Incongruity Essay

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The focus of incongruity theories of humor is cognition and it does not focus on the social and emotional aspect of humor. The theory is based on the idea that the incongruity in the stimulus determines the extent to which an individual will perceive it to be humorous. Stimulus which is perceived to be humorous has the characteristics of being peculiar, incongruous, surprising, strange, bizarre, and funny. Incongruity theories may be traced to the writings of Kant and Schopenhauer as quoted in Piddington (1963). According to Kant (1952), "laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing". Similarly, Schopenhauer stated that "the cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception …show more content…

Several cognitive theorists in the 1970s were of the view that the incongruity must be resolved, so that, it may be perceived as funny. Such a view of humor was known as “incongruity-resolution theories” which theorized that in order to “get a joke”, the incongruity in joke must be resolved. Suls (1972) proposed a ‘two-stage model’ according to which the ability to comprehend humor is crucially dependent upon the ability to resolve the incongruity between the punch line and the expectations shaped by the storyline. According to the theory, humor is divided into two different states: surprise and coherence. Surprise is a feeling generated by an unexpected situation. To comprehend a joke, however, one must go beyond the state of surprise and formulate a new, coherent interpretation of the information. This theory views humor as a problem solving task. The incongruity in the situation is resolved by transforming it into a congruous one. Shultz (1976) also proposed a theory that humour is created by a multistage process in which an initial incongruity is created, and then some further information causes that incongruity to be

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