The Psychology Of Humor

Warren Buffett is well known for his sense of humor, in fact a couple of friends who recently met him tell me he could’ve easily been a comedian. So what’s having a sense of humor all about? Recent psychological research points to several conclusions….Click Here To Skip The Introduction &  Read More About The Psychology Of Humor

Article Introduction (Via 3QuarksDaily)

What makes something humorous? To varying degrees, we all have a “sense of humor.” Yet, in many ways, this sense escapes our conscious awareness. As with language, each of us abides by a similar set of rules, yet none of us is able to say what exactly those rules are. Philosophers have tried, but it remains a point of controversy whether we have found (or whether there exists) a unified explanation for what we find funny.

Today, most theories ascribe humor to the sudden recognition of a state of the world that is incongruous with our expectations. Variations on this “incongruity theory” have garnered popularity over the past twenty years, but even its advocates acknowledge that it is not entirely satisfactory. One weakness of incongruity theories is that they fail to explain why we are amused by certain instances of incongruity – a man showing up to his job at a real-estate agency with a “kick me” sign on his back  – but not others – a man showing up to his job at a real-estate agency with a cure for cancer. The first situation is far more congruous with our expectations about the world, but it is also much funnier.

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