Why we laugh is something that I wondered before reading Comedy Writing Secrets, so when I came across Chapter Two I was immediately intrigued. The reason why this interests me is that humor unlike everything else in our world and universe (well, maybe not universe) humor cannot be explained. I didn’t think that there was any sort of biological explanation to explain why some people find certain things funny and other people find them either offensive or boring. So it peaked my interest when the book mentioned that psychologist Patricia Keith-Spiegel came up with reasons why we laugh and what motivates us to laugh, the six motivations of laughter (according to Keith-Spiegel): instinct, incongruity, ambivalence, release, when we solve a puzzle and regress. Why we laugh is important to know because by understanding why we laugh, maybe we can laugh more, which would result in a happier and healthier population (in my opinion). The only thing that Keith-Spiegel left out was the possibility that we laugh sometimes just to laugh.
When I searched for things that we laugh at that shouldn’t be funny I found this website: http://ravivora.com/blog/funny-things-you-laugh-at-but-shouldn’t. This site listed eighteen things that people laugh at that they shouldn’t necessarily find funny. I chose this as the text to support my topic because in the eighteen things that the author mentions at least three of them were not supported by the six motivations for laughter that Keith-Spiegel lists. The first funny thing that people shouldn’t laugh at (according to that website) was ugly babies. Laughing at an ugly baby is not supported by any of the six motivations that Keith-Spiegel lists.
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