Up to this
point it has been explained how scholars and philosophers of different epochs
have tried to give a definition to the phenomenon of humour.
From now on
more recent theories will be enunciated, which will let us understand which is
that mechanism that sets off the spark and let realize what happens when a joke
is being told, in a few words, the decoding process, so the incongruity theory.
What happens in a person’s mind when he is reading or listening to a joke?
What happens in a person’s mind when he is reading or listening to a joke?
We all have
in our brain a cognitive model, a mental structure which is the synthesis of
past experiences, when the information coming are dissimilar to the model, we
feel an “incongruity”.
When we listen to a joke our brain elaborates the information distinguishing between two phases; in the first phase we detect the situation with the first part denied from the last part and we perceive the incongruity, while in the second phase we put to use a mechanism aimed to give sense to the conclusion, reconciling the incongruous parts.
When we listen to a joke our brain elaborates the information distinguishing between two phases; in the first phase we detect the situation with the first part denied from the last part and we perceive the incongruity, while in the second phase we put to use a mechanism aimed to give sense to the conclusion, reconciling the incongruous parts.
The first
author who talked about incongruity connected to laugh was Schopenhauer: “The
reason why we laugh, anyway, is simply the sudden perception of incongruity
between a concept and the real objects that have been though on its base, the
laugh itself is the expression of this incongruity”...
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