What’s So Funny?
suppressed smile or laugh might come off as perceiving the situation as benign, but
it also may result from a recognition of the severity of the situation and therefore an
attempt to perceive it benignly as a coping mechanism. 15 Considering the ambiguity
of the causes of humor in these cases as well as the viable possibility that the cases
do abide by the conditions in an unusual way, I am afraid my attempts to disprove
McGraw and Warren’s conditions are quite weak. I therefore concede that the
conditions of BV theory are likely necessary.
Stronger evidence for the shortcomings of BV Theory lies in considering
examples where the three conditions are not sufficient; that is, they have the
potential to not result in humor. A common emotion that seems to obey these
conditions is that of surprise. Imagine the day the results of your school’s class
election come out. You do not really care who wins and do not bother tuning into the
live results. The next day, though, you overhear people saying the winner was a
write-in whose name you have never heard before. Your reaction would likely be an
“Oh?” moment of surprise, but not necessarily laughter. At the same time, it was
categorically a benign violation of election norms. In the case of someone showing
up to their surprise birthday party, their reaction after everyone jumps out and
yells “surprise!” also may not be that of finding the situation humorous rather than
just being shocked, flattered, or embarrassed. It is easy to conceive examples where
norms are insignificantly violated and yet not funny, allowing us to refute the
sufficiency of BV Theory’s three conditions.
The previous examples highlight that these three conditions are likely
necessary but not sufficient for a humorous situation. We may then contemplate
what missing additional condition(s) could establish what is necessary and
sufficient. To do so, we must consider how we know what we know about humor.
Typically, there are two general ways of considering the epistemology of something,
by means of either empiricism or rationalism. Humor is far more conducive to
contemplation from the empirical mode than the rational one. One knows humor
15 “Are Your Emotions Out of Control?,” Verywell Mind, accessed December 9, 2022, https://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-inappropriate-affect-4767992.
Volume VI (2023)
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