Cerebrum, July 2014

Funny Science
Review: Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why and The Humor Code: A Global Search for
What Makes Things Funny
By Robert R. Provine, Ph.D.
In Robert Provine’s review o/Ha: The Science of When We Laugh and Why and The Humor Code: A
Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, he leans on his own analysis of simple instincts such
as laughing and yawning and his research for his own book, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.
The importance of humor is suggested by the stature of those who have studied it. This formidable
group includes Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Darwin. The difficulty of the topic is
indicated by our continuing effort to understand it. In contrast to the long history of
philosophical analyses, empirically based humor study is little more than 100 years old. Two recent books
for general audiences provide very different progress reports from the frontiers of humor science.
The first, Ha: The Science of When We Laugh and Why, by Scott Weems, a cognitive neuroscientist and
postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland, takes us on a lighthearted tour of things
funny. Mindful of the cliche that analysis kills humor, Weems starts with an amusing anecdote about
groundbreaking comedian Lenny Bruce and maintains a high humor quotient throughout, mostly
straddling the thin line between entertainment and revelation. Can some popularizers of humor studies try
too hard to be funny? Borrowing a quote from humor scholar Victor Raskin in Weems' introduction,
"[Psychiatrists don't try to sound neurotic or delusional when describing schizophrenia, so why should
humor researchers try to be funny?" What about reviewers of books about humor? It's informative that no
one wants to be seen as lacking a sense of humor.
When not trying to entertain, Weems avers, "... humor and its most common symptom-laughter—are by-
products of possessing brains which rely on conflict," and this conflict is desirable because it encourages
adaptability. Further, humor is "closely associated with nearly every aspect of human cognition," "the
healthiest way to stay cognitively sharp" and "strongly related to intelligence." In case you missed the
point, Weems reminds us, "Nearly every aspect of our lives is improved by focusing on humor." Weems
makes a good point about the variety of humor processing, given the many kinds of humor, from pun to
pratfall, and its many channels of delivery, from spoken word to vision. As he suggests, humor really is a
kind of IQ test—which is a theme of the delightful French film Ridicule.
If you want your cognitive neuroscience with a smiley face, Weems is your man. He caters to the feel-
good, be-happy modern audience of positive psychology by underplaying laughter's dark side, which was
a concern of the ancients. Plato, for example, was motivated by fear of laughter's power, not improving
health of the quality of his stand-up. If you doubt the danger of laughter, ask a politician earning mention
on a late-night comedy show, even one not named [Anthony] Weiner. Carelessly targeted laughter can
trigger a beating.
Few people deny that laughter provides pleasure, but can we really "laugh our way to health," as
suggested by clown/physician Patch Adams and the late writer/editor Norman Cousins (Anatomy of an
Illness as Perceived by the Patientft Weems is optimistic about the prospects of medicinal laughter. Fie
underplays contrary evidence, such as the cited large-scale, long-term study of Howard Friedman at the
University of California, Riverside, which indicated that conscientiousness, not humor, predicts
longevity. Better news comes from pain studies that report an analgesic effect of comedy and laughter.
Perhaps we are expecting too much from laughter, a vocalization that, like speech, evolved to change the
behavior of other people, not to improve our health.
The neuroscience of Weems is of the "my-brain-made-me-do-it" variety, based on the notion that, when
faced with a clash of ideas, the brain's conflict detector (the anterior cingulate) fires up, provides a dose of
feel-good dopamine, and somehow yields ha-ha. Does this casual "neurologizing" earn its keep? The
answer is a tentative maybe. Even devout worshipers at the Church of Neuroscience may question the
limits of imaging to understand a joke, or of dopamine to understand its reward.
Weems may be pardoned for not solving the problem of humor, one of history's oldest and thorniest. But
complex problems need not be confronted head-on, as they are here, even when bolstered by brain
images. Why not adopt the simple system approach useful in attacking other complex biological systems,
thereby focusing on the simple act of "ha" of the book's title instead of wading into the swamp of
cognition? The simple systems approach, guided by an evolutionary perspective, has registered
counterintuitive discoveries uncited by Weems. For example, the modern human ha-ha evolved from the
ancestral pant-pant—the sound of labored breathing of tickle and the rough-and-tumble of our primate
ancestors. Ha-ha is literally the sound of play that announces, "This is play; I'm not attacking you."
