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Nymph piss and gravy orgies : local and global contrast effects in relational humor
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Siew, Cynthia S. Q., Engelthaler, Tomas and Hills, Thomas Trenholm (2022) Nymph piss and gravy orgies : local and global contrast effects in relational humor. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 48 (7). pp. 1047-1063. doi:10.1037/xlm0001120
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001120
Abstract
How does the relation between two words create humor? In this paper, we investigated the effect of global and local contrast on the humor of word pairs. We capitalized on the existence of psycholinguistic lexical norms by examining violations of expectations set up by typical patterns of English usage (global contrast) and within the local context of the words within the word pairs (local contrast). Global contrast was operationalized as lexical-semantic norms for single-words and local contrast was operationalized as the orthographic, phonological, and semantic distance between the two words in the pair. Through crowdsourced (Study 1) and best-worst (Study 2) ratings of the humor of a large set of word pairs (i.e., compounds), we find evidence of both global and local contrast on compound-word humor. Specifically, we find that humor arises when there is a violation of expectations at the local level, between the individual words that make up the word pair, even after accounting for violations at the global level relative to the entire language. Semantic variables (arousal, dominance, concreteness) were stronger predictors of word pair humor whereas form-related variables (number of letters, phonemes, letter frequency) were stronger predictors of single-word humor. Moreover, we also find that semantic dissimilarity increases humor, by defusing the impact of low-valence words—making them seem more amusing—and by enhancing the incongruence of highly imageable pairs of concrete words.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
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| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology | ||||||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Wit and humor, Wit and humor -- Psychological aspects, Wit and humor -- History and criticism, Semantics (Philosophy) , Pragmatics , Metaphor | ||||||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition | ||||||||||||
| Publisher: | American Psychological Association | ||||||||||||
| ISSN: | 0278-7393 | ||||||||||||
| Official Date: | July 2022 | ||||||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 48 | ||||||||||||
| Number: | 7 | ||||||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 1047-1063 | ||||||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1037/xlm0001120 | ||||||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | "©American Psychological Association, 2021. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001120 | ||||||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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