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Episode 31: Psychology of Humor
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so today's topic is actually the psychology behind what what what's humorous what's funny whenever I think about the psychology of humor I I'm reminded of Christopher Hitchens and he was on Ares two in an interview and the interviewer asked him about comedy and he said that men are much funnier than women so of course the interviewer was really upset about this and he said well no let me tell you why you said because men are much more motivated to be funny because if they succeed they're going to get some they're going to get a date out of it at the least right so so we're going to worry about talking about the psychology of humor we're going to be kind of dissecting an article today by a website called the week it's just called how to be funny the six essential ingredients to humor now the author Eric Barger he's not a psychologist so he did the best that he could but we're going to be dissecting this from my professional standpoint in your perspective to see what what is actually true and what isn't true all right so but before we start any any couple of things you want to say about humor ins the psychology of being funny well there's a lot to it actually so there's probably a lot of different things we could discuss but but Hitchens was certainly correct that that men are designed to generate humor and women are designed to enjoy it and so it's a and of course I can see you know some annoyed women out there already if they ever listen to this but this is the truth that it's a this is a mechanism by which females judge males it's a fitness indicator we're not exactly sure what the females are discerning here when it comes to the humor but there's certainly creative intelligence is involved and also probably mutation loads are being analyzed by how kyuhyun's quite a complex psychological event to be able to generate whom humor isn't is no simple trick and therefore there are people that are lousy at it people that are ok at it and then there's people that are outstanding at it so just like athletics or anything else that is difficult it winds up being a potentially useful indicator of genetic fitness or mutation loads and so therefore the men are very motivated to try to generate this and turns out that if you look at studies about about sense of humor and who finds what attractive you will find the following asymmetrical situation and that is that men are found more attractive when they are funny but they are not found more attractive when they are amused whereas women are not found more attractive when they are funny but they are found more attractive when they are amused so this tells us that men like it when women laugh I put in particularly that anything that they have to say and women like it are not so interested in whether men find them funny they're more interested in whether the men are funny themselves so this is a device that men try to sell their genes to women and that is that is the evolutionary backdrop of humor so with with that in mind let's press on and see what the pop culture has to say about it all right yeah you know and I always I always thought that humor had something to do with intelligence although not necessarily a lot of people that I've that I've met who just are aspiring comedians or just pretty good at at comedy they tend to be pretty intelligent they can think through things pretty quickly and come up with something on the fly and say something that that is desirable for others a year yes it would be the equivalent of in athleticism like if you are pretty good with a bow and arrow that would be a fitness indicator kind of a particular one you know can you hold real steady are you strong enough to draw their bow back you know what's your eyesight like all these kinds of things like it's not bad now it's not as good as the decathlon for God's sakes it's not as good as basketball but it's better than nothing and no sense of humor is is like a bow and arrow it's a a person can be actually very witty eight and and not that smart but but a person could easily be very smart and not not that witty so it's not just a intelligence indicator although it is correlated with intelligence it's also indicative of some other things of cooperativeness for example because a good sense of humor it generally enables you to see multiple sides of the situation and which is not going to be typically that easy if you're like a very disagreeable kind of a human yeah and it's also the case that humor also signals that you are motivated to pursue a relationship with the person that's listening so it's actually flattering to listen to someone trying to be funny because they are trying to they're essentially trying to get into a social relationship or a romantic relationship with you they are going to that effort and so it's also a signal of social interest so these are there's quite a number of lines of influence and analysis that are going on with sense of humor which of course is not the slightest bit funny to listen to this analysis so let's go on with the pot people okay let's hear what the real people have to say it says they tell that to some of the people I've tried to tell jokes to and eventually after a minute of me stuttering and coming in on they say just stop yeah just forget it alright here we go so the author is Eric Barker and the article is how to be funny the six essential agreement ingredients2 humor so we're going to play six different clips one at a time and then describe what is the element that's displayed