{"id":15105,"date":"2014-09-26T05:01:19","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T10:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/?p=15105"},"modified":"2015-07-28T11:01:23","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T16:01:23","slug":"the-science-and-spirituality-of-humor-series-is-humor-a-human-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/the-science-and-spirituality-of-humor-series-is-humor-a-human-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science and Spirituality of Humor [SERIES]: Is Humor a HUMAN thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read the 1st\u00a0post of the humor series\u00a0here<\/a>. \"Screen<\/p>\n

Is humor human?<\/h3>\n

Do animals laugh and why should we care?<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the first things that comes up when you start to study what<\/strong> people find funny, and why<\/strong> they do, is the issue of purpose<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

“What’s it all for?”<\/p>\n

And when you start asking those questions invariably you need to see if humor is a uniquely human quality or if other creatures have some of it too and why might they.<\/p>\n

Some animals experience emotions in ways\u00a0humans do.\u00a0Anger, pleasure, fear, and sorrow are a few commonalities.<\/h3>\n

For instance, pachyderms express grief at the death of a member of their parade. House cats don’t give a crap about the death of anyone (usually), but they are certainly spiteful on par with the cunning and potency of humans.<\/span><\/h3>\n

So why not the emotion of humor…?<\/h3>\n

It turns out that science has tried to measure that. The results, in my opinion, are mixed and even a bit unsavory. But, I’ll get to that in a minute.<\/p>\n

Noises of Play<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plebeian anecdotes of laughing dogs or snickering\u00a0nonhuman<\/em>\u00a0primates circulate and seem to indicate that something akin to genuine laughter or maybe some sort of sense of humor could be\u00a0at work. Yes?<\/p>\n

For a number of years scientists have discerned what seems to be jolly\u00a0noises coming from chimps at\u00a0play. These sounds mimic the intonations of young children at play and keg parties.<\/p>\n

And then there’s the business of rodents.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rats, actually.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I told you it would get unsavory.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laughter in the Lab
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Apparently, scientists can get grant money to tickle rats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You heard me right.<\/p>\n

See, if they just use the phrase \u201cheterospecific hand play\u201d on their proposal, a grant check comes in the mail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The phrase sounds sophisticated and science-y, and no one in the grant issuing department considers it\u00a0perverted.<\/p>\n

With grant money in hand, scientists\u00a0use their other hand and go about\u00a0tickling rats of different ages, in different settings, at different times, and sometimes (I’m guessing) on the couch near a cozy fire in the fireplace and atmospheric candlelight as\u00a0Barry White music plays softly in the background. It’s all very clinical.<\/p>\n

The Results<\/strong>
\nOlder (married?) rats don’t seem to respond, but juvenile rats, foolish to the wiles of scientists, make high frequency chirping sounds as they encounter \u201cheterospecific hand play\u201d.<\/p>\n

The sounds are\u00a0somewhat comparable\u00a0to staccato laughing of human children at play. Human children playing but also\u00a0gnawing at garbage in a dumpster,\u00a0perhaps. Or, perhaps the panicked sounds of high anxiety.<\/p>\n

The strange result is that the young rats then seek\u00a0out the human that tickled him or her for plenty more of the same. (This convinces the scientists that the impressionable rats\u00a0are enjoying the interaction and not developing strange and unhealthy co-dependency issues sourced in\u00a0dubious psychologically damaging tickle\u00a0abuse.)<\/p>\n

In fact, the rats grow closer to their ticklers\u00a0socially, and perhaps hope for\u00a0an\u00a0engagement ring one day.<\/p>\n

I’d also like to note that so far I’m finding no such experiments are conducted\u00a0where rats are allowed to tickle scientists and whether the rats or the scientists laugh because of it. This seems like a gross oversight.\u00a0It would also be interesting to know if the scientists found the rats attractive in different outfits and vice versa. Or, maybe not.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t know whether to be proud of the these discoveries or terribly embarrassed for the scientists.<\/p>\n

The Purpose of Humor<\/strong><\/p>\n

What laughter\u2013or its nonhuman\u00a0equivalent\u2013appears\u00a0to do in the animal world is\u00a0to build social bridges through\u00a0appropriate\u00a0positive interactions.<\/p>\n

Positive, mutual, social responses build bonds, trust, and cooperation. Everyone wins.<\/p>\n

Rats, dogs, and chimps are all highly social creatures, and maybe this is needed for\u00a0things to go well.<\/p>\n

