John McCrone reviews recent research on humour
The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the
most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog
has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet
fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck
people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur
Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: ‘unique in that it serves no
apparent biological purpose’.
Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed
the idea that humour is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over
others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a
psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of
the punchline. But most modern humour theorists have settled on
some version of Aristotle’s belief that jokes are based on a reaction
to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either a
nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning.
Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the
linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humour
but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says
that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a
sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a
situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt.
So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a
clever semantic fit and that sudden mental ‘Aha!’ is the buzz that
makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humour is just a form of
creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.
However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social
appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a
crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce
ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty.
Chimpanzees have a ‘play-face’ – a gaping expression
accompanied by a panting ‘ah, ah’ noise. In humans, these signals
have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social
situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these
instinctual markers of play or appeasement.
Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same
expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits
that produce smiles and excited vocalisations. However, if cognitive
laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should
result from more expansive brain activity.
Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new
technique of ‘single event’ functional magnetic resonance imaging
(FMRI). An MRI scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to
track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental
activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of
activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes
such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-
second ‘snapshots’ of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving
activities.
Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal
place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding
a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at
the beginning of a joke the listener’ prefrontal cortex lit up,
particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem
solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side
of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge)
and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a
new area sprang to life – the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of
brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with
evaluating information.
Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment
is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human.
Energy and arousal levels may need to be retuned in the blink of an
eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative
feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel’s
experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such
feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close
connections to the brain’s sub-cortical arousal apparatus and
centres of metabolic control.
All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in
arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have
developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of
language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to
their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into
place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery
being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this
natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative
machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or
funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives
pleasure or pain depends on a person’s outlook.
Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no
evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and
Mary College in Virginia, says: ‘I like to think of humour as the
distorted mirror of the mind. It’s creative, perceptual, analytical and
lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then
we’ll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.
Questions 14-20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in
Reading Passage 2?
For questions 14-20, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this statement
14 Arthur Koestler considered laughter biologically important in
several ways.
15 Plato believed humour to be a sign of above-average
intelligence.
16 Kant believed that a successful joke involves the controlled
release of nervous energy.
17 Current thinking on humour has largely ignored Aristotle’s view
on the subject.
18 Graeme Ritchie’s work links jokes to artificial intelligence.
19 Most comedians use personal situations as a source of humour.
20 Chimpanzees make particular noises when they are playing.
Questions 21-23
The diagram below shows the areas of the brain activated by jokes.
Label the diagram.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for
each answer.
Questions 24-27
Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G below.
Write the correct letter A-G next to questions 24-27.
24 One of the brain’s most difficult tasks is to
25 Because of the language they have developed, humans
26 Individual responses to humour
27 Peter Derks believes that humour
A react to their own thoughts.
B helped create language in humans.
C respond instantly to whatever is happening.
D may provide valuable information about the operation of the
brain.
E cope with difficult situations.
F relate to a person’s subjective views.
G led our ancestors to smile and then laugh.
