Key points
- We never attain our ultimate goals solely by ourselves. We rely on others—family, friends, teachers, coworkers, etc.—to help us along.
- When social relationships become difficult or counterproductive, vulnerabilities are revealed, and changes in status are common.
- Such shifts are exactly the sort of thing that inspire humor. The laughter it generates signals a desire to re-establish the prior arrangement.
Social interactions, by their nature, are rife with humorous possibilities. Most people have a social network, maintain social status, and attempt to make social advances. Whenever one’s status is affected by the demonstration, recall, or manufacture of a social failing, the seeds of humor are planted.
As we might suspect, humor rooted in the interactions of individuals and groups is the sort most affected by culture. Social humor operates within a framework of preexisting social expectations: how children should behave around adults, how employees should behave around employers, politicians around voters, laypersons around religious leaders, and so on. It also relates to social strategies—the means by which we try to advance up the social ladder, find our preferred mate, build material wealth, or maintain friendships to promote our own security.
Humor can be found any time we draw attention to someone’s precarious position within his or her social web or manipulate it to make it less secure. Existing social relationships can be altered or reversed, differences in social status can be ignored or modified, friendships or family ties playfully disavowed, and cultural distinctions exaggerated or caricatured. You can parody the boss’s management style in an unflattering way. You can point out someone’s “wrong” clothing, religious protocol, or political opinion, and, even if temporarily, affect the person’s social standing. Almost any social norm or cultural taboo could be violated in some way for humorous effect.
Remind someone of a bumbling attempt to impress his or her mother-in-law, or point out to your middle-aged and somewhat plain-looking friend the futility of buying a sexy sports car, and you will probably inspire some Self-Lifting Laughter. Similarly, mockingly imitating someone who believes him or herself stronger, faster, or better looking than is really the case can initiate Lowering Laughter from like-minded onlookers. We can “make fun” of others’ mannerisms, morality, social class, career choice, and so on.
One nearly universal theme of social humor is deception. The direct or indirect manner in which we relate to others constitutes a large part of our overall social strategy. In almost every culture, honesty is equated with strength and deception with weakness. It’s no surprise, then, that much social humor revolves around individuals playfully resorting to, being caught in, or suffering the consequences of untruthfulness. It’s a behavior with which we can all identify, and only in extreme cases does it fall into the category of pathological defect.
In the realm of social vulnerability, there’s a lot of leeway in which to have some fun.
Humor’s multiple personalities
Of course, humor rarely works only in a single realm. Yes, a certain theme may dominate, but instances of social, cognitive, emotional, and physical humor are rarely one-dimensional. A social faux pas, for example, may have cognitive causes, emotional effects, and physical consequences. Each member of the audience may sympathize with one or more of these aspects. Individuals witnessing the same humorous event may laugh at different social, cognitive, emotional, or physical vulnerabilities, depending on which aspects they happened to be focusing on at the time, which resonated with their own experiences, or what relevant information they might have at their disposal.
Social humor is a staple of television comedies such as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Stand-up performers, too, convey the importance of personal relationships and the difficulties one faces when interacting with those of different cultural backgrounds. Here are a couple examples. The first deals with challenges faced by married couples as imagined by comedian Jeff Allen. The second highlights some mild social conflicts arising as Americans with different cultural backgrounds interact, in this instance as described by comedian and actor Anjelah Johnson.
The most successful humor tends to touch on a number of themes. Recalling a friend’s slip-of-the-tongue (cognitive) might be marginally amusing. Adding a reference about how it cost him a chance at a second date with a beautiful girl (social) puts it in a richer context. To sarcastically suggest that your ex-boyfriend’s joblessness (physical and social) has nothing to do with the fact that his shoe size exceeds his IQ (cognitive) gives the audience several vulnerabilities to consider. Misunderstandings are communicative (cognitive) failings that typically contain at least the potential for emotional and social consequences. Sexual humor, too, usually includes social, emotional, and physical themes. In general, humor pointing to one category of vulnerability is always more powerful when connected to broader consequences in other areas of life.