here so our first clip is from Louis CK's a famous comedian and it's an example of you having a target so the number one thing is to have a target let's listen in on our first comedian here like when you were 40 if you go to the doctor the doc is what they don't try to fix anything anymore it's not trying to fix shit when you get to be 40 they don't they just go yeah it starts to happen they don't care I wasn't a doctor because my ankle hurt right now if you're 20 and you have a bad shoulder the doctor will reconstruct your shoulder through miracles of modern science they'll take your ear make a solar out of it it's weird when you're 40 they just give you no options but he doesn't care I went because my ankle I go limping for like a month out of nowhere and the doctor he brings me he shows me an x-ray of my ankle he's like yeah your ankle just just worn out so in this case the target is the doctor what yeah a little bit yeah not quite the target is is also him and if you if you actually look at the funniest laugh in that sequence it's the it wasn't that funny until he the doctors talked to him about your ankles worn out ie at 40 you're over the hill so actually what you heard was you heard at first it starts out in this this vague target that we're targeting the medical doctor said so that that's the first little little potshots there but that the audience didn't find it that funny if you listen to this the biggest laugh is at the end by far and what makes that funny is the fact that this guy is up there listen to him he's very articulate and very bright and he's got a big audience there so he's got a lot of status and trust me that makes a lot of men uncomfortable so guys are there with their girlfriends and their wives and this guy is got a lot of status and so therefore we are actually wanting him to lose status and so when he says the the crack about his doctor says well your ankles wore out ie you're over the hill you're 40 that is a that's the rich humor there is that are the guy up there is losing the status and that's what makes that joke funny mmm okay so it's not the target so he's actually the target here well actually there are no yeah there's not really a target year per se it's he's always going to be the target and the goal for this is to take status away from himself that's correct that is exactly what's happening there yeah good okay all right all right second part is another part of humor is hostility and this is Lewis black he's the king of comic hostilities where he gets really angry and this is in regards to shopping for milk at the supermarket you don't know anymore than a lot of you you're sitting there thinking fuck I'm an adult I don't have to drink that shit anymore when I was a kid you knew milk was good because there was only one kind of milk moo cow fuck milk in that day and you have to drink four glasses a day now you don't know because when you go down the aisle of the grocery store there's milk the milk aisle goes on fucking ever there's 1% 2% low-fat skim acidophilus milk what the fuck are you talk [Applause] acidophilus milk milk doesn't need a friend that shit belongs in the yogurt section all right so he's hostile because he's confused yeah that's interesting his biggest laugh is with profanity by far and and it's uh and it's about his own frustration and so it's I think I think that that is I actually believe that once again the target is him and so the the the frustration that you're seeing there in principle that that the world is now confusing for him but he once again here we are we have a guy in front of a big audience and he obviously successful but what he's going to do is he's going to act like the world's a little too confusing for me I'm just a good old boy remember when you were a kid it was simple I could understand it when I was a kid but now that I'm an adult god there's just so much going on you know ie then we're going to use the profanity which is actually a signal of the degree of his frustration and so what this really is this is a very interesting humor in that it's not very elegant but it's effective it's basically saying Amen this is too hard for me and and what makes things funny in life is that what makes it if there was actually a borderline retarded person up there telling that story it wouldn't be the slightest bit funny okay because that individual could not afford to lose that status so what what causes things to be funny is that when somebody of high status can afford to lose status and then does and does it in a way that seems true in other words it's hitting it appears that they're really losing the status but its status that is very affordable so in the first case guy is obviously as I'm listening to the guy I don't know how old the first guy was but he sounds vibrant in other words this is a vibrant guy good boy so he turned 40 he didn't say turned 70 he's 40 so this is a this is an alpha male really in his prime and the alpha male and his prime is admitting that the doctor says that his ankles all worn out ie there's no way to fix it you're just too old this is a beautiful obviously he's not too old to screw obviously he's not too old to go up in grandstand in front of a bunch of attractive females and so as a result this is status that he can afford to lose but it is a relief inside the of nervous systems both the males and the females if you're a female who might consider him you would be intimidated by the fact that he is so so fancy that he's up on the big stage but oh if he has a flaw and he can see that he should be getting the signal that he's over the hill that is a relief because he