What is the Psychology of a joke,

what is the Psychology of a joke,

Why the people laugh at jokes has been the subject of serious academic study, examples being

Emmanuel Kant, in Critique of Judgement (1790) states that "Laughter is an effect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing." Here is Kant's 2-century old joke and his analysis,

An Englishman at an Indian's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale being opened, and all the beer, turned to froth, rushed out.

 And the Indian, by repeated exclamations, showed his great amazement. - Well, what's so amazing in that? asked the Englishman.

 Oh, but I'm not amazed at its coming out, replied the Indian, but how you managed to get it all in.

 That makes us laugh, and it gives us a hearty pleasure.
 This is not because, say, we think we are smarter than this ignorant man, nor are we laughing at anything else here that it is our liking and that we noticed through our understanding.

It is rather that we had a tense expectation that suddenly vanished...

Henri Bergson, in his book Le rire (Laughter, 1901), suggests that laughter evolved to make social life possible for human beings.


Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation (1964), analyses humor and compares it to other creative activities, such as literature and science.

Marvin Minsky in Society of Mind (1986).

Marvin Minsky suggests that laughter has a specific function related to the brain of a human being.

 In his opinion jokes and laughter are mechanisms for the brain to learn nonsense.

 For that reason, he argues, jokes are usually not as much funny when you hear them repeatedly or twice from your friend of any other person.