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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Why do we find it funny when someone falls down?
—William B. Keith, Houston
William F. Fry, a psychiatrist and laughter researcher at Stanford University, explains:
Every human develops a sense of humor, and everyone’s taste is slightly different. But certain fundamental aspects of humor help explain why a misstep may elicit laughter.
The first requirement is the “play frame,” which puts a real-life event in a nonserious context and allows for an atypical psychological reaction. Play frames explain why most people will not find it comical if someone falls from a 10-story building and dies: in this instance, the falling person’s distress hinders the establishment of the nonserious context. But if a woman casually walking down the street trips and flails hopelessly as she stumbles to the ground, the play frame may be established, and an observer may find the event amusing.
Another crucial characteristic is incongruity, which can be seen in the improbable or inconsistent relation between the “punch line” and the “body” of a joke or experience. Falls are incongruent in the normal course of life in that they are unexpected. So despite our innate empathetic reaction—you poor fellow!—our incongruity instinct may be more powerful. Provided that the fall event establishes a play frame, mirth will likely ensue.
Play frames and incongruity are psychological concepts; only recently has neurobiology caught up with them. In the early 1990s the discovery of mirror neurons led to a new way to understand the incongruity aspect of humor. When we fall down, we thrash about as we reach out to catch ourselves. Neurons in our brain control these movements. But when we observe another person stumbling, some of our own neurons fire as if we were the person doing the flailing—these mirror neurons are duplicating the patterns of activity in the falling person’s brain. My hypothesis regarding the relevance of this mechanism for humor behavior is that the observer’s brain is “tickled” by that neurological “ghost.” The observer experiences an unconscious stimulation from that ghost, reinforcing the incongruity perception.
Does napping after a meal affect memory formation?
—Yadhu Kumar, Konstanz, Germany
Neuroendocrinologists Manfred Hallschmid and Susanne Diekelmann of the University of Lübeck in Germany reply:
The past two decades have yielded considerable evidence for sleep’s pivotal role in memory consolidation. The lion’s share of research has focused on the relevance of longer periods of nocturnal rest. For that reason, the duration that is actually needed for sleep’s effects on memory to become behaviorally relevant has not yet been exhaustively investigated. We have reason to assume, however, that even short periods of rest can indeed improve memory formation.
There are only a handful of studies investigating the effect of a short nap on the consolidation of declarative memories, which involve facts and events. Most of these studies have reported better memory performance after sleep as compared with wakefulness, revealing improvements of 4 to 46 percent in word-pair memory after a nap and a 3 percent loss to a 28 percent improvement after wakefulness. Even an ultrashort catnap of about six minutes resulted in better memory retention than staying awake did, but a longer doze of 35 minutes was clearly superior. Interestingly, a number of experiments have indicated that sleep improves memory regardless of whether it occurs during the night or the day, which further highlights the cognitive potential of a postprandial nap.
Research on procedural memory, which comprises perceptual and motor skills (such as learning to play an instrument), has found that a short siesta of 60 to 90 minutes improves visual perception only if the nap includes both slow-wave and rapid-eye-movement sleep, the two phases that the brain cycles through while we doze. In studies focusing on motor skills, such as those in which subjects were asked to repetitively type certain keyboard sequences, a posttraining nap of 60 to 90 minutes likewise improved finger-tapping performance. Even so, the study participants did not show as much improvement after the nap as they did after the following full night of sleep.
