Using Psychophysiological Measures to Examine the Temporal Profile of Verbal Humor Elicitation

Abstract

Despite its pervasiveness in popular culture, there remains much to be learned about the psychological and physiological processes that underlie our experience of humor. In the present study, we examined the temporal profile of verbal humor elicitation using psychophysiological measures of heart rate (HR) and facial electromyography (EMG). Consistent with recent prior research on cardiovascular changes to perceived humor, we found that HR acceleration was greater for jokes relative to non-jokes, and was positively related to the level of perceived humor elicited by these jokes. In addition, activity recorded from the zygomaticus major muscle that controls smiling was found to be greater for jokes relative to non-jokes. To link these physiological changes to the psychological processes that govern humor comprehension, we took the initial inflection point of the zygomatic EMG response as a marker for the onset of humor comprehension, and used this marker to probe the pattern of cardiovascular activity at this time-point. We estimated the onset of the humor response to occur during the initial HR deceleration phase, and found that jokes relative to non-jokes elicited a decreased HR response at this time-point. This result questions the previously forwarded notion that the psychological “moment of insight” that signals the start of the humor response is always associated with heightened cardiovascular activity. This discrepancy is discussed in relation to possible differences in the cognitive processes required to comprehend different forms of humor. At a broader level, our results also demonstrate the advantages of combining different psychophysiological measures to examine psychological phenomena, and illustrate how one such measure can constrain the interpretation of others.

Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Verbal Humor: A Visual-World Eye-Tracking Study

“…The time window is also in line with a study by Fiacconi and Owen (2015) who located the moment of insight, i.e., the instant a verbal joke is understood, at around 800 ms after reading the punchline. In their study participants also heard jokes and unfunny but ambiguous control texts with an incongruity arising at the very end of each story.…”

Emotion Regulation Failures Are Preceded by Local Increases in Sleep-like Activity

“…Variations in facial EMG activity were evaluated to confirm the expected association between tagged events and changes in facial expression. Moreover, given that the estimation of expressive changes based on visual inspection of the video clips may be inaccurate with respect to the actual beginning of muscular activity, the EMG signal was also inspected to determine the specific onset of each tagged event (Fiacconi & Owen, 2015). In particular, for the EMG inspection procedure, the root mean square of the filtered signals was computed using a moving-window approach (1-sec length; 1 time point steps).…”

Emotion suppression failures are associated with local increases in sleep-like activity

“…Variations in facial EMG activity were evaluated to confirm the expected association between tagged events and changes in facial expression. Moreover, given that the estimation of expressive changes based on visual inspection of the video-clips may be inaccurate with respect to the actual beginning of muscular activity, the EMG signal was also inspected to determine the specific onset of each tagged event (Fiacconi and Owen, 2015). In particular, for the EMG inspection procedure, the root mean square (RMS) of the filtered signals was computed using a moving-window approach (1-s length; 1 time-point steps).…”