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"Human behavior Humor."
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Earth (the book) : a visitor's guide to the human race
Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show embark on a mission to write a book that sums up the human race: what we looked like, what we accomplished, and our achievements in society, government, religion, science, and culture. Here is the definitive guide to our species--completely unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity, or even accuracy.
Book
A systematic review of humour‐based strategies for addressing public health priorities
To systematically review research into the use of humour‐based health promotion strategies for addressing public health issues during the past 10 years.
The systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
Thirteen studies were included in the review. Mental health, breast and testicular cancer self‐examination, safe sex, skin cancer and binge drinking public health issues were targeted. Humour‐based strategies were used to influence health attitudes and behaviours, encourage interpersonal sharing to indirectly affect health behaviour, and investigate the level of threat and humour associated with positive outcomes. Findings provided some evidence to support the use of humour‐based strategies as determined by the right combination of audience characteristics, level of humour and amusement evoked, and message persuasion and behaviour change methods underpinning strategies.
Methodologies varied limiting comparability, although overall results indicate that humour‐based health promotion strategies may be a useful tool for increasing awareness and help‐seeking behaviour for public health priorities, particularly those associated with stigma.
Humour interventions vary widely because there can never be a standardised approach to evoking humour. Further research examining humour and public health promotion is needed.
Journal Article
Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny
Humor is an important, ubiquitous phenomenon; however, seemingly disparate conditions seem to facilitate humor. We integrate these conditions by suggesting that laughter and amusement result from violations that are simultaneously seen as benign. We investigated three conditions that make a violation benign and thus humorous: (a) the presence of an alternative norm suggesting that the situation is acceptable, (b) weak commitment to the violated norm, and (c) psychological distance from the violation. We tested the benign-violation hypothesis in the domain of moral psychology, where there is a strong documented association between moral violations and negative emotions, particularly disgust. Five experimental studies show that benign moral violations tend to elicit laughter and amusement in addition to disgust. Furthermore, seeing a violation as both wrong and not wrong mediates behavioral displays of humor. Our account is consistent with evolutionary accounts of laughter, explains humor across many domains, and suggests that humor can accompany negative emotion.
Journal Article
Humor in parenting: Does it have a role?
Despite the widespread use of humor in social interactions and the considerable literature on humor in multiple fields of study, the use of humor in parenting has received very little formal study. The purpose of this pilot study was to gather preliminary data on the use of humor in the raising of children.
We developed and administered a 10-item survey to measure people's experiences being raised with humor and their views regarding humor as a parenting tool. Responses were aggregated into Disagree, Indeterminate, and Agree, and analyzed using standard statistical methods.
Respondents (n = 312) predominantly identified as male (63.6%) and white (76.6%) and were (by selection) between the ages of 18-45 years old. The majority of participants reported that they: were raised by people who used humor in their parenting (55.2%); believe humor can be an effective parenting tool (71.8%) and in that capacity has more potential benefit than harm (63.3%); either use (or plan to use) humor in parenting their own children (61.8%); and would value a course on how to utilize humor in parenting (69.7%). Significant correlations were found between the use of humor and both i) the quality of respondents' relationships with their parents and ii) assessments of how good a job their parents had done.
In this pilot study, respondents of childbearing/rearing age reported positive views about humor as a parenting tool.
Journal Article
Race-Based Humor and Peer Group Dynamics in Adolescence: Bystander Intervention and Social Exclusion
Adolescents' evaluations of discriminatory race-based humor and their expectations about peer responses to discrimination were investigated in 8th- (Mage = 13.80) and 10th-grade (Mage = 16.11) primarily European-American participants (N = 256). Older adolescents judged race-based humor as more acceptable than did younger adolescents and were less likely to expect peer intervention. Participants who rejected discrimination were more likely to reference welfare/rights and prejudice and to anticipate that peers would intervene. Showing awareness of group processes, adolescents who rejected race-based humor believed that peers who intervened would be more likely to be excluded. They also disapproved of exclusion more than did participants who supported race-based humor. Results expose the complexity of situations involving subtle discrimination. Implications for bullying interventions are discussed.
Journal Article
Autism as a disorder of prediction
A rich collection of empirical findings accumulated over the past three decades attests to the diversity of traits that constitute the autism phenotypes. It is unclear whether subsets of these traits share any underlying causality. This lack of a cohesive conceptualization of the disorder has complicated the search for broadly effective therapies, diagnostic markers, and neural/genetic correlates. In this paper, we describe how theoretical considerations and a review of empirical data lead to the hypothesis that some salient aspects of the autism phenotype may be manifestations of an underlying impairment in predictive abilities. With compromised prediction skills, an individual with autism inhabits a seemingly “magical” world wherein events occur unexpectedly and without cause. Immersion in such a capricious environment can prove overwhelming and compromise one’s ability to effectively interact with it. If validated, this hypothesis has the potential of providing unifying insights into multiple aspects of autism, with attendant benefits for improving diagnosis and therapy.
