[KENO]: Welcome to our Neuropragmatics podcast episode about humor and irony.
[KENO]: As we are taking the jokes apart instead of telling them properly, this will, despite our best efforts, probably be about as palatable as a packet of Weetabix without milk.
[KENO]: Dry.
[KENO]: Enjoy!
[KENO]: We will look at how the brain responds to jokes, both linguistically and emotionally, and different reasons why we find something funny.
[KENO]: I'm Keno and I'm joined by two of my fellow students.
[KENO]: Hello.
[LAURA]: Hi. [LUISA]: Hi.
[KENO]: So maybe you can introduce yourself to the listener and quickly tell us what initially drew you to this research.
[LUISA]: Hi, I'm Luisa.
[LUISA]: Well, humor plays a vital role in social interactions.
[LUISA]: As I delve deeper into the literature, I found that understanding how the brain processes humor can shed light on our social behaviors and cognitive functions, which is incredibly relevant in the field of neuropragmatics.
[LAURA]: Hi, I'm Laura.
[LAURA]: For me, humour is a fascinating phenomenon because it seems quite abstract, not necessarily serving a clear pragmatic function, and yet all humans share it.
[LAURA]: It's visible everywhere, which is why I believe that understanding the fundamentals of this processing is very interesting, very enriching.
[KENO]: And you've each brought along a paper on this topic?
[LAURA]: Yeah, mine is Paolo Canal and colleagues.
[LAURA]: It's the most recent paper we'll discuss in depth today from 2019.
[LUISA]: Me, I've brought along a paper by Campbell et al. from 2015.
[LAURA]: And we also got one written by Nicola Spotorno and colleagues in 2013.
[LUISA]: And we also mentioned contents from a book by Salvatore Attardo from 2020, who is really one of the leading experts in the field of humor theory.
[LUISA]: And another book, which is by British comedian Jimmy Carr, so an expert in his own right in the field of humor.
[KENO]: Great.
[KENO]: We've put them all in the show notes, so if you want to check them out, have a look there.
[KENO]: And with that admin out of the way, let's start with irony.
[KENO]: I guess the term gets thrown around a bit loosely.
[KENO]: What do we actually mean by that?
[LUISA]: Well, the dictionary Merriam-Webster defines verbal irony, which is our focus today, as the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.
[LAURA]: The sentence today was really productive, has a very different meaning
[LAURA]: if I sat on the couch watching TV all day,
[LAURA]: And by giving a context like that or a busy day at the office and then comparing the response to the sentence, today was really productive, it's easier than coming up with the punchlines that sometimes work and sometimes don't while keeping structures similar, which is really important in neurological research.
[KENO]: But what can we actually gather from telling people about our productive days?
[LAURA]: So the example is actually loosely based on one from the study by Spotorno and colleagues who found an increased cognitive effort in integrating the literal meaning of the intended meaning that is communicated through context.
[KENO]: So it's harder for us to comprehend irony than a literal sentence.
[LAURA]: Yes, one of the more experimental findings was regarding the increase of power in the gamma band during irony processing.
[LAURA]: This suggests that integration happens relatively early in comprehension, which indicates that contextual factors are involved much sooner than traditionally thought, contrasting with previous models that view pragmatic inferences as later, more effortful processes.
[KENO]: I've got to ask, why are people studying this?
[LUISA]: Irony is pretty good for a certain kind of linguistic research because ironic statements also have a literal reading, so they can be used as their own control group.
[LUISA]: You measure the brain responses to the same sentence in different contexts.
[KENO]: So the findings from irony research can be generalized to other linguistic areas then?
[LUISA]: Exactly.
[LUISA]: Yes, that's why it is so useful in understanding, for example, the timing of integrating different information.
[KENO]: Okay, let's rather move on before it gets too interesting.
[KENO]: What exactly can we call humor and how is it connected to irony?
[LAURA]: I would say that irony can be classed as a subcategory of humor.
[LAURA]: Something that is ironic is usually funny as well.
[LAURA]: We all have a general intuition of what humor is, but from the scientific perspective, humor is essentially a cognitive and emotional response to a stimulus that we interpret as funny.
[LAURA]: It involves multiple brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex,
[LAURA]: which processes the structure of a joke and the limbic system which controls emotions, reaction like laughter.
[KENO]: Okay, and as promised, let's make this dry and ask for theories.
[LAURA]: One of the leading theories in psychological humor research is the incongruity resolution theory proposed by Suls in 1972.
[LAURA]: It generally goes like this:
[LAURA]: We are exposed to a certain situation.
[LAURA]: We are looking for a resolution of this event.
[LAURA]: Our brain tries to predict a certain outcome, and when reality doesn't match that expectation in a playful way, we perceive something as humorous.
