A psychologist defines jokes as those silly snippets of reality that we pay attention to and are rewarded with the chance to ‘break out laughing’.
Marta Vergara Martinez, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology University education From Valencia, he has just published a study carried out with a group of his students, in which he makes ‘brave’ jokes and exposes the reasons that make us laugh, make us laugh or leave us indifferent in less bad cases, and explain to EFE their conclusions.
“The secret of the joke is that it has a modal structure in which there are some premises that are not very related in principle, but which activate the previous knowledge of the listeners with whom they try to relate the information. In fact, we are trying to find the meaning and relevance of what they tell us in relation to some cues that we have, And if we do not find that relationship, then we use the alternative information and either discover it ourselves, or the joke ends with the end of the information that is revealed to us.”
The joy of the decision
It indicates that every joke has three phases, one for revealing the contradictions between the premises raised, another for resolving the contradictions and the final stage for delight at the moment we become aware of the alternative solution to those contradictions. When we realize the workaround is when we find it funny.
“In a joke there are vague remnants of how they can present us with an absurd situation and then see an alternative solution that makes us laugh. But there are many possible alternative solutions, for example, in metaphors, where to understand it we have to think about it from another point of view, as happens with Specific phrases, for example, with the phrase “chicken mountain”, in which you have to understand that it refers to a fight, that is, it has nothing to do with the literal interpretation of the words, but we are not amused, “he points out.
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Jokes told thousands of times
“But we find it funny,” the psychiatrist continues, “when we are in a situation where they ask you to solve a certain dilemma, for example: ‘How are the witch and the weekend alike? Funny, however, the first time you hear it, not that you’ll laugh, but it’s funny.”
For Vergara Martínez, “In fact, they benefit from the novelty of telling you things we don’t expect, something completely unexpected, as well as that ambiguous game between the information they give us and the alternatives that we have to interpret.”
It also depends on the context, because sometimes a joke is told with a recognizable structure: “How’s that like that?” , then we activate the situation model telling us this is going to be a joke because we already have some text, and maybe we find it weird, but we don’t end up laughing. Vergara explains that there are a number of factors that cause us to judge these confusions, sometimes, “simply as being funny.”
The amygdala that recognizes what makes you laugh
According to Dr. Psychology, whoever manages all this information is the amygdala, which is like a servant who provides us with signs of what is related to each person. For example, in a comic movie where a dog appears and they make jokes about it, but your pet has died and you don’t find those jokes funny, because this stimulus has an indication of pain, until some time passes and that indication disappears. . Lose and you can re-experience the sense of humor of some jokes with this item.
The amygdala is responsible for assigning value to items around you and experiences based on how well you do with them. For this reason, we don’t “get” certain jokes or we don’t find them funny, because there are certain stimuli that we are not used to having in our lives, and when we make jokes with them they don’t reach the amygdala either.
For Vergara, “Jokes are different, for example, when a humorist wants to reach everyone, he makes jokes with very basic things and very basic elements, like those told about someone who has a flaw.”
“But there is a more subtle sense of humor, which is based on subtleties and which not everyone ‘gets’, although it is all about the value we give to stimuli, the experiences we have had in our lives and that the amygdala becomes in charge of storing and managing to give a certain importance for every stimulus, which is why we laugh about some things or others.”
In many cases, it has also been shown that people with depression or certain internal disorders that cause structural changes in the amygdala are unable to identify, for example, emotions when it comes to whether a stimulus is positive or negative, and in these cases it is difficult to understand the joke. Finding them funny is even more complicated.
“There are many ways to respond to a joke, and many of them depend on the narrative skills of the person when telling them, in such a way that some empathize better with the listeners and others less so. It may happen that when you tell jokes that you remember frequently, they are very funny, but if If you try to tell others, you won’t be funny anymore, ”the psychologist argues.
There are also cultural factors, Vergara adds, “because there are jokes told to a certain group that cause fun, however, if they are, say, very dark or downright humorous, they are probably not amused.”