Overall, Ha delivers a genial, mostly derivative, neurologically oriented introduction to humor science. It
easily could have been a much stronger and more versatile book. In present form, it's often difficult to
identify core ideas and to follow arguments, and its thinly veiled advocacy reduces its intellectual heft.
The book has a rudimentary index, no bibliography, no citations in the text, and only select references in
the endnotes for each chapter, leaving unclear who did what and frustrating those who want to read
further or to check facts. Topics and people cited in the text may or may not appear in the index. For
example, Victor Raskin appears in the index, but not regarding his quotation used above. The potential of
the book as an authoritative reference is diminished by its casual and incomplete referencing, not its
breezy style.
In The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, authors Peter McGraw and Joel
Warner team up to present a flamboyant road show in the spirit of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby films
of yore. Journalist/writer Warner is the straight man and chronicler of the antics of "Professor Pete"
McGraw, University of Colorado professor of business, psychologist, humor researcher, and wannabe
comedian, as they tour the world in search of the holy grail of humor. The book grew out of a series of
articles that Warner published about McGraw in Wired and elsewhere, and the duo sometimes
communicates more about the human condition than about the science of mirth, but I won't quibble. This
is a delightful conception, executed with verve, warmth, and, well, humor.
With the authors at the wheel, readers join an investigation of comedy clubs in Los Angeles, New
Yorker cartoonists in Manhattan, the site of the laughter epidemic in Tanzania (a topic in Ha), cultural
challenges in Japan, besieged cartoonists of the prophet Muhammad in Denmark, humor in troubled
Palestine, and Patch Adams's medicinal clowning in Peru. The Grand Tour climaxes at the Just for
Laughs festival in Montreal, where Professor Pete put his hard-won comedic knowledge to practical test
in a stand-up routine before a major-league audience. Pete didn't kill, but he got some laughs and survived
with his dignity intact. Although the device of the tour is a bit contrived, it yields fresh material involving
conversations with leading players and earns its keep. I wonder who paid for it.
A major theme in the book is the worldwide test of McGraw's Benign Violation Theory, which posits that
in order to be funny, an event must be a violation of the norm, must seem benign, and must satisfy both
conditions simultaneously. In other words, slipping on a banana peel is funny only when the victim is not
injured. In marketing their idea, the authors learned that humor scholars are a tough crowd, where upstarts
can earn a knee in the groin from irascible elders. Given that the book is not a theoretical treatise, I'll give
McGraw a pass on his plausible premise—plenty of other humor experts will gladly provide a critique,
with the enthusiasm of lions stalking a wounded wildebeest.
The Humor Code should not be criticized for what it is not: It is not a textbook of humor/laughter science,
a how-to book for aspiring comedians, or a comprehensive monograph about humor theory. What it does
very well is to introduce the vast, engaging, challenging terrain of the comic and to inspire readers to
explore further. The thoughtful and detailed endnotes/bibliography and index will assist readers wishing
to do the latter.
Peter McGraw in The Humor Code and Scott Weems in Ha both conclude their books with a display of
their stand-up skills, prompting anticipation of face-to-face comedic combat between these scientists of
the funny.
Note from the author: Readers wanting to learn more about humor from a carefully reasoned
evolutionary, cognitive, and philosophical perspective are directed to the excellent Inside Jokes: Using
Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind, by Hurley, Dennett, and Adams. My book, Laughter: A Scientific
Investigation, complements the above with an analysis of the vocal act of laughter. Those seeking an
enjoyable, wide-ranging perspective about what neuroscience can and can't tell us about how we feel will
find wise counsel in Frazzetto's Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love: What Neuroscience Can—and Can't—Tell Us
About How We Feel.
Bio
Robert R. Provine, Ph.D., is professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County. After training in developmental neuroscience at Washington University
and investigating neurobehavioral development in many species, he developed a novel, low-
tech approach to human brain mechanisms that he terms "sidewalk neuroscience," which is based on the
analysis of simple instincts such as laughing and yawning. As a bonus, the contagion of these behaviors
provides an entree to the neurological basis of social behavior. Provine is a fellow of the Association for
Psychological Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research is
described in Laughter: A Scientific Investigation and Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping,
and Beyond.