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23 Comments
Add CommentI recently experienced this same scenerio however, I was the person "falling down", and a colleague (young woman in her early 20's), thought the whole episode highly amusing. As a matter of fact, as I writh in pain, she continued to find it amusing despite my obvious discomfort. She laughed several times over the course of a 5 minute post accidental time frame. My question is, when does the brain finish "tickling" and when does the person's personality traits take over? Does the brain have a reactionary "cycle"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's a good question pzwvr1. This is an interesting subject that I've always wondered about. Personally, I've been on both the giving and receiving side of these episodes. As bad as it may sound, I've noticed that I'm more likely to laugh at someone I know when they fall, than a stranger. I always feel bad, but the laughter feels uncontrollable. It makes me feel nervous to the point that I actually get butterflies, then the uncontrollable laughing starts. I'm certainly not trying to be rude, and I don't laugh loudly, but I still feel bad about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet us take this one step further. Could your uncomfortableness be the result of additional tickling, perhaps mirroring the perceived, or expected, embarrassemnt of the person who had just fallen? Perhaps an unconcience sympathatic connection of sorts. So, then I have to ask: when are we most embarrassed? When we trip and fall in the presence of strangers or familiars? Or, do we just chalk it up to guilt?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't help but think that the feeling of guilt when laughing at a friend falling is more a result of social pressure than anything else. "what will people/friend think of me because I am laughing at someone else's misfortune".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this might be cultural phenomenon. Not being U.S. immigrant, I remembered when watching AFV when I first came here. I found the premise of the show strange; why would an audience laugh at videos of someone getting hurt; granted the accidents / injuries are non-fatal. Growing up with shows like the looney toons, maybe this cultural reaction to laugh at inappropriate situations is fostered? Ultimately, it comes off as inappropriate and a little mean spirited.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI inquire about this phenomenon in many occasions, and from what I have discovered under the scrutiny of the research I conducted with multiple referential information is that it seems that the triggering of laughter from the perception of a person falling seems to be caused by a connection between the incongruity of the scenery of a person falling and our subconscious urge of deviating from many of the monotonous aspects of our daily lives by satirically visualizing them on ways that would never be cohesive with reality. It may even derive from a very profound, yet known, sadistic side of our neurological roots that incites humor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLaughter is an expression of relief. During the brief instant of watching someone fall, our brains gin up for a possible fight or flight response--will the person be injured and create a crisis? When the event concludes positively--no crisis to respond to--our bodies release the tension with a physical, audible expression: a short burst of laughter. You can see this in action when a golfer is trying to sink a putt or when a basketball player tries to make a three-point shot-- spectators will release the momentary tension with a hoot of success or a groan of failure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are apparently many reasons why people laugh. Personally, I laugh only when I find something amusing. It's very rare that I find personal injusy even slightly amusing ("We are not amused" :D). The exception to this rule is if the person falling portrays him/herself better than others - in which case the "incongruity" is that the fact they can't even WALK any better than others is amusing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI never cared much for AFV for this very reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut then again... I never cared for the Three Stooges either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I laugh whenever someone hurts themselves... so long as it's not too terribly serious. There are humorous injuries and obviously serious injuries. I even laugh when I have a minor injury including falling down in the rain, the time I accidentally removed half of by big toenail, or when I sliced a chunk out of my foot with a sliding glass door. I know its strange and it's even worse when I laugh at others. I feel bad for doing it, and apologize the entire time. It is quite involuntary. I know a handful of people who experience the same thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne thing that I find particularly fascinating is that I am violently hemophobic (afraid of blood). However, my fear can be suspended if the cause of the injury is humorous. My father once punctured the bottoms of both his feet doing yard work, squishing out bloody footprints with every awkward step. I was too busy laughing to be of much help, but I was also too busy laughing to pass out and go into convulsions as I normally do at the sight of blood. The same applies to over-the-top special effects in movies. I often find myself laughing when blood spatters all over the place in a very unrealistic fashion. Personally, I think that's totally worth studying.
I just remembered, stress/tension relief is often the cause of laughter. Shakespeare used comedies in his plays despite the fact that they where tragedies. He did this because if he didn't relieve the tension at acceptable places, the audience might laugh at inappropriate times. Indeed, when you think about it, comedy is usually hand in hand with some form of tragedy. In fact, looking up the definition of humor I see that it we basically laugh for two reasons, when something unexpected happens, or when someone/something is made to appear inferior to ourselves (because they appear stupid, unfortunate, or otherwise mess up).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo perhaps humor is funny because it is different from the "norm". Our brains interpret incongruity in a different way than it normally interpret the expected events and somewhere in that process is humor. To me this sounds much more logical than being tickled by a phantom flailing faller.
