Speaking about the development of a sense of humor, if, of course, there is a task to approach this issue fundamentally, first of all you should understand the nature of humor in general. However, it is not so easy to understand, because... even the most serious research on this topic often falls into the realm of descriptive rather than substantive. The whole point here is that to many researchers the basics of the comic seem so simple and obvious that they are not worth talking about.
In most discussions of the nature of the comic there is the idea that the ability to perceive humor is an evolutionary acquisition; that in primitive society there was a certain necessity that determined the acquisition of this ability by a person. Based on this, trying to explain the nature of humor means trying to understand that very necessity, and also trying to describe the patterns by which we relate certain phenomena to humor. If you look at humor in this way, you can very quickly come to the conclusion that in the hidden corners of the human brain there is a genetic memory that allows us to recognize what is funny and controls the mechanisms that cause positive emotions such as delight and joy.
The author of the book “Psychology of Humor”, the famous psychologist Rod Martin, making attempts in his work to explain the phenomenon of humor, says that scientists have created many theories to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for the emergence of laughter and humor, determine their mechanisms and find out the reasons why humor exists at all pleasant to people.
The ideas of the English materialist philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a huge influence on psychological research in the field of the nature of the comic. They became the beginning of theories of humor and laughter as a feeling of superiority. The English sociologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer, in his approach, distinguished between sardonic and comic types of laughter. He proceeded from the criteria of attitude to the situation and believed that the basis of laughter is contained in human physiology. Later, this idea was developed by the famous Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud - he showed that comedy, humor and wit are directly related to laughter.
Psychologist Charles Gruner developed the idea of superiority, where humor was seen as playful aggression, which manifests the triumph of the winner over the vanquished. In turn, psychologist and teacher Théodule Ribot gives a classification of theories of the funny - he identifies the theory of superiority and the theory of incompatibility of objects.
Studying the nature of carnival laughter, Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin took the work of Francois Rabelais as an example. He managed to find out that the main features of such laughter are appeal to the whole world, universality, ambivalence, focus on the laughers themselves, free playful nature, incompleteness and focus on the future. According to Bakhtin, by participating in the national fun of the carnival, a person becomes liberated and freed from all censorship and internal barriers, loses fear of life regulators and external prohibitions. And art critic and philologist Dmitry Likhachev, in the process of studying Russian “laughter culture,” noted that laughter is in opposition to the ridiculed culture and contributes to its replacement with a new type of culture.
If we return to foreign psychology, it has a whole complex of theories of humor. Most, however, reveal only certain types or aspects of humor, without giving any overall picture. Some have studied and identified more than 80 theories of humor. Naturally, we will not consider them all, but will limit ourselves to only the most significant ones.
Psychoanalytic theory
The author of the psychoanalytic approach to the study of the theory of humor, as one should assume, was Sigmund Freud. His theory (like the theory of psychoanalysis in general) was one of the most influential in the field of psychological research on humor in the first half of the 20th century. According to her, humor can be considered as the strongest defense mechanism for coping with difficulties and negative emotions.
In Freud's theory, laughter and humor are understood as ways of manifesting the unconscious, creating tension and a desire for release. Humor overcomes defense mechanisms thanks to the “humorous movement” from the area of the forbidden to the area of the permitted, as a result of which the power of the “Id” and “Super-Ego” decreases, and internal censorship and unconscious passions lose their power.
Based on Freud's ideas, unconscious aggressive (generated by libido) and sexual urges from childhood and immaturity seek to find instant gratification and express themselves through pleasure. The “Super-Ego,” which includes the demands and regulations of society, counteracts the “Id.” The “Ego” functions according to the principle of reality - it strives to come to a convenient compromise between the requirements of the “Id”, “Super-Ego” and the real world, which, according to the scientist, is humor.
Sigmund Freud said that humor is the highest defense mechanism because... allows you to avoid negative emotions and look at life situations objectively, without resorting to pathological defensive forms. His experiments showed that:
- People who repress aggressive or sexual impulses in everyday life find jokes that contain relevant themes more enjoyable.
