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Key points
- Our emotions rouse us to action, bringing us closer to those things we desire and moving us away from those that might harm us.
- Emotions that are misallocated, too tame, or too intense are not uncommon and often represent vulnerabilities that others can identify with.
- In those moments, onlookers may use laughter to remind others that they are also susceptible to failures of that sort.
What would life be without emotions? Very dull and extremely short.
Our emotions motivate us to take, or refrain from taking, certain actions. Desire and curiosity, for example, move us toward sought-after objectives. Fear and disgust move us away from situations that pose threats. Love compels us to care for someone we rely upon, and anger prompts us to counteract disappointing outcomes.
We experience joy, embarrassment, pride, sadness, excitement, guilt, relief, and contempt as we navigate our physical and social environments. In concert with essential physical drives like hunger, thirst, and lust, emotions regulate virtually every aspect of our lives, making them critically important and their misapplication potential liabilities.
As with physical traits and abilities, emotional characteristics and tendencies can be created, revealed, or modified to highlight vulnerability, the main ingredient of laughter. Virtually any emotion, mood, or personality trait can be tapped for humor.
Fear, envy, shame, gluttony, excitement, despair, revenge—we can fabricate them where they would not otherwise have been displayed, exaggerate them beyond normal levels, or eliminate them from where they typically belong. We can convey some sense of emotional vulnerability that hinders essential life functions but may also foster amusement.
In an attempt at humor, we might attribute unwholesome motives to an elderly man paying gentlemanly attention to an attractive but much younger woman.
We could show mock outrage at the carriage horse who dares to relieve himself in front of our date or abject fear when a child confronts us with his toy gun. These emotional variances from the norm replicate the same vulnerabilities found to a lesser degree in day-to-day human activities.
Exaggerate our sense of embarrassment or anger, point out someone’s semi-rational fear or desire, or simply startle someone, and we have the raw materials for humor. Whether acted out personally or ascribed merely to a fictitious character, cowardice, vanity, and guilt are among the many emotional characteristics integrated into this type of humor.
Emotional humor is not quite as universally recognized as physical humor since emotions tend to be subject more to cultural conventions (Griffiths, 1997). A display that seems exaggerated in one society may seem quite normal in another.
Situations that might inspire mild embarrassment (and thus seem amusing) to members of one religion might be considered sacrilegious or insulting to another.
Still, given adequate attention to social expectations and the right cues for signaling humorous intent, playing up emotional vulnerabilities can be a rich source of mirth.
Here are three examples of humor derived from people’s emotional reactions. The first is a prank that creates feelings of jealousy and disapproval. The second highlights guilt and regret. And the third situation is one designed to generate feelings of…well, let’s just say joy and excitement. Each strikes the audience as being either undeserved or out-sized.
The next time you’re watching your favorite sitcom or comedy movie, take a moment to consider how the characters’ emotions are being intentionally manipulated, exaggerated, or stifled for comedic effect. It’s a tried-and-true technique.
© John Charles Simon
References
Griffiths, P. E. (1997). What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