[KENO]: Okay, so if I say, "how do you make a dog drink?" - "put him in a blender"
[KENO]: You are first looking for the resolution about getting your dog to drink presumably more water, not like vodka, coffee, I don't know what you give your dogs.
[KENO]: And then I subvert that expectation and use the other meaning of drink as in "a drink".
[LUISA]: Exactly.
[LUISA]: We can see in humans, but also in primates, that we get a bigger dopamine hit from unpredictable rewards than those that were fully predictable.
[LUISA]: And the punchline serves as such an unpredictable reward.
[LAURA]: We can find, naturally, different humor theories that focus on different factors.
[LAURA]: For example, superiority theory, where humor gives the one who laughs a sense of superiority over the one that they are laughing at.
[LAURA]: And this is evident in the jokes about so-called
[LAURA]: blondes or mothers-in-law characters that are visible in many joke books all around there.
[LAURA]: By the way, do you know why the blonde dyed her hair brown?
[KENO]: No, why did she?
[LAURA]: because she was tired of hearing those awful jokes.
[LAURA]: There's also the release theory, which asserts that laughter is a release mechanism for build up tension, but also for taboo thoughts or feelings.
[LAURA]: The listener might not be surprised to learn that Freud was involved with this theory.
[LAURA]: Those are the three big ones. Yeah.
[LUISA]: There is also the general theory of verbal humor by Salvatore Attardo, who is, as we mentioned earlier, one of the leading experts in the field.
[LUISA]: That theory takes several aspects like incrogrity and superiority into account, but also linguistics aspects that explain puns or structures specific to jokes, exemplified by why did the blond do XYZ, knock-knock jokes, or how many X does it take to change a light bulb.
[LUISA]: All of those follow specific structures that are somewhat crucial to the joke.
[LUISA]: The underlying question of the general theory of verbal humor is: when are two jokes the same joke?
[LUISA]: But it also gives a tool set for analyzing humorous content on different levels.
[LUISA]: There are many more theories about humor from a non-linguistics perspective.
[LUISA]: Today, though, we'd like to focus on the incongruity theory, as it serves as a simple, solid basis for understanding what exactly is going on when we perceive something as funny.
[KENO]: So following the incongruity theory, I set up my joke nicely.
[KENO]: It has a punchline that is really surprising.
[KENO]: Why is nobody laughing at me?
[LUISA]: Maybe it wasn't funny.
[LUISA]: Humor appreciation refers to the emotional response to humor, whether we find it funny and how much joy it brings us, which can reflect our social connections.
[LUISA]: Humor comprehension is about understanding the joke or comic, so recognizing the humorous intent behind it, understanding the context and identifying the elements of surprise or incongruity.
[LUISA]: This is of course mostly happening subconsciously.
[KENO]: So it's possible they just didn't understand it was meant as a joke?
[LAURA]: Yeah, character traits and mental capabilities are crucial.
[LAURA]: Certain autistic individuals, for example, often fail to select the correct punchline in jokes and instead prefer straightforward endings.
[LAURA]: So people with major depression, schizophrenia, right frontal lobe damage and others generally struggle with humor comprehension.
[KENO]: Okay, thank you.
[KENO]: I will, going forward, assume that every time that joke doesn't land.
[KENO]: But can you actually know if somebody didn't understand the joke or just didn't like it?
[LUISA]: Well, they could tell you, or we could put them in an fMRI scan.
[KENO]: That's like those huge noisy tubes that make images of the body, right?
[KENO]: Like, yeah, I carry them around all the time.
[KENO]: But what could you actually see if you put them in an fMRI scanner?
[LUISA]: Yes, fMRI stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging.
[LUISA]: That allows us to see the brain activity by tracking blood flow.
[LUISA]: When a part of the brain is active, it needs more oxygen, which is carried by blood.
[LUISA]: So fMRI detects this increased blood flow to those areas.
[LUISA]: It creates detailed images that show us how different regions respond during various tasks, like when we try to understand a joke.
[KENO]: And what happens if we try to understand a joke?
[LUISA]: In Campbell's research, they presented participants with a series of comics, some meant to be funny while others weren't humorous at all.
[LUISA]: They measured the participants' brain responses as they rated those comics.
[LUISA]: Whether they found them funny, noticed humorous intended, but didn't find it funny or thought they weren't funny at all, the researchers found two important areas here that are activated when dealing with humor.
[LUISA]: First, the left temporal parietal junction, which is crucial for understanding the context of the joke and recognizing its intended meaning.
[LUISA]: essentially acting like the brain's detective, piecing together clues.
[LUISA]: When participants understood the joke, the left temporal parietal junction became more active, regardless of whether they found it funny or not.
[LUISA]: This area is important for figuring out what someone meant, like reading between the lines.
[LUISA]: Then there's the superior frontal gyrus, which activates when we actually find the joke funny.
[LUISA]: This region is involved in our thought processes and emotional reactions, acting like a cheerleader celebrating the humor.
