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1 Cognitive psychology
Learning objectives
- Understand the cognitive perspective of psychology.
- Understand how this perspective applies to humor.
- Apply information processing concepts to incongruity-resolution theory.
- Appreciate influences of attention, memory, language, decision making, problem solving, and time perspective on humor processing.
Assumptions of the field
- Behavior results from the interaction between the environment and our mind. It is not a passive reaction to external stimuli. For example, we interpret jokes, and this interpretation influences our behavior and thoughts.
- Our mind is like an information processing system (a computer) that encodes, stores, and retrieves information. This system is limited and takes resources to do its processing; therefore, we are often cognitive misers who use strategies and heuristics that save time and effort.
Cognitive perspective and principles
Cognitive psychology adopts a rational philosophy which asserts that our thoughts influence our behavior so that we interact with the world rather than merely respond to it. Our interpretations of the environment are as important as, or even more important than, the actual stimuli we encounter. This perspective focuses on how our conscious and unconscious thought processes operate and influence our behavior. Cognitive psychologists seek to identify and model how our knowledge and thoughts are processed, organized, and used over time and multiple contexts.
Core concepts
Because thoughts are unobservable, cognitive psychologists use the computer as a model of the mind, where information flows through the system from input to output. According to the information processing model, we transform new information from our senses into mental representations. Processes of attention and rehearsal help maintain important information long enough in short-term memory until it is processed and stored in long-term memory. Bottom-up processing occurs when the sensory and physical attributes of information drive this processing. These processes may be most involved in jokes that play with the sound of language or their delivery (e.g., volume, timing). Top-down processing occurs when knowledge and meaning drive processing within the system. Because meaning plays a crucial role in humor processing, most jokes are processed top-down.
We mentally represent knowledge in multiple ways. Some representations contain sensory information from experience, and some are highly abstract. We have some conscious awareness of these representations. For example, we can backtrack in our thinking and see why we were expecting a different ending to a joke than the actual punchline. In general, mental representations in long-term memory are networked in an organization that allows for spreading of activation. When in activated states, they may be accessible and available to our conscious mind, but even when not directly used, representations spread their activation to networked information, where even remote associations increase their accessibility for further processing and availability for retrieval due to the activations of other representations.
Schemas are highly organized knowledge networked mental representations. They contain generalized knowledge of the subject matter and include appropriate behaviors, emotions, beliefs, values, and expected contexts. For example, schemas of birds contain biological information, settings in which they are found, whether we like or fear them, and what to do if we see one up close moving toward us. Stereotypes are schemas for classes of individuals. Most setups of jokes serve to activate particular schemas and the punchline to activate a different one. For example, in the joke, The Dark Ages were so named because the period was full of Knights, the schema of the Dark Ages and medieval times is activated and sets us up to think about kings and knights, and we then have to activate the meaning of night and dark to get the second meaning.
Schemasâ tight organization allows for speedy access to a tremendous amount of information. Schemas are so powerful that their automatic activation cannot be stopped (donât think about elephants! Too late, we already activated that schema), and they influence the processing of all incoming information (top-down processing) with or without our attention or intention. Relevant schemas become activated as we hear a joke, and all information within the schema becomes immediately available for use (Wyer & Collins, 1992).
Cognitive psychologists ask questions such as what thought processes are needed to find jokes funny? Why is it hard to remember jokes word for word? Are all forms of humor processed the same way, or do cartoons require different processes than verbal jokes? How do cognitive processes of attention, memory, language, or thinking help explain, describe, predict, or control what we experience as funny?
Incongruity-resolution models of humor
The incongruity-resolution model (Suls, 1983) proposes that humor involves the activation of an incorrect schema, the detection of another correct schema, the realization of the error in using the first schema, and feeling amusement with the new interpretation. Theorists debate whether all these processes happen in two or three steps, whether additional processes are needed to handle our beliefs and expectations, and the extent to which social contexts, emotions, and surprise play in the detection and resolution of the incongruous activated schemas. They also debate whether incongruity is necessary, sufficient, or a consequence of the processing. By fine-tuning such distinctions, researchers hope to distinguish funny jokes from annoying ones, jokes from problems or riddles, and why some jokes make us laugh until we cry, whereas others barely get a response.
Many researchers use a three-stage model of humor (Cundall, 2007; Deckers, Jenkins, & Gladfelter, 1977). To understand a joke, we need to be able to:
- Mentally represent the setup of the joke. These mental representations are created by knowledge acquired from experience, our culture, expectations, and beliefs. Events (e.g., language, pictures) will activate their relevant schema, usually without effort. Our initial response is to believe this schema is the correct one.
- Detect an incongruity in multiple interpretations. We become aware that our dominant, initial representation has something wrong in it when the punchline occurs, and another mental representation is activated.
- Resolve the incongruity. Resolution may come about by inhibiting the initial, literal, nonfunny interpretation, leaving us with the alternative, funny one. We experience funny feelings (e.g., mirth, joy, amusement) from the resolution of these incongruous schemas. We may find it rewarding to have discovered the alternative meaning or find it amusing to see that our initial prediction was a bit hasty (Amir, Biederman, Wang, & Xu, 2015). The emotional responseâamusement, laughter, or likingâmay depend on the probability of thinking of the alternative meaning. Semantic distance often makes the joke funnier: the more unrelated the association that resolves the incongruity, the more amused we are (Hillson & Martin, 1994). For example, in Far Side cartoons, it may be funnier to see snakes acting like humans than dogs acting like humans.
