Suggestions of Humor and

their effect on

Perception of Humor

Cutamora, Jet

Mahinay, Aristotle Anton

Mangubat, Danstarsky

Bongo, Johann

Abstract

This study's objective is to find out about the suggestions of humor and its effects on our own
perception of humor. The researchers gathered participants from the University of San Carlos

and showed them two videos: one without any suggestions of humor and one with them. Then

the participants were asked to answer a questionnaire that would gauge how funny and amusing

they found the video. The results found out that suggestions of humor do not have an effect on a

person's perception of humor.

Suggestions of Humor and their effect on Perception of Humor

Humans are highly social beings. As a matter of fact, one of the most fundamental human

motivation is to form bonds with others ("Humor and laughter are prevalent", 2013). Not

surprisingly, in order to form this bond, humor is one of the many tools that people use in order

to connect. This is because generally, people respond more positively to each other when humor

is present (Weimer, 2013). However, fundamental as humor is to a human's social life, it works

quite complicated. This complication can be said due to the fact that perception of humor is

personal: what is funny to one individual can be uninteresting or even irritating to another

(Duncan, Nelson, & Frontczak, 1984). Stated differently, a good humor may or may not
necessarily produce a laughter from its audience.

According to Wiley & Sons (2002), there are universal categories of stimuli which trigger

humorous reactions in all human beings, such as; incongruity, absurdity, pleasant surprise, being

startled, and emotional chaos remembered in tranquility, which are all sort of requirements and

experiences or scenarios, for one to laugh. Humor is personal because it depends on the

individuals own unique perception of these universal characteristics. A joke for example may not

be funny to an individual under a pleasant surprise experience, because his own unique

perception of humor does not perceive as being pleasantly surprised, as humorous. A joke may

be funny on the other hand, to a person under the same experience, if his own unique perception

of humor perceives a pleasant surprise as humorous. This accounts for the fact why each

individual may be tickled by events that are different from those that tickle others. In short, every

individual has a distinct sense of humor, which can be translated unto as a perception of humor.

However, given what we know about humor and its subjective nature, it is important to

know that not every individual needs to hear a joke or feel a stimuli to be humorous, to actually

laugh. A study made by Provine (1996) proves that laughter is indeed independent of humor. In

his study, he found out that only 10 to 20 per cent of laughter was actually connected to anything

remotely resembling a joke. Most laughter was in fact either triggered by a banal comment or

used to punctuate everyday speech. He argued that people are 50 per cent more likely to laugh

when speaking than when listening and 30 times gigglier in a social setting than when alone

without a social surrogate such as a television. His conclusion was that the essential ingredient

for laughter is not a joke but another person.

Furthermore, Gendry (n.d.) says that laughter falls into five categories and as such,

cannot be defined in only a single manner. In short, a clear-cut definition of what laughter is, is
by itself, insufficient. The five categories of laughter are: (1) spontaneous laughter, which is

triggered by different external stimuli and positive emotions unrelated to ones free will, (2)

stimulated laughter, happens as a result of the physical contact or action (reflex) of certain

stimuli, (3)induced laughter which is of chemical in nature, (4) pathological laughter, which is

often associated with crying and tends to be uncontrollable and excessive, and finally (5)

voluntary simulated laughter, which is triggered by oneself at will. These five categories, as well

as Provine's results on his study, tells that laughter can be dependent or independent of humor.

One last factor however accounts for why people laugh. And that is: the human brain.

According to Scott (2015), the human brain's premotor cortical which controls the movement of

facial muscles, are wired with mirror circuits that prime us to copy another's behavior when we

recognize their emotions, such as in the case of hearing a laughing person, or seeing and

witnessing sounds and scenes of scream or terror. This is one of the reasons why laughter is said

to be contagious, and why one unexplainably and uncontrollably laughs whenever a laughing

person is present.

Seeing as to as to how laughter is independent of humor, and humor a subjective matter,

it hasn't really been truly established if one works the other way. The researchers would want to

find out whether or not laughter can affect one's own perception of humor, in some way. The

laughter in the environment, in any form whether it be prerecorded or real, is called a suggestion

of humor, and the researchers would want to find out whether it affects one's own subjective and

personal sense of humor, or perception of humor. In short, the researchers would want to find out

if humor can be dependent of a presence of laughter to be humorous. Does suggestions of humor,

affect one's own perception of humor?