[LUISA]: And don't forget the amygdala.
[LUISA]: This little almond-shaped region is crucial for our emotions, particularly when it comes to feeling pleasure or happiness.
[LUISA]: It gets activated when something strikes us as funny, adding that emotional punch to our laughter.
[LUISA]: So this study illustrates that the processes of understanding a joke and deriving enjoyment from it occur in different parts of the brain, highlighting the interplay between the thought and emotion in humor.
[KENO]: That's quite interesting.
[KENO]: Just going back to the beginning of what you said, so comics are like the medium of choice?
[LAURA]: Not always.
[LAURA]: So from my paper, Canal and colleagues presented the participants with two types of sentences, humorous and non-humorous.
[LAURA]: So to examine differences in their processing.
[LAURA]: Let's simulate.
[LAURA]: I will read an example from the study.
[LAURA]: A newly let young couple wakes up in the middle of the night because the first born is crying.
[LAURA]: She says, dear, I get up.
[LAURA]: The baby never stops.
[LAURA]: Perhaps it's time that I change him.
[LAURA]: And he says...
[LAURA]: well done, choose another one in the humorous condition or well done, calm him down in the non-humorous one.
[KENO]: I mean, both conditions aren't exactly funny.
[LAURA]: It appears that scientists can be wise and funny at the same time, but no, they actually measure the funniness of the sentences beforehand on different groups of people, so there exists a significant difference between these two sentences.
[LUISA]: That was a problem in the study of Campbell et al. as well.
[LUISA]: Out of the comics that were meant to be funny, less than half were actually perceived as funny by the participants.
[LUISA]: It might be because most of those comics didn't score highly in their pretests either, but they used them regardless.
[LUISA]: But we can see results, so the jokes somehow work.
[KENO]: Going back to Canal and colleagues, what did they actually want to achieve with their jokes?
[LAURA]: They attempted to investigate whatever the humor theory I mentioned earlier is reflected in language processing and observed in EEG.
[LAURA]: So as an additional aspect, the autism spectrum was considered to further verify whatever the level of autism visibly affects the level of humor processing.
[LAURA]: EEG?
[LAURA]: Oh, yeah.
[LAURA]: EEG is device used to measure brain activity waves.
[LAURA]: Participants wear a cap with electrodes that non-intrusively touch the skin of the scalp.
[LAURA]: We can then precisely determine the timing of brain activity and how it correlated with a certain stimulus.
[LAURA]: This cap was used throughout the entire study, so during the presentation of all sentences.
[KENO]: Okay, so they looked at the brain responses to the punchlines, yeah?
[LAURA]: Yeah, specifically on the one word that made it humorous.
[LAURA]: So in earlier example about changing the baby, we would look at the choose from choose another one and compare that to the responses to the more expected non-humorous ending.
[LAURA]: What did they find?
[LAURA]: Firstly, the component associated with the processing of syntactic violations, grammatical anomalies or word knowledge violations appears around 300-500 milliseconds after the punchline word, intuitively.
[LAURA]: So this is the moment we are trying to understand what happened, the surprising unexpected character of the joke.
[LAURA]: Then we can observe a component called P600.
[LAURA]: The P600 effect is associated with a wide range of linguistic phenomena that could be phrase structure.
[LAURA]: So if the sentence is not in the correct order or semantic anomalies that so when the content doesn't seem right, basically like hearing that the cat fled from the mice, but also other linguistic concepts like metaphors or we talked about it earlier, irony.
[LAURA]: All of those can elicit a P600.
[LAURA]: But the first component of comprehension is still observed, so it may be related to other cognitive efforts to understand the presented situation.
[LAURA]: Maybe we are analyzing what just happened and looking for the reasons behind the specific choice of words.
[KENO]: So to summarize, our brain immediately sees there's something wrong, something which doesn't fit.
[KENO]: And that's like the first component.
[KENO]: And then it tries to find that resolution that you mentioned with the incongruity theory.
[LAURA]: Yeah, that is correct.
[LAURA]: But the processes are way more parallel than the theory indicates, because we can see that the reanalysis of meaning and cognitive exploration overlap in time with the moment of detecting a certain ambiguity among the sentences, among the words.
[LAURA]: Also in the last bit about the second after the target word, there was a visible activity possibly linked to metacognitive reflection that joke or just humor appreciation, which we talked about earlier.
[LAURA]: We finally get the joke and the "aaah", the fuller understanding appears.
[KENO]: So that fits with what Luisa said earlier with the other study, right?
[LAURA]: Yeah.
[KENO]: Also, you mentioned that they took autism into account here.
[LAURA]: The autism spectrum quotient was used in a pre-study to measure the general aspects of social skills, attention to detail, communication, imagination, and attention switching using a self-report questionnaire.
