Perception of Contrariety in Jokes

Abstract

According to the cognitive approach to humor, the comprehension of humorous texts implies recognizing an incongruity and resolving it. This article studies whether the cognitive process involved in the recognition of incongruity is affected by the conditions that make contrariety evident or only analytically recognizable in the perceptual domain. In study 1, participants were asked to choose (condition 1) or rank (condition 2) the best humorous text among three variations of the same jokes in which the critical incongruity was a global, additive, or intermediate contrariety. In studies 2 and 3, they were asked to recognize the critical property on which these three versions of the jokes played. The findings confirmed that the perception of humor and recognition of the critical element was easier when the elements involved in the jokes were opposite in terms of global contrariety (which is the type of contrariety that is perceptually more evident and more easily perceivable).