The person who answered who was not a native North American has a good point. Perhaps the response is largely cultural. The author mentions this as a fundamental laughter response in humans, but I wonder if the tests involved anyone who was not of North American origin. We are pretty mean spirited, humor wise. My fiancee is a comedian, and we notice that the majority of American comedy comes from making fun of yourself or others, usually whatever is culturally relevant at the time. Why Americans are such big meanies would be a more interesting study to me. I think a lot of times laughter is a defense mechanism; the "glad is wasn't me" response outlined in this article does makes sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour article and research would be perfectly matching to a observing person. I was matching your article,when i was young.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally , I don't get laugh seeing a person fall or getting hurt today.
Reason being, when I was young, our parents taught to feel the pain, how one would undergo during that time.
When others laugh during my fall,I think let them be happy. I try to keep my head cool, not getting angry at them.
How this will be explained by your research??
It is funny that you mention the Three Stooges. My wife finds 'slip and fall' humor much more amusing than I do, and I have always attributed it to the fact that in her household growing up, the Three Stooges were a mainstay of entertainment. I never really understood the hilarity of it. I think much of that had to do with an overarching sense of benevolence and sympathy for others that was stressed in my upbringing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find this incredibly interesting. I'm one of those people who laughs at "inappropriate" times, and it's gotten me into a lot of trouble. My brain seems to have to reilieve my tension in this way whenever a situation gets too serious/tense. I also laugh at myself whenever I fall (quite a lot, I'm horrible clumsy :D).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStressing the whole cultural thing: I am an African, and here we have a saying that goes: "You aren't over something until you can joke about it." So in our culture it is far more acceptable to laugh at your own or others' misfortune.
I don't laugh at people who fall, I go and see if they are hurt and need any help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA while back I was riding my bike home from work. I decided to visit the apartment managers office to complain about something, and I was too tired to chain up my bike so I brought it into the hallway, waiting area. I had on my blue non-bike skater style helmet which is festooned with Tux the Penguin linux stickers. Although I was mildly peeved, as I bumbled around with my bike a bunch of kids (3 - 5 yrs) waiting there started tittering with every move I made! I realized -- I must appear as a clown! Even though my day was mildly ruined by dealing with the apartment complex bureaucracy, at least I made some kids laugh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the 1980's I read about a science research study concerning laughing. To put it simply, the conclusion was that people laughed when others were hurt because they were glad it wasn't them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIrene Baron
About twenty years ago I read the research from a study concerning the laughter when someone is hurt. Simply put, the conclusion stated that people laughed when others were hurt because they were glad it didn't happen to them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounded logical to me!
:-)
but sometimes it happens that if someone elder than you(especially your relative) then the story is different .you laugh briefly and if someone near you still laughing then you try to give him a push or any remark to shut his or her mouth.but when the whole event is over the same person talk about that amusing event (considered by him) and start laughing.so my question is that, why we laugh at that event which actually over?even when the event is over we still find it amusing,why? and when someone falls in water then the event becomes more entertaining that splash of water wet clothes we find it very funny.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy teacher told me never to laugh on a falling person. There is no reason to do so. So I program myself on this ethics. It is a good program inside our brain-the ethics of what funny is in order no to hurt the feeling of others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSupraquantra brought up a point I was considering: the sadistic aspect. People have a 'flesh' inside them that finds humor in someone else's embarassment, or inferiority, thereby reinforcing their own sense of superiority. Whether they realize it or not, many people have to feel better than somebody, which is the root cause of rascism, gathering in cliques, even variance with a holy body such as a church. Why do so many people follow the 'soaps'. These are rich, wealthy, have-it-all, created characters who are constantly being knocked down, embarrassed, caught in immoral acts, and so on. It is not a funny thing, despite a brain image of incongruity (otherwise, wouldn't everyone laugh at Picasso paintings, or even cars driving backwards? No, it reestablishes a feeling of 'I'm better than' even though it has its limits; i.e., who laughs at paraplegics, but some people do laugh at unfortunates born with oversized or undersized heads. People can trigger from another's embarrassment, and that sadistic side that supraquantra mention manifests in such situations.
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