A review of experiments on humor.

Abstract

Although theories of humor and the comic are legion, (1, 2) most of them are based on no experimental work whatsoever. The writer here attempts a survey of the experimental work available in this field in the hope of forming a background for future experiments and a basis for theorizing.Since most of the experiments touch upon small and entirely unrelated aspects of the topic, it will perhaps be best not to attempt to group them, but to present them in chronological order.The first research to be reported in the field of humor is one by G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin (3) which was published in 1897. They received about 3,000 responses to a questionnaire sent out requesting a description of all situations which individuals considered humorous, and including questions on tickling and its effects at various ages, causes of laughter in children, laughter in animals, fun in the theater, spontaneous laughter, laughter at calamities, and the best joke in each class, including puns, repartee, practical jokes, etc.Then they classified laughs, gave a resume of theories of laughter, and concluded that all the current theories were inadequate and speculative, but that there are few more promising fields for psychological research than that of humor.There were no further experiments on our topic reported until 1905 when L. J. Martin (4), studying the psychology of aesthetics, published an article, " Experimental Prospecting in the Field of the Comic." Her material was largely composed of pictures. She used 3 methods.The first of these was undirected introspection. From this she concluded that a smiling face or an animal in a picture suggests funniness even if the picture in other respects is not humorous. She found a carry-over of humor from one picture to the next. A person's judgment of humor is greatly influenced by his physical condition. She also noted that on repeated seeing, pictures get stale, trite, and even cause a feeling of unpleasantness.She next conducted an experiment applying psycho-physical