Benign Violation Theory

A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren wrote a research article, "Benign Violations: Making Immoral
Behavior Funny," in which they outline Benign Violation Theory as the foundation to study humor. The authors argue, "humor is aroused by benign violations. The benign-violation hypothesis suggests that three conditions are jointly necessary and sufficient for eliciting humor: A situation must be appraised as a violation, a situation must be appraised as benign, and these two appraisals must occur simultaneously." In other words, as the three conditions are met, we have a fertile environment for laughter. And humor, they conclude, "provides a healthy and socially beneficial way to react to hypothetical threats, remote concerns, minor setbacks, social faux pas, cultural misunderstandings, and other benign violations people encounter on a regular basis. Humor also serves a valuable communicative function: Laughter and amusement signal to the world that a violation is indeed okay."

Note the resonance here to Socrates' description of comedy as a mix of pleasure and pain (in Plato's Philebus), Aristotle's account as an imitation of the ugly or base (ludicrous), and Bergon's idea that humor serves as society's corrective response to the absentminded.

Muammar al-Gaddafi & Charlie Sheen

From Vanity Fair: "The Two and a Half Men star and the Libyan dictator delivered rambling rants this week. Can you tell who said what?"



"These are my people...not yours...we will continue on together...”

  Take the quiz here.

Analyzing Comedy

TV.com staff writer Tim Surette breaks down an episode of Tosh.0.

Funniest Jokes

According to Prof. Richard Wiseman's LaughLab research project, the world's funnies jokes are:

FIRST PLACE

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

SECOND PLACE

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were going camping. They pitched their tent under the stars and went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes woke Watson up and said: “Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you see.”

Watson replied: “I see millions and millions of stars.”

Holmes said: “and what do you deduce from that?”

Watson replied: “Well, if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like earth out there. And if there are a few planets like earth out there, there might also be life.”

And Holmes said: “Watson, you idiot, it means that somebody stole our tent.”

New National Anthem Unveiled at Superbowl XLV

Chrisitina Aguilera's rendition of the National Anthem at Superbowl XLV:

“What so proudly we watched at the twilight’s last reaming.”

The end-of-daysish interpretation immediately drew rave reviews from Westboro Baptist Church.