by Gary Peterson

Created on: May 10, 2007   Last Updated: May 13, 2007

When two trains collide, it's a train wreck. When two trains-of-THOUGHT collide, it's a brain wreck. Incongruity theory describes what happens when two different thoughts hinge on a single word (e.g., train, brain). It's called humor.

When our expectations are suddenly derailed, we are surprised. If the surprise is pleasant, then we laugh. For instance:

A man is sitting at a bar when a woman walks in with a Border Collie under her arm and sits down next to him.

"Nice fox," he says.

"It's a dog." she replies.

"I know. I was talking to the dog."

We, too, assumed that the man was talking to the woman, but then there was a sudden perceptual shift. Not a problem: laugh it off. Philosophers through the ages have commented on this aspect of humor. Plato called it "impotence masquerading as fate." Kant said it was "a strained expectation reduced to nothing," and Henri Bergson cites "the mechanical encrusted upon the living" as the formula for laughter. Incongruities, all.

Incongruities can be detected by all five senses. VISUAL puns (cartoons and optical illusions) are things that look like they're not; AUDIO bloopers are like Victor Borge playing the Hungarian Rhapsody (or Spike Jones playing a whoopee cushion). There are incongruities of TOUCH like tickling or hand buzzers, and even TASTE and SMELL have to reconcile Raclette cheese: it smells bad but tastes good.

Along with incongruity, humor also has a superiority aspect: the satisfaction of elevating one's own status over others:

The man at the bar starts telling a "dumb Slobovian" joke. The bartender says, "Those two guys next to you, plus the two at the end of the bar, and I myself am a Slobovian. Do you still want to tell that joke?" The man rethinks his position. "No, I don't want to have to explain it five times."

Even puns and riddles, provide both incongruity and self-satisfaction. But laughter is always triggered by an incongruity, whether it is real or just in one's mind. Sometimes it's a familiar pattern that is broken:

A priest, a rabbi, and a mullah walk into the bar. The bartender says, "What is this - some kind of a joke?"

(Actually, it's a joke ABOUT a joke.)

Incongruity can also spark other creative processes such as invention, discovery, or art. But usually it's just a false alarm and we laugh it off. It's a subjective thing, but then - "Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

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