Differentiating What Is Humorous From What Is Not

Warren, Caleb
McGraw, A. Peter

Marketing Department, Texas A&M University
Leeds School of Business, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder

The authors thank Zachary Estes, Chuck Gulas, James Adelman, Lawrence Williams, Christina Kan, Abby Schneider, Erin Percival Carter, Shruti Koley, Brady Hodges, and Robert Merrifield Collins for helpful comments. We also thank the Humor Research Lab (HuRL), Dian Wang, Marc Hartwell, J. J. Chen, Haley Gooch, Jeremy Zdunkewics, and Nikola Babic for valuable research assistance.

Caleb Warren, Marketing Department Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, 4112 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4112 [email protected]

Received February 19, 2014

revised July 22, 2015

Accepted October 2, 2015

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 110(3):p 407-430, March 2016. | DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000041

After 2.5 millennia of philosophical deliberation and psychological experimentation, most scholars have concluded that humor arises from incongruity. We highlight 2 limitations of incongruity theories of humor. First, incongruity is not consistently defined. The literature describes incongruity in at least 4 ways: surprise, juxtaposition, atypicality, and a violation. Second, regardless of definition, incongruity alone does not adequately differentiate humorous from nonhumorous experiences. We suggest revising incongruity theory by proposing that humor arises from a benign violation: something that threatens a person’s well-being, identity, or normative belief structure but that simultaneously seems okay. Six studies, which use entertainment, consumer products, and social interaction as stimuli, reveal that the benign violation hypothesis better differentiates humorous from nonhumorous experiences than common conceptualizations of incongruity. A benign violation conceptualization of humor improves accuracy by reducing the likelihood that joyous, amazing, and tragic situations are inaccurately predicted to be humorous.