Laughter and Literature: A Play Theory of Humor

Boyd, Brian

doi:10.1353/phl.2004.0002

Cited by 48 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The Superiority Theory is used in racist and bullying jokes ( Hodson and MacInnis, 2016 ; Billig, 2001 ; Ford et al., 2008 ; Philips 1984 ). Play theory, which indicates that humor involves playing with words and objects ( Boyd, 2004 ; Eastman, 1936 ). Relief or release theory, which perceives humor as a constant wrestle between id, ego, and super ego.…”

Section: Humor In Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

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COVID-19 humor in Jordanian social media: A socio-semiotic approach

Hussein¹,

Aljamili

2020

Heliyon

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The Coronavirus has wrapped the whole universe with a mood of fear, depression, anxiety and loss of hope. It has made countries of the world, west and east, rich and poor, advanced and underdeveloped, all engaged in a common task: facing one ‘invisible’ enemy; the pandemic. The consequences are conditions that, the UN states, have not been experienced since the horrific conditions of World War II resulting into heavy toils in the number of victims. The normal course of life has now changed. The pressing demand is the adaptation to various new measures including curfews and the restrictions on mass mobility. These conditions managed to alter the long-established rhythm of daily course of life. This paper focuses on how Jordanian social media is contributing in overcoming Pandemic anxiety burdens and offering relief. For this purpose, the study undertakes a two-track task. A survey is compiled to elicit social media users' opinions concerning the effect of humor on people's well-being. Participants were given questions on humor and were also asked to give their impressions on a selection of 20 humorous figures attached as a link within the survey. 1274 participants responded. Likert's five-point scale was adapted to analyze the data. Second, the paper examined these twenty selected memes and caricatures extracted from Jordanian social media websites. The study applied Kress and Leeuween's approach of social semiotics. The objective is to identify and analyze specific semiotic patterns in COVID-19 related caricatures and memes in Jordanian social media in order to demonstrate how humor can be used as means of softening the grim mood created by the Pandemic through examining the data from a social-semiotic perspective.

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Section: Humor In Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2. Play theory, which indicates that humor involves playing with words and objects (Boyd, 2004;Eastman, 1936). 3.…”

Section: Humor In Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 humor in Jordanian social media: A socio-semiotic approach

Hussein¹,

Aljamili

2020

Heliyon

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“…Chimpanzee have far superior short-term memory than humans (Inoue and Matsuzawa 2007). Perhaps the most striking indication of the rich inner lives of animals is the capacity for play (Boyd 2004):…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Consciousness of Reality

Glattfelder¹

2019

Information—Consciousness—Reality

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Finally, the human mind faces its own nature. By extending the information-theoretic paradigm, the informational nature of consciousness is uncovered. This gives rise to the very first formal description of consciousness. In attempts to bridge the chasm between the objective and subjective, scientists and philosophers have opened up to the unspeakable. The nature of consciousness, as has been suggested by ancient Eastern and shamanic traditions, is necessarily universal and primal. The notion of spirituality is creeping back into science. Moving towards a more empirical analysis, the enigma of intelligence is discussed, arising in decentralized systems and even in inanimate structures. Then, the surprising therapeutic effects of psychedelics is discovered, next to a myriad of transcendental planes of being, accessible to pure consciousness. Moreover, peer-reviewed studies are appearing in the physics literature describing mind-matter interactions in double-slit quantum experiments-a long suspected connection by many pioneers of quantum mechanics. As the cracks in the current edifice of science continually grow, the new informationtheoretic paradigm is embraced. Beginning with an information ontology, a radical participatory ontology is hinted at. In essence, the human mind is witnessing the most radical paradigm shift in its own history. The well-served and previously glorious materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview is yielding to a novel scientific conception of subjective consciousness and objective reality-and their unexpected intimate kinship. Level of mathematical formality: low. Consciousness is a truly puzzling phenomenon. For one, my own consciousness is the only element of existence I am personally aware of. Through the flow of subjective experiences I perceive an external reality and myself demarcated from it. I assume that other human minds-and to some extent non-human minds-experience a similar structure in this eternal moment of "now." Strangely however, the subjective itself is very hard to objectify. The totality of perception, including every memory, is notoriously unreliable and misleading (Chap. 11). How then, should one try to comprehend the fundamental nature of consciousness? Moreover, is the external world our senses are seemingly reporting to us about really "out there?"

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“…Happiness can elicit positive feelings in others through a process of emotional contagion [20]. Also, humor can positively affect well-being [21]; suggest empathy, trust [22], and intelligence [23]; and reduce social distance by indicating shared expectations and friendly intentions [24]. Positive effects have been observed additionally in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI): for example, in increased intention to interact with a fun robot [25], higher positive affect due to skillfully operating a happy-looking robot [26], good overall impression of two robots performing a humorous routine [27], and softened mood of interactions after a robot told jokes [28].…”

Section: Avoiding Playfulness Gone Wrong In Motionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Avoiding Playfulness Gone Wrong: Exploring Multi-objective Reaching Motion Generation in a Social Robot

Cooney

Sant'Anna

2017

Int J of Soc Robotics

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Companion robots will be able to perform useful tasks in homes and public places, while also providing entertainment through playful interactions. "Playful" here means fun, happy, and humorous. A challenge is that generating playful motions requires a non-trivial understanding of how people attribute meaning and intentions. The literature suggests that playfulness can lead to some undesired impressions such as that a robot is obnoxious, untrustworthy, unsafe, moving in a meaningless fashion, or boring. To generate playfulness while avoiding such typical failures, we proposed a model for the scenario of a robot arm reaching for an object: some simplified movement patterns such as sinusoids are structured toward appearing helpful, clear about goals, safe, and combining a degree of structure and anomaly. We integrated our model into a mathematical framework (CHOMP) and built a new robot, Kakapo, to perform dynamically generated motions. The results of an exploratory user experiment were positive, suggesting that: Our proposed system was perceived as playful over the course of several minutes. Also a better impression resulted compared with an alternative playful system which did not use our proposed heuristics; furthermore a negative effect was observed for several minutes after showing the alternative motions, suggesting that failures are important to avoid. And, an inverted u-shaped correlation was observed between motion length and degree of perceived playfulness, suggesting that motions should neither be too short or too long and that length is also a factor which can be considered when generating playful motions. A short follow-up study provided some additional support for the idea that playful motions which seek to avoid failures can B Martin Cooney martin.daniel.cooney@gmail.com 1 School of Information Technology, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Halland, Sweden be perceived positively. Our intent is that these exploratory results will provide some insight for designing various playful robot motions, toward achieving some good interactions.

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Laughter and Literature: A Play Theory of Humor

Cited by 48 publications

References 28 publications

COVID-19 humor in Jordanian social media: A socio-semiotic approach

COVID-19 humor in Jordanian social media: A socio-semiotic approach

The Consciousness of Reality

Avoiding Playfulness Gone Wrong: Exploring Multi-objective Reaching Motion Generation in a Social Robot

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