Writing humor? Keep It Simple. Research Explains Why.

L&H in Way Out West

One of Stan's simple visual gags - innocently lighting his thumb without burning

himself.  Of course, an infuriated Ollie tells Stan that what he just did can't be

done.  And, of course, Ollie has to try it - with inevitable results. (Click to see

Stan's Magic Lighter from Way Out West.)

It's no great secret that I find the humor of Laurel and Hardy funny.  Why?  Their simple approach to humor.  Stan Laurel, when questioned about his humor, freely admitted that his films were based on a limited number of simple gags, gags that students and critics of humor point out were flawlessly pulled off time and again.

Laurel and Hardy's simple humor built a huge following, not just in the English speaking world, but in every country on the planet.  So it should come as no surprise that many of the gags created by Stan are still common today.  They are the tropes of modern humor.

Lesson:  Simple works.

The following research backs up this observation with a nice, explicit explanation of why.

*  *  *  *  *

Complex humor is no laughing matter

Jokes with too many mind-twists not found to be funny

"The best jokes are thought to build on a set of expectations and have a

punchline to update the knowledge of the listener in an unexpected way."

Since the earliest times, laughter and humor have performed important functions in human interaction. They help to expedite courtship, improve conversational flow, synchronize emotional states and enhance social bonding. Jokes, a structured form of humor, give us control over laughter and are therefore a way to elicit these positive effects intentionally. In order to comprehend why some jokes are perceived as funny and others are not, Robert Dunbar and colleagues at Oxford University investigated the cognitive mechanism underlying laughter and humor. 

The ability to fully understand other people's often unspoken intentions is called mentalizing, and involves different levels of so-called intentionality. For example, an adult can comprehend up to five such levels of intentionality before losing the plot of a too-complex story. Conversations that share facts normally involve only three such levels. Greater brain power is needed when people chat about the social behavior of others, because it requires them to think and rethink themselves into the shoes of others.

The best jokes are thought to build on a set of expectations and have a punchline to update the knowledge of the listener in an unexpected way. Expectations that involve the thoughts or intentions of people other than the joke-teller or the audience, for example the characters in the joke, are harder to pin down. Our natural ability to handle only a limited number of mindstates comes into play.

In order to shed light on how our mental ability limits what we find funny, the researchers analyzed the reaction of 55 undergraduates from the London School of Economics to 65 jokes from an online compilation of the 101 funniest jokes of all time. The collection mostly consisted of jokes from successful stand-up comedians. Some jokes in the compilation were mere one-liners, while others were longer and more complex. A third of the jokes were factual and contained reasonably undemanding observations of idiosyncrasies in the world. The rest involved the mindstates of third parties. The jokes were rated on a scale from one to four (not at all funny to very funny).

"The funniest jokes are those that involve two characters and up to five back-

and-forth levels of intentionality between the comedian and the audience."

The research team found that the funniest jokes are those that involve two characters and up to five back-and-forth levels of intentionality between the comedian and the audience. People easily loose the plot when jokes are more complex than that. The findings do not suggest that humor is defined by how cleverly a joke is constructed, but rather that there is a limit to how complex its contents can be to still be considered funny. According to Dunbar, increasing the mentalizing complexity of the joke improves the perceived quality, but only up to a certain point: stand-up comedians cannot afford to tell intricate jokes that leave their audience feeling as if they've missed the punchline.

"The task of professional comics is to elicit laughs as directly and as fast as possible. They generally do this most effectively when ensuring that they keep within the mental competence of the typical audience member," says Dunbar. "If they exceed these limits, the joke will not be perceived as funny."

It is likely that everyday conversational jokes do not involve as many intentional levels as those that have been carefully constructed by professional comedians. Further research needs to be conducted in this area. However, Dunbar's findings shed some light on the mechanics of language-based humor and therefore on the workings of our mind.

Story Source:  Materials provided by Springer.  R. I. M. Dunbar, Jacques Launay, Oliver Curry. The Complexity of Jokes Is Limited by Cognitive Constraints on Mentalizing. Human Nature, 2015.