Significance Autism is characterized by diverse behavioral traits. Guided by theoretical considerations and empirical data, this paper develops the hypothesis that many of autism's salient traits may be manifestations of an underlying impairment in predictive abilities. This impairment renders an otherwise orderly world to be experienced as a capriciously “magical” one. The hypothesis elucidates the information-processing roots of autism and, thereby, can aid the identification of neural structures likely to be differentially affected. Behavioral and neural measures of prediction might serve as early assays of predictive abilities in infants, and serve as useful tools in intervention design and in monitoring their effectiveness. The hypothesis also points to avenues for further research to determine molecular and circuit-level causal underpinnings of predictive impairments.
Journal Article
Investigating audience preferences within the hybrid competitive-comedic format of taskmaster UK
Background: Hybrid entertainment formats combining competitive and comedic elements present opportunities to investigate factors driving audience engagement. I analyzed Taskmaster UK (2015–2023), a BAFTA-winning comedy panel show where comedians compete in creative tasks judged by a host, to quantify relationships between scoring mechanics, performer characteristics, and viewer ratings. Methods: I analyzed 154 episodes encompassing 917 tasks performed by 90 contestants, with audience reception measured through 32,607 IMDb votes. To capture scoring dynamics while avoiding intercorrelated metrics, I employed a low-dimensional representation using mean ( μ ) and variance ( σ 2 ) of score distributions. Additional methods included mixture modeling for rating distributions (tri-peak model: a 1 · δ ( 1 ) + a 10 · δ ( 10 ) + a gaussian · ( μ , σ ) ), hierarchical clustering for performance patterns, and Random Forest regression. All p -values include False Discovery Rate correction. Results: Low-dimensional scoring representation showed no significant associations with IMDb ratings ( μ : r = −0.012, p = 0.890; σ 2 : r = −0.118, p = 0.179; combined R 2 = 0.017, p = 0.698). Contestant age emerged as the strongest predictor (39.5% ± 2.1% feature importance). Sentiment analysis identified increased awkwardness over time ( β = 0.0122 , adjusted p = 0.0027). Clustering revealed five performance archetypes appearing consistently across series. Geometric analysis showed 38.9% (98/252) of mathematically possible scoring distributions occur in practice. Conclusions: Competitive elements provide framework while audience engagement correlates with performer characteristics and emotional content. The low-dimensional scoring analysis eliminates methodological concerns about metric intercorrelation. These findings position Taskmaster UK as a quantifiable example where secondary mechanics enable but do not determine primary value.
Journal Article
Conversational humour and (im)politeness : a pragmatic analysis of social interaction
Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness is the first systematic study that offers a socio-pragmatic perspective on humorous practices such as teasing, mockery and taking the piss and their relation to (im)politeness.
eBook
Towards a social functional account of laughter: Acoustic features convey reward, affiliation, and dominance
Recent work has identified the physical features of smiles that accomplish three tasks fundamental to human social living: rewarding behavior, establishing and managing affiliative bonds, and negotiating social status. The current work extends the social functional account to laughter. Participants (N = 762) rated the degree to which reward, affiliation, or dominance (between-subjects) was conveyed by 400 laughter samples acquired from a commercial sound effects website. Inclusion of a fourth rating dimension, spontaneity, allowed us to situate the current approach in the context of existing laughter research, which emphasizes the distinction between spontaneous and volitional laughter. We used 11 acoustic properties extracted from the laugh samples to predict participants' ratings. Actor sex moderated, and sometimes even reversed, the relation between acoustics and participants' judgments. Spontaneous laughter appears to serve the reward function in the current framework, as similar acoustic properties guided perceiver judgments of spontaneity and reward: reduced voicing and increased pitch, increased duration for female actors, and increased pitch slope, center of gravity, first formant, and noisiness for male actors. Affiliation ratings diverged from reward in their sex-dependent relationship to intensity and, for females, reduced pitch range and raised second formant. Dominance displayed the most distinct pattern of acoustic predictors, including increased pitch range, reduced second formant in females, and decreased pitch variability in males. We relate the current findings to existing findings on laughter and human and non-human vocalizations, concluding laughter can signal much more that felt or faked amusement.
Journal Article
Such a high cost: the positive effect of leader humor on employee incivility via psychological safety
Unlike prior studies, which have focused on the positive outcomes of leader humor, the current study seeks to understand why and when leader humor produces negative results such as employee incivility. This study creates a cross-level second-stage moderated mediation model and tested it with multi-time and multi-source data from 290 employees in China. The results show that employee psychological safety mediated the relationship between leader humor and employee incivility. Leader moral identity is found to negatively moderate the relationship between employee psychological safety and incivility and negatively moderate the mediating effect of employee psychological safety between leader humor and employee incivility. These findings enrich the theoretical research on leader humor and incivility and provide guidance to help organizations effectively control employee incivility in the workplace.
Journal Article