- If aggressive and sexual urges are stimulated, jokes related to these urges will be more enjoyable
- Presenting aggressive and sexual jokes reduces the strength of corresponding impulses
In addition, some confirmation of Freud's theory was found in studies demonstrating an increase in sexual and aggressive themes in the responses of respondents who completed tasks to generate humor.
Subsequently, many researchers came to the conclusion that Freud’s theory does not agree with the functioning of the nervous system in the modern understanding, and began to gradually abandon it.
Theory of arousal and consolation
Arousal theory continues the idea of Herbert Spencer (laughter releases energy) and the idea of Immanuel Kant (laughter relieves psychological stress). Kant pointed out that laughter is an emotion resulting from an abrupt cessation of tense anticipation. And another proponent of this theory and the founder of modern arousal theory, Daniel Berlyne, examined in detail all sorts of properties of stimuli that attract attention and cause aesthetic experiences from laughter, games and art. Berlyne considered them comparative variables, because they involved the simultaneous perception of objects for comparison and contrast. Among the properties, he identified complexity, novelty, variety, surprise, redundancy, ambiguity and inconsistency, thanks to which what is perceived becomes unusual and interesting, causing stimulation of the brain and autonomic nervous system.
Here we note that the research of psychologist Igor Gavansky showed a connection between smiling, laughter and excitement and emotional pleasure from humor, but the assessment of funnyness is always more related to the understanding of humor and cognitive assessment. Some other scientists (Godkevich, Zillman, Bryant, Kantor and others) found that, firstly, the stronger the arousal, the more pleasure a person gets from humor, and secondly, both negatively and positively colored arousal contributes to greater pleasure .
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The theory of superiority and humiliation
A huge number of humor theorists consider aggression to be one of the most important features of humor as such; humor itself is a form of aggression. For example, in the Old Testament there are 29 references to laughter, and most of them are associated with shame, ridicule, ridicule, and only two cases indicate the origin of laughter from a cheerful and joyful heart (note by Arthur Kostler from the monograph “The Act of Creation” (1964) .)).
The aggressive aspect of humor is also noticeable in cruelty, when, for example, children tease each other. Among other things, mass humor is often based on humiliation of another person or self-humiliation. Currently, this form of humor can be observed in various practical jokes, stand-ups, farces, ridicule of the shortcomings of others, teasing, ridicule, etc.
If we consider the theory of Charles Gruner, where humor is considered as “game aggression” and a demonstration of superiority, we can see that humor is a certain form of play. Laughter in this case is responsible for the rapid restoration of homeostasis (performs a physiological function), and also serves as a message of victory over the enemy (performs a psychological function).
Although aggression-based theories of humor are relevant, they cannot be applied to some forms of humor, such as wordplay, puns, or riddles, where there is no aggression. Rod Martin, mentioned above, believes that the approaches to humor of Freud (humor is a defense mechanism) and Gruner (humor implies aggression and superiority) can become the basis for modern ideas about humor as a method of dealing with the stresses of everyday life. In the first case, humor protects against destructive emotions in difficult situations, and in the second, it gives strength to resist situations and people that threaten well-being.
Why do you need a sense of humor?
The nature of the sense of humor has been studied by many scientists in various branches of science for hundreds of years. As a result, several of its functions have been established:
Psychological protection.
Laughter helps you get through a difficult situation or emotional shock. A humorous view of what is happening activates the emergence of new neural connections in the brain. This happens through an unusual connection of thoughts, that is, comic perception. The essence of this function lies in unpredictable juxtaposition.
The jokes of doctors, military personnel or rescue workers are sometimes perceived by civilians as unimaginably rude. Their black humor has a justification - a defense mechanism is triggered, so the consciousness abstracts from the daily encounter with death.
We resort to psychological defense through laughter when we touch on taboo topics. That is, I retreat from a direct answer and we start joking.
Gender function.
Psychologists have proven that women prefer men with a developed ability to joke. In this way, the stronger sex attracts attention, gives a positive mood, as if assuring: “I adapt to any situation, trust me.”
Men choose those who respond to their jokes with laughter, understand their meaning, and are ready to play along. This is how a high-quality selection of people who are on the same wavelength occurs both in psychological interaction and in intimate life.
