In response to Hannah's lead blog post, I found it interesting how my results varied from the different episodes and the types of humor that stuck out to me. I scored a 5 and 6 for Friends and found sarcasm, satire, people doing stupid things, put down, and incongruity. For The Office, I scored an 8 and 7 and found satire, dark humor, people doing stupid things, joking around to fit in, and naughty humor. I think this experiment demonstrates how people's perception of humor affects their favored type of humor and what they find as funny. Not everyone will like Friends, and not everyone will like The Office. But why do some people find certain things funny while others do not? It could all be linked back to the three types of humor theories, or maybe just plain life experience. If you like the kind of humor where there are discrepancies between what the character is saying and the actual meaning of the action, then you are inclined towards the incongruity theory and so on. In terms of life experience, you may have had a traumatic or significant thing happen to you that in turn shifts your perception of humor. Say your precious dog died when you were little: you're probably not going to laugh at a joke with the subject matter of a dead dog because it reminds you of your own experience with it. Overall, there are many factors that affect our own perceptions of humor. It will be interesting to learn more and see what experiment this data is used for!

Comments

  1. Caroline BassNovember 15, 2018 at 9:24 PM

    It's interesting to think about the three theories in relation to a laugh track! I think what I'm getting from your post (and correct me if I'm misinterpreting it :) ) is that people will find a show funny regardless of whether or not the laugh track is in the show. So, in this way, the presence of a laugh track won't automatically make a joke funny when it's objectively not. It's as if the laugh track is there to force the audience to think about why the joke is supposed to be funny, ultimately killing it.

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  2. UnknownNovember 16, 2018 at 5:12 PM

    I like that you addressed the aspect of personal experience in perception of humor... Everyone interprets scenarios differently, and one's individual thoughts, opinions, and past play a large role in determining whether or not humor is found in a situation.

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