[Rosie Shuster] did have one quality she could privately lord over her classmates: her father was a comedian. . . A life in comedy meant that Frank Shuster nodded, rather than laughed, at jokes that worked.
From American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent, pp. 62-3. When I was in college I came up with a theory: Laughter is caused by sudden pleasure. Obviously we enjoy jokes, and jokes have punchlines. People laugh in lots of situations not involving humor and as far as I can tell they always involve sudden pleasure — unexpectedly seeing an old friend, for example.
Which is only to say, as this passage implies, there should be a limited number of joke categories and they should be far from mysterious. I once wrote a bunch of jokes from the TV show Cheers on cards and sorted them into categories. Later I classified six months of New Yorker cartoons and Spy accepted it. It was my first submission and I was thrilled.
More. Mike Kenny put it better than me. That I was able to get my research published in a magazine I adored was “ a fusing of the intellectual with the practical.” I was going to say it was a practical application of pure research.
Yeah, laughter is a way for the autonomic nervous system to quickly move control from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic system. Ie. you get suddenly really excited (kind of fight or flight) and your body realizes its not dangerous so it tries to relax you back to normal as soon as possible.
Hi,
this question isn’t related to this post. I saw this recently:
https://www.trysensa.com/how-sensa-works.htm
this diet is supposed to work by sprinkling flavors (different sets of flavors each month) on food. Average weight loss is claimed to be 30 pounds per six months, or 5 pounds a month.
Is this related to your work/diet? Do you think it should work? Do you know anything about it? Thanks.
oh, i’m glad you felt that was a good way of putting what you do! i really like your blog for fusing the intellectual with the practical!
do you find that some people have difficulty fusing the intellectual and the practical, seth? or that some people are hostile to fusing the two? to me you seem unusually (in a good way) focused on fusing the two.
non, yes it is related to my research. I discuss the connection here:
https://sethroberts.org/2008/06/16/crazy-spicing-works/
Mike, I think it is rare to find college professors highly interested in practical stuff because they see practical stuff as lower status. Applied research is lower status than pure research. Veblen wrote about this in The Theory of the Leisure Class.
i’ll have to check out veblen. i wonder if there are any obvious evolutionary psychological explanations for this phenomenon, too. i’m sort of at a loss on that count! i can imagine alpha males not doing drudge work, and having others do it for them, and i can imagine nobles taking on this alpha-male-like role.
i tend to not think of academics as a sort of power-elite, like nobles or alpha males, but perhaps this is a mistake. there is some reverence towards the well-educated. i wouldn’t be surprised if alpha males tended to have high iqs, given cleverness seems an asset in gaining and maintaining power.
Speaking of status, don’t forget to account for social status in laughter: people are much more likely to laugh at jokes made by their superiors than their inferiors, and in the presence of a person of high status, members of the same group will check whether the superior is laughing before laughing themselves.
People are also more likely to laugh aloud if other people are present, and less likely to do so when no-one can hear.
All of these things seem to point to laughter having a social signaling function that goes beyond the simple expression of pleasure.
Yes, laughter is a curious signal — signalling both submission and dominance depending on the situation.
Seth,
I am sure you have seen this:
https://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=magnifying-taste&sc=rss
Igor.
thanks for your answer and sorry to be so slow to respond.
He claims to have tested which flavors work best. Unfortunately in response to my query, they informed me their product is not kosher. Do you know anything more about his research or which flavors are supposed to work? IIUC according to your theory, any unfamiliar flavor would work.
also the subjects used these flavors for a whole month, and only switched sets of flavors at the end of each month. Isn’t a month a long time dont you theorize a flavor connection is made more quickly than that?
I don’t know how Hirsch selected the flavors he used in his research. Good question, I will try to remember to ask him. Yes, according to my theory any unfamiliar flavor will work.
Nor do I know why they switch after a month. That might have been the most often they could switch. The effectiveness of many diets seems to wear off after 6 months or so. I think they stop being effective — the lost weight starts being regained — because the diet caused the dieter to eat food less strongly associated with calories and new associations were learned over months. if I”m right, apparently it takes months to learn them enough so they make a difference. That sort of data supports Hirsch’s choice.
that’s interesting. Do you have results with unfamiliar spices alone? or have you seen an additional weight loss effect with unfamilar spices.
What would constitute an unfamiliar spice? Must it be totally unfamiliar or just not associated with that food? (I guess the latter, since you suggest sprinkling cinammon on pizza?) I did try cinammon on pizza once and didn’t notice anything except a weird taste!
Dr hirsch claims that “The Tastants slightly enhance the flavor of your food without changing the flavor. In fact, you probably won’t even notice they are there!” How do you reconcile that with your flavor – if one doesn’t notice it, how can new flavor connections be made?
non, this isn’t the place for an extended back and forth. Feel free to give me a call and I would be happy to answer your questions. Or you can post them on the SLD forums.
The humorous response (including the release of neurotransmitters and endorphins, instant responses in the autonomic nervous system and a reduction in stress hormones) is also, of course, broadcast as laughter, signalling that one has recognized the pattern in question. This humorous response has both voluntary and involuntary neural networks and, consequently, the response can be attenuated or extenuated in certain circumstances. However, laughter is only a minor part of the major cognitive process known as humour, which is fundamental to perceptual proficiency and has played a vital role in the evolution of humankind’s unique intellectual capacties.
Everything mention in the above messages is true to some extent but all these ideas must be place into a coherent hypothesis. I believe my essay (see below) does this. It may not be correct but it answers most of the questions that still puzzel researchers.
Basil Hall
https://sites.google.com/site/basilhughhall/anewtheoryoflaughterandhumor