Statistics show that the strongest relationships are those who laugh at jokes.
Cognitive function.
Comic perception is a way to understand the world and form an idea of it. Humor allows us to see reality objectively, and not as others show it to us. Behind the cognitive function is a deep rethinking of phenomena and events, the formation of one’s own conclusions.
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Entertainment function.
The mood rises, positive emotions appear. Statistics show that it is comedies that sell out the largest number of tickets in cinemas. The same applies to comedy shows - their ratings on TV are always the highest. This is explained by the fact that when we are tired of being at work or doing household chores, we want to relax and “turn off” our brain. Having fun with humor is the easiest and most effective way (after sleep, of course) to restore strength and recharge with positive emotions.
Educational function.
Comedy works serve as the basis for moral development.
With their help, we have been raising both children and adults for many years in a row. Psycholinguists and educators agree that ridicule is much more effective than “reading morals.”
Such a literary genre as the tale is entirely built on the means of the comic - allegory, irony, sarcasm. To understand morality, you need to have a subtle sense of humor. Then the educational function is realized.
Interesting Facts.
- According to statistics, a five-year-old child laughs more than three hundred times a day, while an adult laughs about twenty.
- People who are about to watch a comedy film have three times more levels of growth hormone and beta-endorphin than those who pick up a political newspaper or turn on the news on TV.
- A doctor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine has identified the area of the brain that is responsible for a sense of humor. According to researcher Dina Shibata, this location is located in the lower part of the frontal lobe. This is why, after microstrokes concentrated in this part of the head, the understanding of jokes sometimes completely disappears.
- Those who like to laugh look younger, because when smiling, about 15 facial muscles are activated and blood flows.
- Laughter strengthens the immune system. This conclusion was reached by scientists who were able to study changes in the saliva of laughing patients. As it turned out, after laughing, saliva has tens of times more protective bacteria than in a calm person.
- Smiles relieve pain. It has been proven that sincere grins increase the pain threshold.
Mismatch theory
The presented theory has its roots in the views of Arthur Schopenhauer, who believed that the cause of laughter always lies in the sudden perception of a discrepancy between ideas about objects and their real images. This discrepancy is the most important factor determining the comedy of a joke: everything that does not meet expectations, everything that seems unusual, peculiar, amazingly absurd, seems funny.
This idea was developed by the British psychologist Hans Eysenck. He believed that the cause of laughter is the sudden intuitive integration of incompatible or contradictory ideas, feelings or attitudes objectively experienced by a person. The idea was also developed by journalist and psychologist Arthur Koestler: he introduced the term bisociation, which occurs when an event, situation or idea is perceived at the same time from two completely logical, but incomparable angles.
It is worth noting the theory of inconsistency resolution by Thomas Schultz. He believed that what allows a joke to be understood is not the incongruity, but its resolution in the joke: it is the moment of the punchline in the joke that generates cognitive incongruity through the introduction of information inconsistent with expectations. For this reason, the listener returns to the beginning of the joke and tries to identify the ambiguity that will resolve the incongruity.
There is also a two-stage theory of understanding humor proposed by psychologist Jerry Suls. In it, the main part of the joke creates an incongruity that causes the listener to assume the likely outcome. The discrepancy between the outcome and expectations causes the listener to be surprised and look for a cognitive rule to restore the cause-and-effect logic, the beginning and the outcome. After finding this rule, the inconsistency can be eliminated, the joke is perceived as funny, and humor becomes the result of eliminating the inconsistency.
The theory is certainly valid, but even this time scientific research (in particular by the German psychologist Kurt Goldstein and his colleagues) showed that incongruity, although necessary, is not the only condition for humor. We must not forget about a person’s psychological mood for humor and his emotional readiness for it. Incongruity theory comes closer to understanding humor, but not to explaining its emotional pleasantness.
Switching theory
The switching theory is based on the ideas of the American researcher Max Eastman. He believed that humor was a fun and playful activity. His theory was later supported by Daniel Berline and Charles Gruner, and psychologist Michael Apter began to develop it. He proposed to distinguish between a serious state of consciousness and a playful mood, in which, after a joke, a person finds himself in a psychologically safe zone.
