The Humor Code Read Online Free Page B

stranger tries to tickle them, since nothing about that is benign.
    Pete’s ideas about tickling were recently boosted by, of all things, a tickle robot. Cognitive neuroscientists at University College London devised an apparatus in which subjects could control, via a joystick, a mechanical arm brushing a piece of foam over their other hand. When the arm corresponded to the joystick movements, participants didn’t find the feeling all that ticklish, but the more the experimenters delayed or shifted the direction of the arm’s movements from that of the joystick, the more ticklish folks rated the sensation. 10 These findings meshed with the idea that laughter occurs when tickling is a benign violation: adding a small delay or change in direction of the robotic arm added just enough of a violation to make it ticklish.
    Almost as soon as Pete unveiled the benign violation theory, people began to challenge it, trying to come up with some zinger, gag, or “yo momma” joke that doesn’t fit the theory. Although Pete is willing to engage in such rhetorical debates, he’s weary of doing so. For one thing, humor theorists had been relying far too long on such “thought experiments,” trying to shoehorn as many jokes as possible into their theory of choice. But outside of philosophy, thought experimentsonly get you so far. For another, says Pete, it’s fine to criticize the theory, but you’d best offer up a better alternative. And Pete’s confident that the benign violation theory outperforms incongruity, relief, superiority, and all other humor-theory contenders. To prove it, he and Caleb turned to science—hence the founding of HuRL. “Your intuition often leads you astray,” Pete said to me. “But within the lab, you can set theories against one another.”
    In one HuRL experiment, a researcher approached subjects on campus and asked them to read a scenario inspired by a story about legendarily depraved Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. In the story, Keith’s father tells his son to do whatever he wishes with his cremated remains—so when his father passed away, Keith decided to snort the ashes. Meanwhile, the researcher, who didn’t know what the participants were reading, gauged their facial expressions as they perused the story. Then the subjects were asked about their reactions to the story: Did they find the story wrong, not wrong at all, a bit of both, or neither? As it turned out, those who found the tale of Keith and his obscene schnozz simultaneously “wrong” (a violation) and “not wrong” (benign) were three times more likely to smile or laugh than either those who deemed the story either completely okay or utterly unacceptable. 11
    Pete and Caleb became more confident. Pete came to believe the benign violation theory could even help people improve their schtick. As he puts it, folks could use his theory to make upsetting concepts more amusing by making them seem more benign. He calls this tactic the Sarah Silverman Strategy, after the comedian who gets away with jokes on abortion and AIDS because the way she tells them is so darn cute. On the flip side, he believes that pointing out what is wrong with our everyday interactions with soup chefs and “close talkers” can help make those experiences hilarious. Pete calls this technique the Seinfeld Strategy.
    HuRL’s research has started to gain traction. Pete and Caleb’s first paper on the benign violation theory appeared in one of the top mainstream psychology journals. Meanwhile, some of Pete’s fellow humor researchers are starting to take notice. “I absolutely consider it significant; it furthers the field,” Don Nilsen, co-founder of theInternational Society for Humor Studies and co-author of the Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor , told me. “I don’t think there are any examples of humor that don’t fit