[LAURA]: What the study suggests is that participants with higher autism quotient scores, so indicating more autistic-like traits,
[LAURA]: exhibited stronger LAN responses.
[LAURA]: LAN is the first component I mentioned earlier.
[LAURA]: So the factor of the incongruity recognition was suggesting that they found incongruity is more disruptive, more surprising.
[LAURA]: They basically understand them differently than the people with lower AQ scores.
[LAURA]: So it truly matters.
[LUISA]: This research area opens up opportunities to explore how neurodiversity influences humor processing, especially in individuals with autism spectrum disorders.
[LUISA]: Their reactions to humor may be very different from those of neurotypical individuals.
[LUISA]: And understanding the neural foundations of humor can have important implications for educational and therapeutic settings.
[LUISA]: For example, therapy for children on the autism spectrum could benefit from incorporating humor-based interventions to help improve their social skills and communication.
[LUISA]: Moreover, fostering a humorous atmosphere in workplaces can boost teamwork and communication and thus leading to more supportive teams overall.
[KENO]: That's pretty cool that there's, at least for the future, some practical applications of this.
[KENO]: If I remember correctly, these papers were a few years old.
[KENO]: Has there anything new been found?
[LUISA]: Subsequent studies have sought to replicate and expand upon these findings, looking into more nuanced aspects of humor processing.
[LUISA]: For example, researchers have begun examining how individual differences such as personality traits or cultural contexts affect humor comprehension and appreciation.
[LUISA]: Other studies have shown mixed results, indicating that the brain's responses to humor can vary widely from person to person, which suggests we're still uncovering various layers to this research.
[LAURA]: Yeah, indeed, a shift towards a deeper analysis of individual differences can be easily observed.
[LAURA]: In new studies based on Canal's work, for example, one can find investigations into the differences in how humor is experienced by extroverted versus introverted individuals.
[LAURA]: It turns out that the exploration of jokes by extroverted individuals is deeper than the introverted individuals, as proposed by Li Chuan in 2020.
[LAURA]: which may suggest a greater need for seeking experiences.
[LAURA]: One can also find more articles that more and more thoroughly analyze the range of humorous experiences of individuals on autism spectrum, such as those with Asperger's.
[LAURA]: The results align with those of Canal's, but expand on them, creating a more complex, more accurate portrayal of individuals on the spectrum.
[LAURA]: Still, much work needs to be done.
[KENO]: So while some of the findings have been reinforced, I guess the story isn't complete yet.
[KENO]: What do you think that we still don't know about humor processing in the brain?
[LUISA]: Great question.
[LUISA]: And indeed, the story isn't complete yet.
[LUISA]: There's still much to learn about how humor interacts with other cognitive processes.
[LUISA]: For instance, the paper didn't fully explore how situational contexts or individual experience shape humor perception.
[LAURA]: Yeah, I would also highly appreciate an interest in the field of humor preferences, as we sometimes have this dual feeling that we find something funny, but it's too silly for us to fully appreciate.
[KENO]: Before we wrap up today's episode, if you had a chance to understand a very specific thing in human comprehension, obviously, what would you like to know?
[KENO]: And let's say we could have an expert on who would you ask?
[LUISA]: We've been talking a lot about the ways our brain processes humor, and it's hard not to think again about Dr. Salvatore Attardo, a leading figure of the field whose general theory of verbal humor we mentioned already before.
[LUISA]: His work not only categorizes different types of humor, but also reveals how elements like context and narrative strategy play vital roles in our understanding of jokes.
[LUISA]: I think it would really be exciting to ask Dr. Attardo, for example, how he sees his theory accounting for the subjective and emotional aspects of getting a joke, and what his thoughts would be on incorporating more cognitive processing models into linguistic humor theories.
[LAURA]: Now, something that also personally interests me is how time and timing influences human comprehension.
[LAURA]: As timing is really important when delivering a punchline.
[LAURA]: I wonder if we comprehend long jokes with more sophisticated setups differently from simple one liners.
[KENO]: I guess I too have a question.
[KENO]: How does this theory explain why swearing is so fucking funny?
[KENO]: Or rather, why sometimes a punchline is improved by adding a swear word?
[KENO]: I guess let's end this episode on the last question.
[KENO]: What is your take-home message?
[LUISA]: To wrap up, I would say listeners should remember that humor is highly subjective and culturally influenced.
[LUISA]: What's funny to one person may not be to another.
[LUISA]: The findings illustrate that while there are common neural mechanisms involved in humor processing, individual differences play a critical role in how we understand and appreciate humor.
[LUISA]: This self-awareness can enhance our communication and relationships in social contexts.
[KENO]: Thank you to you both.
[KENO]: And thank you to Elli and our parents, who are presumably the only ones still listening.
[KENO]: Thank you.
[LAURA]: Thank you. [LUISA]: Thank you.