According to Apter, a person switches between playful and serious states many times during the day. For example, at a meeting, someone can make a witty joke or make a funny comment that will amuse the other participants and plunge them into a state of psychological comfort, and after that they will return to a serious state again. In the same way, at a meeting of friends, people can remain in a playful mood for a long time, constantly joking, telling anecdotes, funny stories, etc.
In addition, Michael Apter rejects the mismatch theory by introducing the term “synergy.” Synergy is similar to bisociation, introduced by Koestler, and is used to describe a cognitive process where incompatible ideas or representations can be simultaneously present in a person's mind. In a playful state, synergy causes pleasure, but in a serious state, it can cause cognitive dissonance. Apter's switching theory can be attributed more to the cognitive aspects of humor, issues raised by incongruity theory.
Subsequently, a theory of humor appeared, based on the cognitive complexity of understanding, developed by psychologists R. Weyer and D. Collins. They reworked Apter's “synergy” in terms of social cognition and used cognitive schemas to do so. When there are several incomparable options for perception, both options are simultaneously held by consciousness - this is synergy.
Through much research into the understanding of humor in a social context, Collins and Wyer were able to show that humor is primarily a type of social interaction, and also examined two critical factors in information processing - cognitive complexity and difficulty of comprehension. Scientists have suggested that humor gains strength when moderate effort is made to understand it and when there is more opportunity for detailed elaboration of cognitive synergies.
Taking into account the ideas of a recognized expert in the field of humor psychology, Rod Martin, several conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, switching theory allows us to explain aggressive and sexual humor and reveal the emotional subtleties of perception and understanding of the comic. And secondly, the ability of synergy to put a person into a playful state offers opportunities to overcome stressful situations in a playful way, in which they are not seen as a serious threat.
Understanding humor as a game implies that a joke can be seen as a way of playing with the cognitive mechanisms and structures that a person has developed for the purpose of perceiving “serious” reality and living in this environment. Jokes can be used by people not only as fun, but also as a coping strategy.
The social context is that the subjects of interaction (storyteller and listener) collaborate in the playful activity of “distorting” reality, which introduces an element of incongruity that brings pleasure. If we talk about spontaneous forms of humor, then people are able to operate with thoughts and words, as if teasing each other in a playful manner, due to which tension is reduced and the outlook on the situation changes, which greatly facilitates the search for solutions to complex problems.
Personal approach
The authors of the personality approach are American psychologists Gordon Allport and Abraham Maslow. Allport is inclined to believe that a sense of humor is the most amazing tool of self-knowledge. In his work “The Formation of Personality” (1967), he noted that people spend a lot of time thinking about themselves, and therefore it would be good if their thoughts corresponded to reality.
Allport believes that a person's understanding of himself is closely related to humor, because they both relate to self-realization, which is their basis. Giving an answer to the question of what a sense of humor is, the scientist refers to the words of the novelist Meredith and says that humor is the ability to laugh at what you love and love it (this also includes a person’s personality and everything connected with it).
Allport shares the concepts of a sense of humor and a sense of the comic. It is the sense of the comic that he considers much cruder (plus almost every person has it, regardless of age). What seems comical to most people includes absurdity, puns and crude jokes. Small children always sense the comic, but rarely laugh at themselves. People perceive failures more often with suffering than with laughter. But the ability to laugh at oneself can be considered an indicator of personality maturity, because a true humorist always sees behind a serious object, even if it is himself, the contrast between what is visible and what is inside.
Abraham Maslow made many observations of people who had managed to self-actualize in life, and noted that they all had a unique sense of humor. For example, they do not like cruel humor (when they laugh at someone) and humor based on the superiority of some over others, as well as jokes of an obscene nature. They perceive humor that is thought-provoking and causes a smile much more readily than laughter; humor, which performs an educational function, as do the same fairy tales, proverbs or epics. For such people, puns, witty remarks, practical jokes and banter are practically not typical. Also, their humor is more spontaneous rather than prepared.
“Well, this is typical female humor”: why is it ahead of male humor?