is now not so fancy and he may be attainable and for the males it's a relief that he is but he's not so fancy and but he's you know that he's maybe getting past it okay so those are this is what I call fuzz status so in the first case he lost both status behind his knee or his ankle being II's getting old and in the second case the other disc immunity median is saying I'm kind of dumb okay that's actually the underlying the edge to this humour and he uses a profanity behind the shock value of it because it's indicating frustration it turns out that when people get frustrated they swear we're not exactly sure why this is theirs there's multiple different hypotheses about that but one of the hypotheses is that it is actually difficult not to swear and so therefore when you get frustrated you lose stress tolerance and then then the profanity emerges so that is a serious possibility that could be true it's also highly associated with this Susteren as males swear three times more than females so it's an indicative of a testosterone oz brand so we have a testosterone eyes brain alpha male up there essentially telling the story that he's not very smart and he's confused in the modern world with all the different milk which is of course absurd but by using the profanity and by keeping it very simple he's actually he's cloaking it in an aura of believability that when he hits those punches with the profanity it's hitting the circuit and he is in fact losing the foe status at indicating that he's not too smart which is of course absurd or he wouldn't be a stand-up comic in front of a big audience and so that losing of the foe status status tickles the the neural circuits of the listeners and they enjoy it so this is sig this is why that happened very good very very I'm sorry an interesting yeah I'm sensing a theme here you know like so many of the articles we've done after the first three we can already see the writing on the wall about what exactly nothing so let's go to the third the third one is realism so the author says most good jokes have to state some sort of bitter truth which the audience can associate with and so here's louis c.k it's the same comedian from the first clip now he's talking about his daughter got it but my daughter is really something else man she runs the house she runs the whole house she decides everything like we were playing hide and seek the other day we play hide and seek and we play by her rules that she invented and you know why because she sucks at hide-and-seek and so she covers it with his fucking roots to level the playing field and I got a fucking pretend it's old that she's great no it's bullshit like we're playing oh fucking I know she's a kid but fucking listen when it's my turn to hide she tells me where to hide she tells me where she could hide in the closet papa but you're gonna know where I hide the closet all right fuck I'll hide in the closet good fine I'm standing in the closet like an asshole she comes in I found you she's like shitty about it like I found you and I'm like wow how did you figure out where you told me the fucking high and then when yeah so it's now yeah let's it sounds like he let me see if I get this if I'm understanding this right sure so he is losing status to his daughter which obviously he's not but he's playing to that right so he is it yes it's the fact that his daughters in charge okay so the status is that he's supposed to be dad and dad's supposed to be in charge and in fact gee he's not in charge okay so that that's what's supposed to be funny I and we he tries to edge it edge it in with the profanity that was indicating his frustration that he you know but that he's not in charge the I I don't find it very funny I think the only people that are laughing her drunk and and so I I think it was a bad set their bad bad sequence but you can see what he's trying to do he's he's trying to sort of lose status as the person in charge but it's it's not work and it's it's too ridiculous yeah we're going to find that in the the first example was better in other words the doctor says he's he's worn his ankles worn out that it we don't quite believe it but something like that could have happened and it is possible and so that that is in the second case the guy swearing about the milk yeah that's sort of believable that that was it was delivered well this one this one's mediocre and that's because the the we don't believe that he's really frustrated about losing quote that he's in a role reversal with his kid he there should be no indicate he should not be frustrated with this you obviously do this only because it's entertaining and fun and sweet to do and so you would not be frustrated so this is a it's it's tickling a little bit maybe the idea the appearance you know bending over backwards for their three-year-olds and being frustrated about it but I don't think it plays well I think it's uh I think it's generally poorly conceived okay and it seems like he's also trying to displace some of his agree ability versus his daughters disagree ability yeah yes a little bit yeah it's as if he's he says if he's frustrated with his daughters disagree ability which is of course ludicrous so all this is just this is comedians doing the best they can these guys are operating on instinct rather than than really understanding the structure of humor and you know that's why it's that's why it's fabulous and artistic as hell when they get it right but a lot of times they're going to get it wrong okay yeah the next one is actually I have this clip here with Eddie Izzard now Eddie Izzard has a really different style of humor he really