The exception is the occasional\u00a0instance where rats eat their young.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 This seems to indicate that some tickling just isn’t funny, or that kids can be a real pain sometimes.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Humor and\u00a0Spirituality<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m proposing that humor remains invaluable\u00a0to\u00a0human<\/strong> flourishing, not just for healthy social bonding, but ultimately for the vital element of\u00a0identity, <\/strong>and this is the territory of spirituality.\u00a0We’ll get into the reasons of why more deeply as we continue.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Like those laughing animals,\u00a0humans are social too. When they are not socially healthy, bad things happen: murder, sexual assault, arson, random violence, and strange behavior\u00a0on Facebook.<\/p>\n

But, unlike animals, scientific experiments\u00a0show that humans have three<\/strong>\u00a0main reasons for laughing besides<\/strong><\/em> a\u00a0tickling episode, according to work by\u00a0psychologist Diana Szameitat. Here are the other three:<\/span><\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Laughing in joy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

2. Taunting<\/strong> laughter. Laughing at someone\u00a0in contempt.<\/i><\/p>\n

3. Schadenfreude<\/strong> laughter. Laughing at another person who encounters something unfortunate, like falling down. <\/i>The Germans have just the precise word for it too,\u00a0which is not surprising.<\/p>\n

I think there are several more, but that’s for future posts.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Funny Things are\u00a0Seriously Complex<\/strong><\/p>\n

Humor and laughter comprise\u00a0a whole\u00a0system of complex emotions for humans, compared to animals.<\/p>\n

And as anyone who’s been tickled for too long knows, sometimes humor includes\u00a0mixed<\/strong> emotions like discomfort, fear, apprehension, or wanting to slap\u00a0a scientist for\u00a0creepy\u00a0\u201cheterospecific hand play\u201d.<\/p>\n

Anything for a laugh.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

To sum up, humor is both uniquely human and<\/strong> shared among certain other creatures in a lesser way.<\/p>\n

Read the next one in the series here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Are you enjoying this series?<\/em><\/span> I’d love to know.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks for reading!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

-Lisa<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know wether to be proud of the these discoveries or terribly embarrassed for the scientists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5626],"tags":[6306,214,223,232,253,265,4985,4378,372,455,4649,4584,585,627,633,4768,848,4130,864,927,953,4377,1015,4697,1071,1113,1114,1184,1191,5053,1217,24,1291,4510,1388,1400,1503,34,1544,5070,37,1710,6538,5668,4716,1763,5181,1794,1874,1882,4081,1921,4848,1970,5974,2046,2077,5796,2248,53,2367,56,2521,6074,2584,2587,5845,5651,5902,2741,2747,4527,2782,2784,2855,4079,2905,4328,3044,3045,4628,3126,4694,6539,6467,4859,6156,6232,3421,6446,3444,3514,4179,3698,4641,89],"class_list":["post-15105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spark-my-muse","tag-abuse","tag-anger","tag-animals","tag-anxiety","tag-arson","tag-asking","tag-bad","tag-be","tag-behavior","tag-bonding","tag-business","tag-care","tag-cats","tag-cheese","tag-children","tag-cooperation","tag-cozy","tag-crap","tag-creepy","tag-death","tag-dependency","tag-do","tag-dogs","tag-down","tag-eating","tag-emotion","tag-emotions","tag-experience","tag-facebook","tag-fact","tag-falling","tag-fear","tag-fire","tag-foolish","tag-funny","tag-future","tag-good","tag-grief","tag-gross","tag-heard","tag-hope","tag-house","tag-humor","tag-identity","tag-if","tag-in","tag-interaction","tag-interesting","tag-jolly","tag-joy","tag-just","tag-kids","tag-laugh","tag-laughter","tag-learn","tag-lisa","tag-love","tag-mail","tag-money","tag-music","tag-not","tag-pain","tag-people","tag-personal","tag-play","tag-plays","tag-positive","tag-post","tag-projects","tag-purpose","tag-questions","tag-rat","tag-reading","tag-real","tag-research","tag-right","tag-rodents","tag-science-2","tag-sexual","tag-sexual-assault","tag-show","tag-social","tag-sorrow","tag-spirituality","tag-spirituality-of-humor","tag-start","tag-study","tag-theory","tag-things","tag-tickle","tag-time","tag-trust","tag-violence","tag-why","tag-word","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15105"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15110,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15105\/revisions\/15110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

We’ll learn much more about the complexity of humor\u00a0as we go. In future posts I’ll also cover the dubious reputation of humor among early philosophers, the fascinating aspect\u00a0of humorous sarcasm and mockery, plus the latest compelling humor research theory<\/a> that explains both the good and bad reasons why we find things funny.<\/p>\n