Examples of this model
- What has four wheels and flies? Our initial mental representation is of a transportation vehicle like an airplane that has four wheels and flies. Then we hear the punchline, âa garbage truckâ, and we realize the word âfliesâ is ambiguous and garbage trucks have four wheels with insects flying around them. The riddle is amusing because we realize we didnât initially see the double meaning of flies.
- âIs the doctor at home?â the patient asked in his bronchial whisper. âNoâ, the doctorâs young and pretty wife whispered in reply. âCome right inâ. The patient-making-a-house-call schema changes to a lover-of-the-doctorâs wife schema. This joke can be funny because we didnât originally activate the correct schema and because the correct one involves sexual taboo (see violations of social norms in Chapter 4 âSocial Psychologyâ).
- Three men are on a deserted island when they find a lamp with a genie in it. After rubbing the lamp, the genie emerges and says, âI will give each of you one wishâ. The first man says, âI wish I were homeâ and vanishes immediately. The second man says, âI wish I were homeâ and also disappears. The third man says, âI miss my friends, I wish they were hereâ. When hearing this joke, we activate our knowledge about genies granting three wishes. We also activate desert island stories and how the characters need a rescue. This knowledge tells us that finding the genie is a wonderful opportunity because options for rescue are limited. The first two men do as expected in accord with this knowledge. The story becomes funny when the third man violates our expectations; we realize that we thought there was just one possible ending, which wasnât funny, and we are amused that we made a false assumption of only one ending.
- This joke is also funny because the story ends with the characters being exactly where they were before, due to the third manâs wish. The ending is incongruous with a rescue. We can easily imagine and empathize with the reaction of the first two friends. The empathy we experience is our Theory of Mind at play, our ability to imagine other peopleâs thoughts. As discussed in Chapter 6 âDevelopmental Psychologyâ, empathy with the state of mind of the characters matters to finding humor in many jokes.
Types of incongruity
Incongruity occurs in humor in various ways (Shultz & Horibe, 1974). These illustrate the forms increasing in cognitive complexity.
Phonological incongruity
Why do people become bakers? Because they knead the dough. The sound is the same for two words: âneedâ and âkneadâ.
Lexical incongruity
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, âDoes he taste funny to you?â The word funny has two meanings: odd and comical. (âDoughâ in the previous joke is an example of lexical incongruity, too.)
Surface structure incongruity
I saw a man-eating shark in the aquarium. Thatâs nothing, I saw a man eating herring in the restaurant. Surface structure concerns syntax and the rules of word order. We can parse the first sentence either as man or shark as the object of the verb saw.
Deep structure incongruity
Sign in a tailorâs shop: âPlease have a fit upstairsâ. Deep structure concerns how we represent the meaning of utterances. Have a fit either means throw a tantrum (funny) or experience a fitting (literal).
Temporal incongruity
Announcements on the radio: âCall 555â5555 for more information on getting a vasectomy. And now the winner of the do-it-yourself competitionâ. When sentences occur temporally back-to-back, we often connect the meanings into one mental representation instead of having separate, independent representations. In this example, the two sentences are not meant to be connected, but their timing creates a humorous mental representation when listeners connect them.
Background knowledge incongruity
A wealth of unspoken, background information becomes available in an activated schema that enhances comprehension and appreciation of jokes. For example, imagine a cartoon that shows personified death commenting on the fashion of the victim who lies in a pool of blood; Death says, Red was never your color. This cartoon was rated as funnier than the same cartoon with a hooded human instead of the grim reaper (Samson & Hempelmann, 2011). Samson and Hempelmann (2011) found that participants rated cartoons with background incongruity as funnier than similar ones without it. Figure 1.1 illustrates a cartoon with background knowledge that enhances its humor.
Figure 1.1 The background information of the scholar-teacher is incongruous with his father doing his grading for him. The cartoon would likely be less funny without the academic regalia.
Figure-ground reversal
Gestalt images are classic examples of two meanings in one picture (such as the frequently used vase/face, duck/rabbit, and old/young lady pictures in psychology textbooks). Perceivers are able to shift which meaning to keep in mind as both meanings are correct and present in the picture. Veale (2008) viewed figure-ground reversal as a cognitive tool for reframing a nonfunny situation. In his view, salient items or the big picture are the foreground, and the second meaning is in the details. The foreground activates one schema, and the background activates a different schema. According to Veale (2008), feelings of surprise arise when the shift occurs from one perception to the other, and we realize there is a second interpretation that we didnât see at first. Further, feelings of humor (amusement) can arise when we realize both interpretations are simultaneously possible.
Does modality matter to incongruity resolution?
The cognitive processes needed to understand a joke may depend on whether the joke is written, oral, or pictorial. Can there be processing differences of humorous cartoons (pictorial) compared to verbal jokes (auditory or visual)? The answer may be yes. When we hear a joke, the stimulus is presented only once, time passes, and all the work is now happening in memory. When we see a cartoon, however, it remains present usually for the entire time that we are processing it, suggesting that the activation of the initial schema continues, even after the detection of incongruity.
In an examination of modality effects with humor, Fein, Beni-Noded, and Giora (2015) found that the meaning of a cartoonâs initial schema was not inhibited even after detection and resolution occurs. They used a priming paradigm, where they presented the cartoon followed by a word. In a priming paradigm, the first stimulus (in this case a cartoon) facilitates the processing of a second stimulus (in this case a word). For example, a series of panels showed some darts sticking to what looks like a dartboard due to its spiral design; the last panel shows the board is really a snailâs shell. Fein et al. (2015) examined whether a word related to the cartoonâs dominant initial interpretation (e.g., dartboard) would be responded to faster than a word related to the punchline (e.g., snail). They reasoned that if a pictureâs initial meaning was still activated after ...