likes to tell a big long story and he exaggerated Sal OTT it's he exaggerated so much that it's actually funny in some ways in this particular clip I don't think he nails it on the head but but let's take a look here see if we can we can listen we had empires in Europe we had em has everyone had France and Spain and Britain and and Turkey the Ottoman Empire full of furniture for some reason and the austro-hungarian Empire famous for fuck oh yeah that's all they did was slowly collapse like a flan in a cupboard and the German Empire they organized always build an empire and Finance might build an empire vape Russian then they'd celebrate with the world war and then lose the whole fuckin empire by then and the 30s Hitler Czechoslovakia Poland France Second World War Russian front not a good idea Hitler never played risk when he was a kid because you know playing risk you could never hold on to Asia that Asian Eastern European there you can never hold it could you seven extra men at the beginning of every go but you couldn't fucking home Australasia that was the one Australasia all the purples get everyone I'm poppin you Guinea and just build up and build and Hitler ended up in a ditch covered in petrol on fire so that's fun I think that's funny is use a master kind of a different style of humor yeah very clever real cerebral and actually the inside jokes I found funny because I played risk as a kid and and as a result the things he was saying were absolutely true as so and and also it's a the beauty of this some of the the status the status loss here is fascinating fast loss towards Hitler yet is that that essentially had you played something as simple as risk you would have known not to get so greedy at that that's actually what he says and so the AE a fourteen-year-old kid that had played you know hunter games a risk would have not made the mistakes that you made you frickin idiot ass and that that is exactly what he's saying there and so that bet that that tickles a a circuit because in a very different way than what I've described so far and that is that when you when because humor is centered around status loss the there's two ways you can lose status number one you can lose real status and number two you can lose SPO status so when a comedian is up there losing status themselves that's those status in other words that's not real it's no big status loss if this guy does have a worn out ankle okay and we don't believe that the second guy has any problem in the grocery store while looking at all the different milk so this is all bogus okay this is just all a way to paint a picture of their of their theoretical minimal weakness to drag them down to our level and that process we enjoy inherently if they do it well but in this case Hitler is a hated figure in history he's a despicable and hated figure and he would use hated because he was actually so effective I had he been just an ineffective little tyrant that didn't didn't really do anything it wouldn't be we wouldn't be talking about him but the truth is he was he was terrifyingly effective and he was unbelievably dangerous and brutal and extraordinarily costly and so as a result of this we actually want this guy to lose status okay not foe status we want him to lose the real thing so what we do is we try to paint him into a corner and say hey you're a greedy stupid fuck you what do you didn't play risk as a kid you you should know you can't fight a two-front war what an idiot okay when it's really not idiot it's it's stupid greed which is exactly what what undermined Hitler was a was a stupid greedy stupid not stupid stupid greedy stupid so disagree otto along with intelligent yes or a lack of intelligence that's that's right as a result when we it is pleasurable to sit back after a dangerous bastard loses and say hey you're you're a stupid shit any idiot could have done that better than you did it my 14 year old kid could have done it better and so that that is what makes that part of that sequence that sequence funny is he's going after he's going up he's got several little things in there it's a complicated thing that he does but a lot of clever high cerebral issues but I point out the issue of true status loss but it's only funny if you are the in group and they are the out group okay so you have to really dislike the out group and you have to fear them and you have to you have to have a legitimate hatred of the out for them to lose status and for it to be funny okay otherwise it's not funny and so I will I would bet that that is not so funny probably to Germans or - you know there's we would probably find if we were to test a thousand Germans but they wouldn't find some of this funny in the same way that they'd say a thousand Jews would find it funny so there's going to be a historical in-group out-group edge there and he is he is playing on the side of it's fair game to take that guy down mm-hmm okay yeah the next the next comic is Chris Rock and the next of Teck the the next essential ingredient to humor is emotion and Chris Rock he can be pretty funny sometimes he's talking about marriage here and what happened out but when you get married and you visit other married couples is using emotion to play this song married and bored on sing a little old that's right just like marriage it's a boring and shit cuz once you get married you're gonna hang around other married people and it's just disgusting yes Ilona dinner with six neutered adults a bunch of women talking about diaper genies and hair coloring you know believe it in too long its sting shut the fuck up a bunch of men talking about barbeque grills and