Don't Worry, It's Not Real: How Humor and Violation Severity Varies with Hypothetical Psychological Distance

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/1831ck40d

Abstract

We seek to examine how the level of “hypotheticality” (how real or abstract something seems) affects humor in this study. Under the Benign Violation Theory of humor (McGraw & Warren, 2010), or BVT, humor is a result of a benign violation. Psychological distance can enhance or limit humor based on the ability to reduce a sense of threat. Previous research has been limited to extreme violations either mild or severe. The purpose of our study is to give depth to intermediary violation severity and how they interact with humor and distance. We hypothesize the moderately hypothetical condition is the funniest as a close stimulus will be too close and uncomfortable to be humorous, and a distant one will be irrelevant. Two studies were conducted using first 76 university students and secondly 388 MTurk workers. The results did not reveal any significant differences in humor level between hypotheticality and severity.

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