It’s Not Funny!

One year, when my youngest was in Middle School, he came home from school on April Fool’s Day with a prank he wanted to play on his Dad. He did something with a rubber band and the sink sprayer so that when you turned on the water, the sprayer would get you. I didn’t interfere, he was so excited about it. A short time later, he ran in to wash his hands, and completely forgetting the prank he had set up, turned on the sink and got a face full of water. It was actually pretty funny.

I’m not a big fan of April Fool’s Day. As a kid, I always felt like someone was going to do something mean and then laugh at me. When you stop and think about it, the prank filled April Fool’s Day is a weird custom. Interestingly, the practice of having a day when you play pranks on your friends is pretty common around the world. It may have begun in ancient Rome as part of their New Year’s festivities, which were around the Vernal Equinox, in March (when their first calendar began). One source says that it goes all the way back to Biblical times and is connected to Noah’s Arc and the story of releasing the dove too soon.

Everyone likes a good laugh: it releases endorphins and fosters our emotional connections with others. When people are asked what are the most important qualities in a partner, a sense of humor tops the list, and I’m sure that’s the case for friends, too, I know I’m very fond of people who laugh at my jokes. Laughter emerges in human infants in the first few months of life and transcends cultural and species boundaries. It is believed to have evolved in our common ancenstors with the Great Apes 10-16 million years ago, from the labored breathing that comes from tickling.

Humor is one of those aspects of being human that is hard to define. What someone finds funny depends on a variety of variables, including culture, level of education, maturity, intelligence and context. Comedic possibilities range from slapstick to satire. The behavioral scientist Peter McGraw suggests in his Benign Violation Theory that something is funny when a person sees a situation as wrong in some way but simultaneously realizes that it is actually ok. One of the reasons humor might be so hard to define is that it has so many forms and is used for many social ends, both positive and negative.

Practical jokes, or pranks, are supposed to be lighthearted and make their victims feel embarrassed and foolish but not victimized or humiliated. But to my mind just the premise of most of these jokes is mean. Just look at some of classic pranks: replacing the cream in an Oreo with toothpaste or sugar with salt and putting a bucket over a door that falls on the person who opens it. The tricks may not physically hurt their target but they are unpleasant and create a feeling of negativity. No one wants to be the victim of a prank.

Humor is often used to bully and can generate social bonding within one group by being used at the expense of another group. This kind of humor delivers a hidden negative agenda and creates sends a strong message of insider vs. outsider. When a group of people is made the butt of a joke based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, weight, or other characteristics, it is done to show superiority to them. And when others laugh at those kinds of “jokes”, the joker and his compatriots feel affirmed and justified. Humor that puts others down, laughs at others, humiliates, dismisses, ridicules and stereotypes is mean-spirited and polarizing.

And then there is one of my personal favorite sources of humor, schadenfreude, joy at the misfortune of others who you dislike. I’m not proud of this, but when Luigi Mangione allegedly killed the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, my gut reaction was glee. Along with a lot of other people, I think insurance companies are evil and that someone who works for one at such a high level must be evil too. So it stands to reason that a bad thing happening to a bad person would be good. (I know I know, 2 wrongs don’t make a right. But still.)

Schadenfreude is the experience of pleasure or joy that comes from witnessing or hearing about the suffering or humiliation of another person. Researchers have identified three primary motivators behind schadenfreude: aggression, rivalry and justice. The first is that found in bullying, when an in group finds joy in the suffering of an out group. The second is personal, the joy that you might feel when your personal nemesis suffers. And the last is the most intriguing and related to my feelings about Brian Thompson death, the pleasure experienced when a ‘bad’ person seems to be receiving retribution and that fairness is being restored.

Schadenfreude has been observed in children as young as 2 years and may be an important social emotion demonstrating the preference for fairness known as inequity aversion. As many of us who have children, (or were children!) the idea that resources (such as cake) should be fairly distributed seems pretty innate. The social scientist James Fowler has shown that subjects in random income games are willing to spend their own money to reduce the income of wealthy group members and increase the income of poorer members. In an experiment on capuchin monkeys, animal behaviorists Franz de Waal and Sarah Brosnan, discovered that not only did these monkeys prefer to receive nothing than receive an inequitable reward but they appeared to target their anger at the researchers responsible for the inequitable distribution of food.

Inequity aversion is expressed in some cultures as ritual humbling, which is a leveling mechanism used to ensure social equality by shaming or humbling people attempting to put themselves above others. Ritual humbling is designed to foster humility - to curb ego and promote a sense of self-awareness. For example, “cutting down the tall poppy” is a cultural phenomenon from Australia and New Zealand whereby people who brag about their success are criticized and cut down to size. The iKung people maintain social equity and prevent arrogance by subtly mocking and devaluing a hunter’s kill.

Humor is an integral part of the human experience and can be used to foster both unity and division. Most of us know exactly how each of these different uses of humor can make us feel. If you’ve ever been the butt of a joke, you know how it can be used to isolate as well as connect. If we want to foster a society that lifts people up instead of tearing us apart, we need to be aware of humor’s many nuances and guard against it being used to manipulate us.