routes to work you know sometimes we'll take the highway but it's backed up I got besides each I like to say to give me this and half the time yeah you should take it out I minded five and clears up to shut the fuck up I hate Barry Bebo and fuck it's disgusting if you want to eat dinner with single people single people eat for hours in 30 minutes and leave cuz they got fucking to do married people closed down a restaurant they start ordering coffee and dessert start talking to the architect I like to think it but right there stop talking to the cook lucidity what a bet [Applause] hurry up we got a lot of not fucking to do if you hurry up we cannot fuck all night oh I hate married fucking people man and fellas once you get married you become your wife's pet you become a fucking fence the women like to get their husbands together they don't even know each other and have like a grown man playdate put you in a room with some other married motherfucker because he likes baseball just like you owe us some room with some fucking stranger I like baseball [Applause] well I gotta tell you this guy's one of the greats the this is this is actually really well-conceived if we start you know I'd have to listen to it ten times to to pull everything out of it but what we're seeing is people he's he's doing the following and that is married people are actually higher status in the culture than unmarried people okay they make more money more stable they found somebody etc etc okay so when you think married you think stable financially better off that's what you think okay the now so therefore they're absolutely fair game to cost them some status and so it's totally fair game to go after them I actually I've heard people go after their marriage before but I've never heard people go after married people just in general you gotta end it though my meat is very very interesting all right it looks like look at the sound is like it sounded like he didn't lose too many married people because there wasn't that much status to be lost in the way that he was like right exactly so once again we're losing foe status and what he's and there's again I think that there's some there's elements of truth in here so when you lose whenever you're going to lose SPO status there has to be it has to have some believability to it so the guy actually went to the doctor and his ankles worn out etc the so there's a as a guy that did the milk thing spoke in a way that sounded like he was 90 IQ and so therefore you could see him as potentially overwhelmed cognitively so and in Chris Rock's case he's basically saying Wow married people are are non-sexual and the men are emasculated and which of course absolutely is true that when when males get in committed relationships their testosterone levels drop dramatically and so the this uh this is a undoubtedly part and parcel of an energy conservation mechanics inside the genetic code that just basically says no reason to huff and puff and show your muscles and do risky behavior at the grandstand for the females you're you're with one and so you're done for a while and so this is and it's going to turn out that and I think it's hilarious playdates in other words you're basically saying let the men are now domesticated as opposed to the exciting and trepidation because if they were before and so this is a the biggest even though he's he's uh he's hammering on women but actually in a very clever way that's inoffensive because the truth of the matter is is that he's signalling that the women are in charge of the marriages and so the and that the the so this is this actually makes it much fairer for him to be to be hitting the whole the whole structure and basically saying marriage when that happens the guys basically get their balls cut off they're no longer real men they get ordered around by their females the whole thing turns into sexless pablum and it's all about everybody getting along and being a little social club and talking about what women want to talk about and so is there truth in this yeah there is quite a bit of truth in it and as a result how despite that this is still a higher status place to be than to be single and so as a result of this you can get away with it and and so therefore his theoretical frustration is that he quote hates married people but you generally don't hate things that are below you in socioeconomic status that is not generally how human human beings wouldn't feel that frustration and so it all plays out that is it as if in god forbid if you're a married guy that is saying this which Chris Rock may have been or may not have been but he but the point is either way if he's married and he's saying this then it's all then he's losing this data says he's doing it if he's not married when he's doing it he's basically dreading and fearing what is going to happen to his life when he becomes married he's worried that he's going to be this immaculately domesticated animal and he hates looking at that prospect because behind that prospect is a big reduction in sexual electricity and he sniffs that as a potential inevitability in that situation and so this this is actually close to a masterpiece and certainly not the best thing Chris Rock has ever done but this is this is quite sophisticated adult humour and what the hell you know this is why the guy is you know on the big stage very interesting now for listeners who are cute are worried about that happening when they actually do marry or if they actually do get married off listen to a few of our other podcast last time you mentioned a book called mating in captivity yeah Esther Pro so it may be worth