Humor is a specific thing. Sometimes he can save, and sometimes provoke a war even between friends. And humor with children is a completely separate issue. About the differences between male and female views, instilling humor in children and much more - in the column of 63-year-old Muscovite, marketer and leader of the slow food movement in Russia, Viktor Michaelson.
Photo: depositphotos/adriaticphoto
Recently, while talking with a close friend, I dropped a phrase about someone: “Well, this is typical female humor.” She tensed up and was ready to put me in a corner for sexism and political incorrectness, but I explained to her that it was a provocation, a joke. The joke, it must be said, did not please her, but it gave impetus to a conversation on topics of female and male humor.
Science has long proven that a woman’s brain does not have specific qualities (smarter... dumber... cunning): the difference in behavior is determined by gender roles that go back to the times when men got food - killed mammoths, and women sat in a cave, nursing children and frying those same mammoths... Moreover, funny is very different in different parts of the world, so we said very conditionally and locally: women's humor in China and especially in the States is completely different.
When my first daughter was growing up, I often trolled her (there was no word... but I still trolled her - provoked her, teased her).
The daughter sensed a catch and was confused, but soon learned not to be offended and to answer such a joke: “I know that without you!” Now she is a young woman with a fantastically quick reaction: her reciprocal “sword thrusts” are accurate, laconic and irresistible. At the same time, she does not gather circles around her, telling jokes, but she has an excellent sense of humor.
The youngest daughter was offended - and seriously. I didn’t know this until she told the nanny after my latest teasing: “Tell dad not to laugh at me.” By the age of five, she finally learned to understand when “daddy is joking,” so now everything is fine: she laughs at my jokes and parries them. In order for her to learn to feel where a person is speaking seriously and where not, I began to tell her: “Now the nanny said it lightly,” “Mom was joking,” and so on. And the same thing to myself - having teased her, I immediately came out with a disclaimer: “Well, you understand, I’m joking!”
Photo: depositphotos/HayDmitriy
When talking about a sense of humor, we need to separate the concepts: it’s one thing to be able to joke, and another thing to understand jokes. And third, I dare say, is the ability to see the frivolous, the funny in your life and those around you. As for the first and second, one of my friends once brilliantly said: “I have a wonderful sense of humor - I like all my jokes!” This was not said seriously, but, as you know, every joke has some truth. Indeed, each of us has our own understanding of what is funny. Haven’t you ever met people at a comedy movie, say, or at concerts who sat with a sour expression on their faces, showing with all their appearance that they weren’t funny? But at the same time, there are people who make thousands of halls and multimillion-dollar television audiences laugh.
Well, if we return to the topic of female humor, what is its difference from traditional male humor?
A woman, even participating in some kind of “Distorting Mirror,” will not stoop to toilet jokes. Women are more merciful - their humor does not humiliate the person it is making fun of. Women are wiser - behind the paradoxical, funny situation, they see the overall picture of the world, sometimes absurd.
More than once I have come across in the press that women are “ahead” of men in terms of humor, that female comedians are literally pushing men out of the profession. So what's the deal? It seems to me that this is not a narrow shop disassembly. This phenomenon reflects a much broader trend: empathy, compassion, and sympathy are increasingly valued in the world. And less and less - the ability to win, lower, go over your head. And these properties are obviously more characteristic of women. It is no coincidence that women are gaining more and more positions in such seemingly ruthless areas as business and politics. It is no coincidence that we are no longer talking about “women’s novels” - either men fell in love with various shades of gray, or women began to write in such a way that men can’t tear their ears away! It’s the same with humor: subtle, merciful, not without self-irony, female humor, devoid of gender atavisms and toilet allusions, is increasingly in line with today...
Michaelson Victor
The nature of the comic. Brief summary
We can see that each of the theories of humor has its own point of view. But, as we said at the beginning, none of them gives a complete picture of what humor is in a global sense. However, from any of the above theories you can glean useful information and food for thought, because in any case, humor is important in a person’s life. And not only because it allows you to lift your spirits, relax, release energy, or even increase stress resistance, but also because it is one of the most important ways to build relationships with people around you.
