In Wired magazine's May 2011 issue, Joel Warner detailed Colorado professor Peter McGraw's attempt to scientifically explain what exactly makes things funny. Since the story made clear that McGraw had a lot to learn about comedy in the real world – an in-person attempt to get Louis C.K. to sign on to his theory devolved into an incoherent question about the comedian's penis size – McGraw and Warner are teaming up to explore the science of comedy around the world.
Their occasional Wired.com column, The Humor Code, will chronicle their adventures, their scientific experiments and the unintentional comedy they encounter along the way.
BOSTON – Do you shun social situations to avoid ridicule? Do you struggle to engage in natural, easygoing conversations? When you hear others laughing, do you tense up and flail about in awkward, stilted mannerisms, practically popping and locking like a break dancer?
If so, you might be suffering from gelotophobia, the fear of being laughed at.
If you've never heard of gelotophobia, that's because the term is only a few years old. The concept and its counterparts – gelotophilia (the joy of being laughed at) and katagelasticism (the joy of laughing at others) – are just now being developed by some of the top minds associated with the International Society for Humor Studies, a global organization of humor scholars.
Many of those minds came together in Boston last week for the society's annual International Humor Conference to probe the intricacies of gelotophobia and many other unusual subjects related to the cutting-edge science of funny.
To be clear, the conference, held in a drab five-story building at Boston University, was far from sidesplitting. No whoopee cushions going off midseminar, no banana cream pies sailing through the hallways. That's exactly the point: In the eyes of the society, it's high time for humor to be taken seriously.
'Philosophers and intellectuals have long looked down on humor.'"Humor has traditionally gotten a negative connotation throughout most of Western history," says John Morrell, a religious studies professor at the College of William and Mary who helped found the society. "Philosophers and intellectuals have long looked down on humor."
That's why, since the mid-1970s, academics from disciplines ranging from philosophy to neuroscience to linguistics – many of whom were shunned by colleagues in their own fields – have come together annually in recognition of their shared fascination with humor.
The results last week were a colorful hodgepodge of humor scholarship. In one session, John Rucynski Jr., of Okayama University in Japan, detailed screening for his students "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo," an episode of The Simpsons that has never been shown in Japan because of its coarse cultural stereotypes.
In another, Christian Hempelmann of Purdue University reported on how computers are being taught to understand size differences, in hopes that sooner or later they will get the joke, "How do you fit six elephants into a car?" (Answer: three in the front seat and three in the back.)
Then there was Gil Greengross, an evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist at the University of New Mexico who is investigating the effect of ovulatory cycles on humor appreciation. Research is ongoing, but Greengross postulates that women are more sensitive to comedy during peak fertility.
Attendees also explored whether their humor theories could explain the peculiar world of viral comedy videos with the help of self-described "YouTube comedian" Kevin Nalty, a product director at Johnson & Johnson and the creative mind behind 1,000-plus YouTube videos seen, by his count, more than 200 million times. (According to Nalty, his opus is a clip of his son using a fart machine in a public library.)
True to form, Nalty posted a YouTube video of himself at the humor conference (above), wherein he dabbles in a bit of stalking and offers critical feedback on the presentation style of some of his fellow speakers.
An important goal of all this comedy analysis is to dispel many of the stereotypes and misassumptions long held about humor. Take the notion that women inherently aren't as funny as men, an idea that's graced the pages of Vanity Fair and triggered controversy at The Daily Show With John Stewart.
Rod Martin, a psychologist from The University of Western Ontario, tackled the idea head-on in a seminar titled, "Sex and the Witty: Empirical Studies of Humor and Gender." He found that nearly all objective humor tests suggest that women, for the most part, produce and appreciate jokes no differently than men. It was well-executed research, but not the sort of stuff easily incorporated into a comedy bit.
The conference, for all its fascinating insights, suggests that humor researchers have a ways to go before they become an academic force to be reckoned with. The lack of a shared terminology or academic standards among the scholarly disciplines of those in attendance means it's nearly impossible for the group to agree on something as basic as a general definition of humor.
Attempts at consensus were often plagued by ego clashes and one-upmanship during the International Humor Conference. At one point, Victor Raskin, a Purdue University linguistics professor who founded the academic journal Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, took the podium to declare that humor researchers have long exaggerated their self-importance, and that it's time to determine once and for all "whether humor actually has any impact in society."
Will folks who grew up with The Jack Benny Show be able to concur on how to deconstruct comedy with those weaned on South Park?In response, The New Yorker cartoon editor and humor scholar Bob Mankoff quipped to the audience, "Regarding Victor's comment that humor doesn't have any impact: I agree, except for my own."
Another stumbling block for the conference is the significant age difference between the International Society for Humor Studies founders and the up-and-comers entering the field. Will folks who grew up with The Jack Benny Show and The Odd Couple be able to concur on how to deconstruct comedy with those weaned on South Park and The Colbert Report?
No moment better highlighted this challenge than the conference's annual joke-telling contest, held one night at the university's student union. After his colleagues had offered up their selections of witty yet relatively restrained zingers, 29-year-old professor Caleb Warren took the stage and unleashed a joke that involved a donkey, a dead grandmother and a bit of incest in three tidy lines.
A handful in the audience cracked up, and a laughter yoga expert rolled on the floor, cackling. The majority, however, sat stoned-faced. They might not have been able to agree on how to define that joke, but they knew they didn't like it.
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