneself, so annoying when coming from the next table? “Only when kindness fails,” he said.Ī theory of humour must also account for laughter-a very weird thing. “Do you believe in clubs for children?” WC Fields was asked. “Mr Holt, what’s better than roses on a piano? Tulips on an organ.”Īnd the “incongruity” theory-that’s Kant (also Pascal, Schopenhauer)-says humour is a matter of the logical abruptly dissolving into the absurd. It suits naughty jokes-like this one, told to me by one of my students at a Catholic girls’ school.
The set-up fools our inner censor, and the punchline liberates repressed impulses. The “relief” theory of humour-that’s Freud (also Spencer)-says that humour allows us to get around our inhibitions. The guy sitting at the end of the bar says, “Just a minute, I resent that.” It suits jokes about cuckolds, racist jokes and put-downs, like:Īngry guy walks into a bar, says to the bartender, “All agents are assholes.” The “superiority” theory-that’s Hobbes (also Plato, Bergson)-locates the essence of humour in the “sudden glory” we feel at the humiliation of others. There are three classic theories of humour. The bartender says, “Hey, which of you guys can tell me why humans laugh?”
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