
Humour is an act of aggression - nreece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6078247/Humour-is-an-act-of-aggression.html
======
miloshh
The study seems to say that whether a person uses humor (and what kind)
depends on their place in the social hierarchy. But that is a far cry from
saying that the purpose of humor is to _define_ the hierarchy.

Similarly, the type of food people eat reflects their social standing, but the
purpose of food clearly isn't to define the social hierarchy.

~~~
ankeshk
>but the purpose of food clearly isn't to define the social hierarchy.

Actually food is used to define social hierarchy in many groups and societies
- mainly the order in which it is eaten. The head of the family eats first and
gets the largest piece of the chicken.

~~~
alextp
> Actually food is used to define social hierarchy in many groups and
> societies - mainly the order in which it is eaten. The head of the family
> eats first and gets the largest piece of the chicken.

So you're saying that the hierarchy would not exist except for the food? The
OP's post said that humor, like food, _reflects_ an existing hierarchy, and,
as far as I can see, this dinner table hierarchy would exist regardless of the
food.

~~~
ankeshk
The hierarchy would exist - yes. But the order in which food is eaten
_reinforces_ the hierarchy - no?

~~~
alanthonyc
No.

The order in which the food is eaten is simply a reflection of the hierarchy.
One eats first because one is the king. One does not become the king by eating
first.

~~~
lucifer
You can certainly signal your intent to assume the position by eating ahead of
your position. And if you do get away with it, chances are you will be the
next king.

Same with humor. Review the material on the use of pornography and humor in
the French Revolution.

[edit grammar]

------
edw519
A British programmer, a French engineer, and a German "pragmatic scientist"
are in a bar. The programmer and the engineer are arguing about whose country
will be next to put a man on the moon. After a while, they asked the German
"pragmatic scientist" why his country wasn't in the race. "We're going to the
sun," he said. "The sun?" they asked incredulously, "You'll burn up before you
even get close!" "Oh, no," he replied, "We're going at night."

 _That's_ the purpose of humor. When something is so absurd that there's no
other way to deal with it, we turn it into the joke that it really is. OP
provides perfect fodder.

~~~
dtf
That's a great joke - in fact I've never heard it before. But, at the risk of
being a spoilsport, the OP is not completely absurd, and neither is the
original version of this joke. Googling, I found two common versions of this
joke. The first two in the bar are invariably an American and a Russian
(countries with a prestigious history of space exploration). The third person
is either:

    
    
      1) a blonde
      2) an Irishman
    

Now it's no longer just absurd, it's making joke at others' expense. Blondes
(in the US) and the Irish (in the UK) are _stereotypically_ dumb. (Maybe
there's a French version involving a Belgian?) It's still funny for sure, but
there's more to it than harmless absurdity.

edit: I found the French version:
<http://www.blague.info/blagues/humour/drole-2228.html>

~~~
edw519
_OP is not completely absurd_

When something stupid gets posted to hn, some of the instant responses
typically include:

    
    
      - stupid
      - not hacker news
      - a sample size of one means nothing
      - ameteur ramblings
      - belongs on digg or reddit
      - correlation != causation
      - citings?
      - anecdotal, not scientific
      - fail
      - flagged (not only do they flag, they comment that they have flagged)
    

I've been reading hn for years, and OP is the most absurb thing I've ever read
here. All of the above apply. But since it was about humor, I just turned it
into the joke that it already is.

~~~
fnid
I think you're wrong on this one. I think the OP is on target and your joke is
an example of its validity. I also think your posting of typical responses is
you establishing your position in the HN hierarchy. Since you can list all of
those typical responses, obviously you have been here longer and since you've
been here longer, you're the man dogg.

You also belittle the OP calling it stupid. It's not stupid. It's the result
of perhaps many years of research by people who are patient and observant.

The article echoes the feeling many, including myself, have had when making a
joke in front of a superior and gotten that stern look of someone who feels
their power being subverted. "I want people to feel my wrath and you are
cracking jokes..." It's a subtle show of disrespect of the social order.

It's also poignant because we've probably all been in situations where we were
_compelled_ to laugh at a joke that wasn't funny to show our allegiance to the
joke teller. This happens a lot when someone is making a joke at another's
expense. If everyone laughs, then all is okay, the leader is still in charge.
But if someone doesn't laugh, then everyone knows who is really on the side of
right. Laughing at bad jokes shows loyalty and disregard for honesty at the
gain of social credibility.

------
foulmouthboy
Humor at the expense of others CAN be an act of aggression.

Good natured jokes made by a manager to make his or her employees feel at ease
is a demonstration of people skills. People use humor in stressful situations
not necessarily because they want to be in charge, but to actually lighten the
tension. How is that aggression?

There are so many obvious situations of humor being anything BUT aggression.
This is a completely ridiculous statement stating the exception to the norm as
the general rule.

"Cars are used to kill people" "Food is poison" "Headlines are linkbait"

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, from what I've witnessed, humour is usually used in a form of
empathising with peers or a form of group-initiation (new people tend to get
poked fun of to see if they're good natured vis a vis a good fit in the
group). I tell the joke about how I set a boiling pan of water alight (it's
true, and I'm not sure how) because I'm a far better cook than most of my
friends; I use the joke to actually reduce any social imbalance because I make
it at my own expense. I could easily make a joke at my friend's expense, but
then we likely wouldn't be friends for very long.

