Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
be, ” 8 to include physical and psychological well-being (playfighting and insults,
respectively), as well as behaviors that break social, cultural, linguistic, logical, and
moral norms. Condition (2) means to account for those situations that violate
expectations and are not humorous. It states that for a violation to be humorous, “it
needs to seem OK, safe, or acceptable.” 9 Three cues in which a violation may be
perceived as benign are the presence of alternative norms that suggest the violation
is acceptable, psychological distance from the violation, or a low commitment to the
person or norm being violated. 10 Lastly, McGraw and Warren use Condition (3) to
specify that humor is only the product of these perceptions occurring together. The
standardized form of this theory is as follows:
(P1) We perceive some norm being violated.
(P2) We perceive this violation to be benign.
(P3) The simultaneous occurrence of these perceptions results in humor.
(C) Humor is the result of a perceived benign violation of norms.
When contemplating whether the Superiority Theory provides the necessary
and sufficient conditions for humor, many holes arise. Firstly, feelings of superiority
are not a necessary condition for humor — that is, when we find something funny, we
do not always experience feelings of superiority. When we laugh at puns or the
noise a ketchup bottle makes when you squeeze it while empty, it is unlikely we feel
superior to the word play or the ketchup bottle. We may even laugh at a person who
jokingly insults us, as in a roast dinner; in this instance, we probably do not feel
superior to the roaster, and if the behavior they are making fun of is one we
currently exhibit, we are probably not feeling superior to a former state of ourselves.
Smuts offers the situation of opening the refrigerator and finding a bowling ball
inside; the humor we would find in this would not seem to be rooted in even any
8 McGraw and Warren, “Benign Violation Theory,” 75. 9 McGraw and Warren, “Benign Violation Theory,” 75 . 10 McGraw and Warren, “Benign Violation Theory,” 7 6.
Volume VI (2023)
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