a shot your thought about you know we're we're not down on marriage here we're just we're just trying to be informed all right go ahead if you have the next yeah the last one is surprised so the author writes that surprise is one of the primary reasons why people laugh comedy is mentally pulling the rug out from under each person in your audience but first you have to get them stand on it and then you have to fool them because if they see you preparing to tug on the rug they'll move so this is just a very short clip by Jerry Stahl talking about his addiction to heroin yeah I was let the cat out of a bag now said I was the heroin addict for a while and this is the story of about how in the early 90s I made the decision to try and get off heroin finally crack controversial method not been approved by drug czar general McCaffrey at this point but yes Bob are you there yes so he says he's managed to break his addiction to heroin by switching to crack right and again now let's look at this he talks about in the 90s so it's a while ago and so now he's up on a stage clearly you know healthy relaxed also using the words the funniest laugh in here was when he said a controversial you know technique and because someone that was being that highbrow that articulate about this is it that that is such a bizarre juxtaposition to talking about being a heroin and or crack addict and the biggest laugh wasn't the was not actually the surprise factor of the heroin to crack it was actually the phrase that when he says controversial the and the reason is is that that this is where the audience actually gets a relief in an interesting way where they are a little it's a little unsettling to to listen to this guy we don't we're not sure what to believe about this you certainly this is certainly not true you did not try to get off heroin from crack but we are a little disturbed about any human being that has done both heroin and crack those are those are essentially two of the worst most addictive most brutal substances that anybody could ever get into and and so were a little concerned about him and but when he says yeah his controversial strategy or whatever he says about this this gets us to relax there's actually a relief that goes on that that not now we kind of don't we don't believe it for one thing because it's to articulate into two measured and intelligent and and it's uh it also signals to us that that he is clearly none the worse for wear because he's got a smooth articulation high brow delivery that there's been no brain damage that anybody can see and that and that it's got a sort of distanced and humorous light air to it so this is uh I think that what you're seeing is considerable relief in the audience but relieved that yet so where the the status loss in here is is I'm a little confused I have to think this through a little bit more but anyway this is there's some there's some elegant lines in here Nate that that are hidden from view and we'd have to pick through it a little more carefully but yeah I think that some of this is relief actually yeah that makes a lot of sense Terry yeah very interesting this psychology humor kind of I'm just kind of thinking through and now is I can see that the way you're thinking about is you're actually paying attention to when the audience laughs the most that's a really insightful way of looking at it yes the this is this is tricky business and there are evolutionary theorists who believe that that the sense of humor may have been selected as as number one we actually recognize that men are overwhelmingly the generators of humor not that females can't generate humor but it does not have the sexual cachet for women than it does for men and the certainly a lot of you know it's not like the female brain can't generate humor of course it can but it but it probably has those characteristics not because it's useful for a female but it would be extremely useful jeans are active and you can pass those on to your sons and that it could really help your sons mating a situation sense of humor is a is an important characteristic that females look for in potential mates now there's a but there's another angle to this and that is that it is hypothesized that this is a method by which less robust physical males have been able to actually take shots at bigger stronger males that were that that would be otherwise physically dominant to them and and find a way to chisel away at those men's status and thereby elevate the the weaker man's status in the mating community relative to the strong man status and so this is a this is uh this is another avenue of sexual competition and we think some of us think that this this may be how this got selected for for this kind of sensitivity and talent at looking for ways to to take down people not necessarily brutally but just just point out a little foible that may cost them a little bit but not too much not enough to get beat up not enough to get injured but just enough to take a little bit of the shine off the guy who is three inches taller and four and thirty pounds stronger than you just find some little quirky characteristic and we're going to point that out at some upside-down way that it's going to be clever and have the females laugh and therefore raise our status by the fact that that the alpha dog lost a little so that that's probably part and parcel of the evolutionary history of this characteristic fantastic well let's go laugh at some jokes and maybe make some more of our own cool oh yeah well thank dr. Lyle my great pleasure and we'll see it resonate
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