In addition, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that humor is the most effective method of training the brain, developing intelligence and increasing cognitive abilities. Agree, the sense of humor of uneducated and educated, uneducated and erudite people will always be different, as, in fact, their jokes.
Laughter appears and exists in the zone of social contact - contact between people, groups of people, cultures and entire eras. A similar zone of contact is the theory of the comic, which combines the spheres of a whole complex of scientific disciplines, and which considers different levels of the funny, starting with language games and ending with serious philosophical constructs. At each level you can find your own logic and ability to build unique associations and examples of the funny. At the same time, the proposed models are not closed at all - they intertwine with each other, clarify each other and form an integral system.
If you want to study laughter and humor, it is best to start at the beginning, i.e. take one of the most authoritative concepts of the comic, for example, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Bergson or Bakhtin. Any of them will lead to a wide research path with many branches, signs, and answers to questions. But here we will also encounter a paradox - as research continues, more and more new phenomena relating to laughter will appear; the nature of the comic will become more complex; New questions will appear, the answer to which is not always possible, because not every manifestation of the funny can be squeezed into the framework of definitions or separated from the totality of phenomena and phenomena of various kinds.
Taking this into account, you can act in two scenarios. The first assumes that the heterogeneous definitions of the comic that history offers us can be united using common features as a basis. As a result, we will get a concept that is perfectly suited to comic phenomena and covers a huge range of manifestations of humor. This option is applicable to empirical research, for example, to the linguistics of laughter with its zeugmas, litotes, hyperboles and other linguistic devices. Here they are easily subsumed under the contradiction of different substantive plans. However, what is often overlooked is the fact that contradictions are comical and do not always cause laughter, and in some cases can even cause fear, anxiety or sadness.
If we act according to the second scenario, then it is necessary to abandon any kind of structure and attempts to finally resolve the existing problem. The theory of the comic can no longer be considered as a beaten path - it appears in the form of a fork with a large number of paths, and each of them serves as the beginning of the next fork; Some paths may intersect, and some will never meet. The path of research can begin at any of the crossroads, because the infinite number of options makes the existence of any specific starting point impossible. As a result, the study of the nature of laughter will become a collection of diverse essays that are united by one theme - the fundamental impossibility of explaining the nature of the comic. But the positive thing is that the researcher has unlimited freedom - he is not constrained by any framework or theories, which makes it possible to have an unbiased look at humor and laughter. The downside is the futility of trying to unambiguously describe what is funny.
The best option would be to follow the path of the golden mean by describing laughter as unity in diversity and plurality in integrity. In other words, there must be a starting point for research, but the work must be structured in such a way as to be able to at least roughly explain the cultural, value-based, social and emotional-sensory meanings and sub-meanings that determine the desire or reluctance to react to the funny.
The task of a researcher of the nature of the comic cannot be limited to simple descriptions of facts offered by psychology, cultural studies, physiology, linguistics, etc., because then everything general that is expressed in laughter can simply be lost in examples and particulars. Humor, if considered as an integral unit, should cover the general philosophical sphere of research into human existence, not limited by scientific disciplines.
And, concluding the first lesson, we can only note that the concept of “laughing man” is on the same plane with the concept of “reasonable man.” As for the question “What is the nature of humor?”, it should be considered only as an addition to the comprehensive question “What is a person?”
Attempts to explain the nature of laughter will not help to understand the mystery of human existence, but they are needed to correctly pose this question itself. The funny lifts the veil of secrecy on another side of the truth, because it is the other side of the serious, and together they are one whole. This means that something serious can always be tested by laughing at it, and laughter should be talked about with all seriousness.
Of course, a serious conversation about humor does not make it possible to make specific and final judgments, because the very nature of the object of study contradicts this. But the search for mechanisms and patterns of the nature of laughter is needed to understand the nature of man, society and culture, and each subsequent stage in the development of the theory of the comic is always a step towards understanding the nature of humor.
This concludes the main theoretical part of our course. In all subsequent lessons there will be more practice than theory. In the second lesson we will talk about positive thinking as one of the foundations of humor, as well as its development in this vein. Exercises and practical recommendations will be presented to your attention.
