As a consumer psychologist, I have been intently following the developments in the emerging academic and applied field of neuromarketing. But first, a definition courtesy of Wikipedia (as of 8/25/10): Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. Researchers use technologies such as functional magnetic […]
What makes things funny? Most think that humor has something to do with incongruity. Incongruity can mean that something is unexpected, like a cloud that farts pistachios. One critic of our recent paper argues forcefully that humor results from this type of incongruity: Another swing-and-a-miss from eggheads trying to explain comedy. Not all comedy stems from […]
Last week, the BBC World Service Radio rang me up and asked me what makes things funny. They also included a very funny comedian, Alonzo Bodden, on the call. You can listen to the entire thing by clicking the link below. Try to ignore my heavy breathing (I was excited). Click here: The BBC interviews […]
The folks at Big Questions Online asked me the question: “What is the Most Universal Type of Humor?” Here is an excerpt of my answer: My colleague Caleb Warren and I believe that the most universal forms of humor are play fighting and tickling. Our theory, the “benign violation theory,” builds on previous work by […]
In a previous post, I discussed why I am trying to answer the age old question of what makes things funny (LINK). In today’s post, I investigate whether or not books that help you pursue a career in comedy help answer that important question. These folks are funny, but do they know what makes things […]
My employer, the Leeds School of Business, made a video of me talking about why humor is important. If you don’t want to read the previous post I wrote, you can watch the video here:
Q: What is the best day to launch a blog post? A: Well, as is usually the case, it depends on who you ask. I Googled it, and check out what showed up back-to-back: Hmmh. I am going to split the difference and make focal posts on Wednesdays. I will sporadically post other days, if […]
I want to discuss why it is important to answer a question that has puzzled philosophers, scientists, and comedians since the dawn of Western thought: What makes things funny? To help answer this (tough) question, I recently started the Humor Research Lab (HuRL) at the University of Colorado, Boulder. HuRL is an interdisciplinary research lab […]
