Real Guinea Pigs don't Giggle

Reading the titles of the scientific articles published in any given week ultimately leaves me with one take-home message: scientists will study anything. Case in point: right now the Humour Research Lab (HuRL) in Boulder Colorado is investigating whether things are funnier under the influence of marijuana. Funny, eh?

            But seriously folks, humour is a gravely important topic highly deserving of a dedicated and meticulous team of scrupulously unfunny real scientist researchers. Really. Okay, the lucky grad students performing this work are allowed to be a little funny, but the results of their work (however amusing to the general public) are crucial pieces of the human psychology puzzle. As these researchers will point out (to any bench scientist pointing and laughing at them) the ubiquity and pervasiveness of humour in human culture indicates a key role in psychological well-being. Anxiousness, fear, and especially happiness have been hot topics in the modern world of psychological research. Studies about the nature of humour add to this body of work by contributing valuable insight into how humans interpret and process incoming information.

            So exactly how are these studies conducted? Do these researchers just wander around with clip boards occasionally noting down “funny” or “not funny,” or are test subjects shoved into an MRI and forced to watch Fresh Prince reruns until their patronizing amusement centres light up? Perhaps surprisingly, the truth is closer to the first scenario with a few laughable modifications. Students from a university campus were recruited to participate in studies with the promise of either course credit or candy bars (that’s right, undergraduates can be bought with candy). To earn their sugary snack, students were asked to read descriptions of various scenarios and respond to questions regarding how they felt about them. I can only imagine that reporting these results in a respectable fashion takes more than a dash of academic discipline as the questionnaires tend to include such sitcom gold as a man rubbing his bare genitalia on a willing kitten, someone making the decision to snort the ashes of their deceased father, and a man having sex with a dead chicken before cooking it for dinner. The final academic publication walks a fine line between rigorous science and reading material for future humour test subjects.

            When all of the giggling dies down, what are we learning about all of this funny business? The hypothesis championed by the folks in Boulder is termed “benign violation.” By this theory, things are funny when they challenge or disrupt a cultural norm (that’s the “violation” part), and are seen as harmless or “benign.” This theory explains why a child hitting his father in the crotch with a baseball bat is endlessly hilarious (just ask Bob Sagget), but only until the injury requires surgery stopping the man from having more children (suddenly a little more serious). According to this group, we find disturbing, disgusting, and generally wrong things absolutely uproarious, unless they present a real threat to our well-being or that of those we identify with.

            So the next time that you’re chuckling over some stooge-worthy antics, remember that your mom was right: “it’s all fun and games until…”

Read more in HuRL's benign violation paper