There is a very big difference between being fun and making fun. The OP IMO is
way off, perhaps this is the social norm in Germany, but in Anglo-culture most
jokes are self-deprecating. It's rare that aggressive (belittling or
demeaning) jokes are made and go over well, people in senior positions using
this type of humour are at risk, in fact it's one of the main reasons
employers get sued because it frequently creates a hostile work environment.
If you think your joke is so funny that you want to get sued over it, well I
believe it's still a self-depreciating joke, because either way the joke ended
up on you, but it depreciated your bank account too.

The few exceptions when aggressive jokes are allowed and found funny is
usually between close friends or family and it's usually classed as a roasting
joke where the entire point is that they're respected _more_ for showing their
good nature.

Comedy on TV is very different from comedy in real life. The reason why most
doctors don't crack jokes is because they're insured to work, if they start
insulting their subordinates with aggressive jokes, their insurance goes up
and the same is with almost any antisocial behaviour, because the insurance
company is thinking "How long until this idiot calls an obese patient a tub of
lard and we have to fork out a hundred-thousand dollars to shut the patient
up".

~~~
David
The only place I can realistically see ill-natured joking being accepted is in
a school. The social hierarchy in schools is often based on it, in fact.

But in the real world, I agree with you. (What does that say about our
education system? Sigh.) (Actually, it probably says more about slowing rates
of maturity and development in the general population. I still blame the
education system, though. =P)

~~~
electromagnetic
I agree there's probably a lot of blame to bare on the education system.
Packing 700+ students into a school with barely 30 adults (including janitors)
isn't a realistic representation of society. There's barely 1 child per adult
in the western world, but our education system gives 30 or more children to a
single adult that hasn't even had a child of their own.

How can you expect to raise 30 kids when you haven't even raised 1. It's
ludicrous.

------
viggity
For the love of god, does everything now-a-days have to be about how someone
is oppressing someone else, blah, blah, blah.

Being politically correct is like trying to pick up the clean end of a turd.

~~~
David
I don't see the social hierarchy as a form of oppression. And I don't see how
this says anything about political correctness, either.

I'm not at the top of the ladder. I'm not particularly funny, and I'm not
particularly cool. But social domination, on the part of anyone, doesn't
really feel like oppression, to me.

Can you explain your POV a little more?

~~~
viggity
While they didn't outright mention oppression or political correctness, those
terms often go hand in hand with a term like "aggression".

The author also mentions: "But both sexes use comedy as a means of controlling
others".

The authors also imply that men do it to be mean because they make jokes about
others, but women are wholly innocent because they only make jokes about
themselves.

"Aggression" and "Controlling Others" have negative connotations and to equate
them with humor in general is unfortunate. The authors of this study need to
lighten up.

------
sgoranson
I've evolved a self deprecating style of humor, mostly because I like to make
people laugh without unintentionally stepping on anyone's toes.

Does that make me a dissociative schizophrenic in a power struggle with
myself? (actually, after typing that out, that kinda describes who I am to
some extent. "whoa." -keanu)

------
skybrian
I've always thought of humor as a way of gaining trust. A joke that succeeds
proves that you share a common understanding about some aspect of life. This
is why explaining a joke never works (if you have to explain it, it proves you
_didn't_ understand each other), and why it's much easier to get a friend to
laugh than a stranger; if someone already knows and trusts you, any little
thing will remind them of that trust. It's also why insider jokes are only
funny to insiders; they are a way of proving shared knowledge and cannot work
without it.

It sounds like these researchers showed a special case of this: if you want be
the leader in a situation then you need to be able to get people to trust you,
so naturally would-be leaders will tell jokes in an attempt to create and
reinforce trust. Also, if you're not a leader and you tell a joke then it
could be considered a challenge by an insecure leader, so this will be avoided
by people who don't want to rock the boat. But to say that jokes are _only_
about aggression is too much. If everyone in the group is comfortable telling
jokes then that's a sign that there's a lot of mutual trust.

------
jacquesm
"The research, which was published in the Journal of Pragmatics, suggest that
the role of humour is not to make other people laugh as much as it is to make
others know who is in charge."

Please, really. So, everytime somebody asks for a joke we are now to interpret
this person as being subordinate ?

Humour has since time immemorial been a way for people to relieve tension and
to deal with the hardships in life.

To reduce it to 'an act of aggression' suggests the author should take some of
their own medicine and laugh a little more at life and take themselves less
serious.

