WHY ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The best supported scientific explanation for why we laugh is called "incongruity theory" and the superiority theory is now considered by most humor researchers to be wildly implausible. Incongruity theory proposes that humor occurs when a contradiction violates our expectations. When identified, it alters our perspective and produces laughter. In the language of standup comedy, the set-up creates the expectation and the punchline violates it. The Onion often puts them both in a headline, such as "School Bully Not So Tough Since Being Molested." This joke not only illustrates a key distinction between the superiority and incongruity theories, it also highlights the often subtle distinction between the subject and the target of a joke. While the superiority theory presumes that the joke is making fun of people who are either bullied or molested, incongruity theory suggests that the humor lies in the conflict, and surprising relationship, between being both a victim and a perpetrator at the same time. In the latter interpretation, the schoolyard bully is being restored to his rightful status by someone who holds the lowest rung in our society--the child molester. George Meyer, writer for The Simpsons, encapsulated incongruity theory when he said that appreciating humor is "like seeing in two dimensions and then opening the other eye or looking through a View-Master and suddenly seeing in three." Research showing that humor can help to undermine cognitive biases, identify faulty logic, and detect mistaken reasoning lends support to this intuition.

My research with the evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers has shown that more self-deceptive people laugh less. This finding builds on incongruity theory and indicates that our ability to detect humor is inhibited when we lie to ourselves. Humor often involves identifying contradictions and revealing new perspectives, which suggests that the less you are in touch with reality, the less likely you are able to identify that something is amiss. This is because rational thought often depends on the ability to view a situation from multiple angles to get a less biased overview. If you are practicing self-deception and blocking out certain angles, however, you will fail to see the contradiction and therefore fail to enjoy the humor when these viewpoints are challenged. Leslie Savan, writing for the Nation, has speculated that Donald Trump is likely to be highly self-deceptive because he is almost never seen laughing. But what's good for the goose is also good for those on the other side of the political spectrum, and I would make the same point about some of my colleagues in the cultural anthropology department whose apparent inability to detect any sort of humor gave me the idea for the study in the first place.

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