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Humor, in a broad sense, is everything that can cause a smile and laughter. Ozhegov’s dictionary says the following: Humor is an understanding of the comic, the ability to see and show a funny, condescending and mocking attitude towards something. Every person has a set of favorite jokes, anecdotes, comedies, and simply funny situations from life. Let's see what types of this wonderful phenomenon there are and at the same time find out what kind of humor we love most.
Black humor
Black humor is when a comic effect is achieved by jokes related to violence, death, deformities, physical disabilities, illnesses, as well as so-called horror stories. Often this humor is immoral, but this makes it no less loved by ordinary people.
Vulgar humor
All jokes related to sex and sexual perversions.
Dumb humor
Another name is children's humor. Laughter can be caused by any absurd situation or just some ordinary thing, absurdity. As a rule, it is inherent in get-togethers and close teams. Also, stupid humor is similar to professional humor, it is not accessible to everyone and there is nothing wrong with that.
Professional humor
Humor that is accessible only to the bearer of any profession or ideology. Doctors, teachers, builders, military. But it also causes laughter among people who have at least a vague idea of the profession.
Irony
This is humor in which what is said clearly contradicts what actually is. To make it clearer, let’s give an example: “A man, shooting from a gun, didn’t even hit the target, but somewhere away from the target, and they said to him: “You’re a sniper.” The kind of humor that is most often referred to as “Subtle.” Irony also has to do with sarcasm (mockery), and the grotesque (a combination of the real and the fantastic). Irony is understandable to many, but being ironic is not accessible to everyone.
Satire
The comic effect is achieved through humiliation, exposure of something or someone, presented in a funny form. The person being talked about in a satirical joke may be offended. Political jokes can be classified as satire.
Parody
Laughter in a parody is caused by a deliberate alteration of a person, his manner of behaving and speaking. Also the deliberate alteration of any work, story, film, poem, whatever. Often the parody is vulgar or black, but that makes it no less funny.
Get-together humor
Available only between close people, friends, girlfriends, in a work team, and the like. Perhaps someone found himself in a situation where, being in a crowd of unfamiliar, serious people, he chuckled at a friend’s joke, while the people around him were completely serious. Or I watched it from the outside. Here the comic effect can be achieved through anything that is known and understandable only to people who laugh, since what makes them laugh is what they know from common experience. Sometimes a powerful fit of shared laughter can just be a facial expression and a finger.
Forbidden humor
Prohibited not in the sense of law, but prohibited by some specific situation. For example, schoolchildren are not allowed to laugh in some lessons, and it is not customary to laugh in the theater during a tragedy or anywhere else. But it happens that a person sees something funny, remembers something or reads something, and he begins to burst out laughing quite seriously. And from the fact that he is trying to restrain himself, it becomes even funnier for him and he is no longer able to understand what is funny to him, but he can no longer stop. They poke fun at him, make comments, but all to no avail. The best option in such a situation is to get out, but when you return to your place, you may start singing quite seriously again.
To briefly summarize, the kindest and most harmless type of humor is perhaps irony. Anything can make you laugh. The golden rule of humor is that an anecdote or joke must be told at the right time, in the right place, appropriate to the situation, then they are most successful, this also applies to black humor and vulgar humor. A set of jokes and anecdotes stored in memory and told out of place are funny, of course, but do not achieve the full effect. Another thing is get-together humor and forbidden humor.
Test your knowledge
If you want to test your knowledge on the topic of this lesson, you can take a short test consisting of several questions. For each question, only 1 option can be correct. After you select one of the options, the system automatically moves on to the next question. The points you receive are affected by the correctness of your answers and the time spent on completion. Please note that the questions are different each time and the options are mixed.
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Kirill Nogales
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What is a sense of humor?
A sense of humor is a psychological feature of a person that allows you to evaluate what is happening from a comic point of view. In fact, we are all born with this skill, but everyone develops it differently, influenced by environment, temperament, character and other factors.
If difficulties arise during the development of a sense of humor (stress, psychological trauma, social isolation), a straightforward personality type is formed. It is difficult for such people to adapt to society.
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