The study, which has apparently been conducted in Germany by an 'expert in
genderlinguistics' (is there such a thing) according to this page:

[http://www.gender-in-gestufte-
studiengaenge.de/expertin_beis...](http://www.gender-in-gestufte-
studiengaenge.de/expertin_beispiel.php?print=1&lg=de&expertin=102&gruppe=alle&fach=73)

makes me feel sad for my neighbours to the east. Too many jokes have already
been made about the Germans not having a sense of humour (in spite of an
enormous body of 'witzen' and the general German traditions), no need to fuel
the fires.

~~~
lionhearted
I did laugh myself when I saw it was a German study.

That said, Germans have a fantastic sense of humor - it's just a bit different
than the English-speaking Western humor. It's more dry and more casually draws
attention to something that's a bit funny anyways - so you get your attention
drawn to it... not sure why for a second... then people start laughing.

The timing/pacing is a bit different too - for me, it seems like the German
pacing is frequently either - "ok, I'm telling a joke" (like a traditional
standup comedian's pacing). Or it's dropping a joke into the middle of a
seemingly serious conversdation without switching tone to convey storytelling
- so it kind of sneaks up on you sometimes.

From my limited time in Germany, it seemed to me like there's less sarcasm and
irony in German humor, and more highlighting nonsensical or tense situations.
I didn't really "get" it at first, but once I did I had a right good time.
Very nice and friendly people too, once you acclimate to the cultural
differences.

~~~
jacquesm
At the risk of coming across as agressive:

q: How often does an Englishman laugh at a joke ?

a: Once, he laughs out of politeness, he'll never get it

q: How often does a German laugh at a joke ?

a: Twice. Once when you tell the joke, out of politeness, the second time when
he thinks he gets it, but he'll never get it.

q: How often does a Jewish guy laugh at a joke ?

a: Not at all, he already knows the joke ;)

------
randallsquared
From the fact that I laughed out loud at this headline, I conclude that nreece
has aggressed against me! I demand restitution!

Or, er, not. :)

------
melito
Seems like very subjective results.

In my experience being a demanding prick is an often successful technique in
defining social peking order.

Oddly though, it does seem common for someone with a cutup personality to butt
heads with a demanding prick.

Full disclosure: I tell a lot of jokes :( I think the jokes have more to do
with not being able to take much seriously though than it is me trying to
exert some type of social dominance. If I'm trying to exert anything its
something along the line of: "hey lighten up."

------
Batsu
Some days science just takes the fun out of things.

------
asdlfj2sd33
According to this the class clown is at the top of the social hierarchy.

I think humor is a bit more complex then that.

~~~
mahmud
A class clown _was_ at the top of the social hierarchy, at least until
recently when Americans tired of the joke.

------
erlanger
This article didn't make that much sense to me until I read this paragraph at
the end:

 _"Nurses and midwives tend to tell jokes about patients but not when the
doctor is present. And when someone initiates a joke they tend to be ignored
if they are in the presence of someone of a higher status."_

I've seen this played out countless times from both perspectives (not
literally in a doctor's office), and it always smacks of a power struggle.

~~~
hughprime
This kinda makes sense. Subordinates will often try to inject humour in order
to break a the tension in a serious situation. Superiors can't allow their
subordinates to control the tone of the conversation like that, though, so
they'll ignore it.

The article ignores, however, the fact that an awful lot (the vast majority?)
of joking takes place between social equals. Now I come to think of it, jokes
between social equals are the only ones which are actually particularly
_funny_ \-- jokes told across different social levels tend to elicit a good-
natured chuckle, not uncontrollable guffawing.

~~~
ErrantX
except perhaps in the case of stand up comedy: which for me usually elicits
the loudest laughter.

~~~
dtf
There's nothing more tense than a showdown between a stand-up comedian and
their heckler. It's like a being in the saloon in one of those Western movies
when a some tike speaks out of turn to the local gunslinger.

------
tripp
What a load of Malarky.

Is the cup half full here or half empty ? It's both for me too, but it's often
not aggression.

I think it's pretty normal for a boss to tell a joke as an effort to show calm
and relax his/her employees. It's a good leadership attribute. I've seen women
bosses do this - often. Most are not trying to assert control, but rather to
fullfill the role most employees deserve - a boss whom shows strong leadership
yet is approachable/approving/inspires/empowers.

I myself am cautious joking around when the bosses are present - not because
of a lack of desiring control, but rather as a sign of respect to others and
to myself. I want people to know I take my job seriously and rarely does
joking around all the time accomplish this.

Interestingly enough, when I lose respect for the "bosses" I tend to joke with
them more, but again not for control or aggression - rather to lighten the
weight/mood under the circumstances - the respect for the person is not lost
even though respect for the persons role has been.

So is joking or a lack of joking a form of showing aggression/submission or is
it showing respect and caring ? I drink the half full glass thank you.

I've been reading these kinds of studies for over a decade and the more your
read, the more you live the less you believe BS articles like this.

If your interested in the motive. Money, Name Publishing etc etc. Read John
Robins "Diet for a New America", it's interesting how all the facts in life
are sold to corporations for a reason.

T.

------
polos
Humour is a fine Old French vocable, and so is its original meaning.

You can pervert anything, and humour (together with real love) is one of the
most often perverted (but originally _really_ beautiful) things...

:(

Try to create real humour to tell your own children; it's not that hard -- and
it will be _real_ humour.

:)

------
jemka
Knock Knock

Go fuck yourself.

~~~
zackattack
This is actually a relevant if not explicit point from __Catch Me If You Can
__.