The researchers hypothesize that suggestions of humor really do have an effect on a

person's perception of humor. As social beings, humans are natural conformers. According to

Stetka (2015), the human desire to conform is inborn or at least active, at a very young age. This

urge to conform probably evolved to be stronger than that of our ape cousins because group

harmony was extremely important in growing hominine communities dependent on the exchange

of cultural information. Conforming boosts these feelings of sameness. In the same way, the

researchers think that hearing laughter or suggestions of humor creates a need to conform, thus

explaining why people think that the joke they heard was funny --even when it's really not, to

them. The researchers speculate, that one's own perception of humor can be changed, adding

unto it laughter as one of the universal categories of stimuli, through the power of conformity.

Methodology

Design: The experiment design used was an independent samples T test where in the

independent variable was the presence of a laugh track in the background of the video and the

dependent variable was how funny and amusing the participants found the video.

Participants: The res earchers used a convenient sampling method in acquiring their

participants. The participants came from various college courses and the senior high in the USC

Talamban Campus. The participants were comprised of 17 males and 25 females.

 Materials: The materials that were used in this experiment were two video clips of the

same scene from the show The Big Bang Theory, episode 8 of season 1 in particular. One video

had the laugh track in the background edited out of the video, while the other video had the laugh

track left in. A questionnaire was also used to measure how funny and amusing the participants

found the video using a 1-10 scale with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.

Procedure: Firstly when the participants were selected to join in the experiment, they

signed the consent form and underwent random assignment.

Both procedures were conducted equally between the two groups. Firstly, they had a brief

introduction of what the experiment was about. One of the researchers explained to the

participants that they were performing an experiment on suggestions of humor and its effect on

their perception of humor. The participants were then told that they would be watching a short

video of , and that they would have to answer a questionnaire after. Immediately after, the

introduction, the lights were dimmed and the video was played. The control group was shown

the video without the laugh track while the experimental group was shown the video with the

laugh track. When the video finished, the participants were given the questionnaire and were

asked to answer it. They then gave the questionnaires back to the researchers and were debriefed

about the experiment. After everything, participants were given their incentive and were deemed

finished in the participation of the experiment.

Results

Respondents who were exposed to the video without the laugh track showed

a similar response in perception of humor(M=5.4,SD=2.31) to those who watched the video with
the laugh track(M=5.9 , SD=1.81 ). t(40)=-.668, p> 0.5

In terms of amusement, those who saw the video without the laugh track had a slightly

higher mean (M= 6.2, SD=2.2) than those with the laugh track. (M=6.0,SD=1.8). t(40)=.372, p

> 0.5

Discussion

This studys purpose was to find out if the presence of suggestions of humor in the

background of a form of media would affect how a person would perceive the humor being

suggested. The study reported statistically insignificant results. It found out that the participants

who were subject to suggestions of humor found the media just as humorous and amusing as the

participants who were not subject to suggestions of humor.

The results of the experiment could be attributed to the findings of Duncan, Nelson and

Frontczak (1984), as their findings about the subjective and personal implications of one's

perception of humor indicate that the participants in the experiment did not find the material
humorous despite the laugh track in the video suggesting that it was While during the

experiment, it was observable that some participants were laughing during the presentation of the

video but did not score in the extremes when answering the questionnaire, occurrences like that

probably resembled the findings of Provine(1996) in his study where he linked that laughter and

the perception of humor ran independently and did not work with one another. Additionally ,

with Wiley and Son's (2002) findings of the universal categories of stimuli that can generate

humorous reactions, like incongruity and absurdity. It can be assumed that the participants were

not able to detect the types of stimuli present in the video with their perception of humor. Major

limitations of this study include the sample sized used, which was only 42, A larger sample size

might have provided a more significance statistic that would support the hypothesis.

There were difficulties experienced during the conduction of the experiment, as it was

conducted over a short period of time -- 1 hour to be exact - in which participants were difficult

to find resulting in the researchers splitting their labor into finding participants and performing

the experiment.

Results from this study have not demonstrated strong-enough evidence that would support the

hypothesis. Thus the researchers conclude that ,based on the evidence gathered , that suggestions

of humor do not have an effect on a person's perception of humor.

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