Something You Should Know - SYSK TRENDING: What Makes Things Funny

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

You probably laugh every day—at something someone says, a scene in a show, or a random moment that just hits you the right way. But have you ever stopped to wonder why something is funny? Why one person bursts out laughing while another barely cracks a smile? Humor feels spontaneous, but researchers say there is actually a structure behind it. Certain patterns, expectations, and subtle violations of those expectations seem to trigger laughter. In other words, what makes something funny may not be as random as it seems. And laughter itself isn’t just entertainment. It can reduce stress, strengthen social bonds, and even influence how we connect with other people. That may explain why we actively seek out comedy—in movies, TV, and live performances—even when we don’t need it. Caleb Warren, assistant professor at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona and lead author of the study What Makes Things Funny (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1088868320961909), joins me to explain the science behind humor. He explores what triggers laughter, why humor varies so much from person to person, and what laughter reveals about how our brains process the world around us. If you’ve ever wondered why something makes you laugh—or why it doesn’t—this is a fascinating look at something we all experience but rarely understand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs' national series on the Canadian Standard of Living, productivity and innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it. There are many things to worry about today, and a lot of people are for feeling on edge, but it seems that humor is always there to uplift people's spirits and make them feel better. So how does that happen? What makes something funny? Why do we laugh at a clever joke,

an awkward moment, or even something a little inappropriate? It turns out humor isn't just random. It follows patterns our brains are wired to recognize. So that's why today's S-Y-S-K trending topic is what makes things funny. In my conversation with marketing and psychology researcher Caleb Warren, who studies humor and how it works, we explore the science behind what makes things funny, from surprise and timing to the fine line between comfort and discomfort. So get ready to rethink what makes you laugh and learn why humor is so important for all of us right after this.

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Text S-Y-S-K to 64,000. Message in day. data rates may apply. I imagine that every day you laugh, at least a little, or you smile because you saw something or read something funny. Laughter, humor, funny, it's all part of life. But what purpose does this serve? Why do we laugh?

What is it that makes something funny? Is laughter the best medicine? Why do we seek it out? Why do we go to comedy shows, watch comedy movies? What does it all do? Well, as you might imagine, laughter is actually a serious area of study. And one of the people doing the research on this is Caleb Warren. He is an assistant professor at Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona,

former assistant professor at Texas A&M University, and lead author of a study called What Makes Things Funny? Which, if you'd like to read it, there's a link to. it in the show notes. Hi, Caleb. Welcome to something you should know. Hi, thanks so much for having me today. Sure. So people obviously know what funny is because we all laugh all the time. We all like to laugh. I think we all like to laugh. But why do you study it? Why is this important to study? The big reason that I find it important to study is that humor, comedy, laughter are a reaction that we have, often when something seems wrong or off, or there are cultural differences

or miscommunications or misunderstanding, something is potentially wrong. And it would be really easy to get overwhelmed by all of these often minor or inconsequential or sometimes really even more major bad things that are happening to us personally and in the world. And humor is one of the tools, or at least one of the responses, a more adaptive and positive response, that we can have to the either minor inconveniences or sometimes even more major problems that we encounter. So what is it that makes something funny? I mean, you just kind of alluded to it.

But people laugh at the oddest things. They laugh at things that are clearly meant to be funny, but they also laugh at things because they weren't meant to be funny. So what is it that makes funny? Yeah, this is one of the main questions I've been studying for over a decade now. And I want to begin with a wrong answer. And there was this whole website. I'm not sure if it still exists,

but when I started called The Secret to Humor is Surprise. I think that fits with a lot of people's intuition. It's like, well, what makes something funny? It needs to be unexpected. And that's just not the case. There are many instances of things that are unexpected that are not funny. Like if you were to get hit by a car or your love going where to die. And then there are plenty of things that are expected that are funny.

So the writers of South Park killed the same character in 77 of the first 78 episodes, and people presumably continued to find that funny. Comedians often do callbacks to earlier jokes. And in studies that have systematically looked at this, when they had some people, they showed them stand-up routines of people like Phyllis Diller and Bill Cosby before we knew he was a monster, and they would have one group of people say, all right, what do you think the comedian's going to say next

after stopping the tape right before a joke and another group say how funny they thought the joke was when they heard it through and the more predictable the joke was, the less surprising it was, the funnier it was. So this is sort of where I started looking at this question. So if humor is not about what's surprising,

then what is it? And the answer we came to is that humor tends to occur when something appears to be wrong or off, but at the same time you think it's okay. So we call these benign violations. Maybe one of the more universal examples of humor, or laughter, is tickling.

Tickle is sort of a, usually a light touch to a body part vulnerable from attack, from someone you trust. And a tickle is basically a, it's like an attack. So there's a violation, but at the same time it's benign. You know it's okay because it doesn't actually hurt, and it's from someone you trust.

tickling doesn't lead to laughter. The same touch doesn't lead to laughter if you try to do it to yourself because there's no threat, there's no attack, there's no violation. Tickling also doesn't produce laughter if it's not someone you trust. If like some creepy dude in the street comes up to you and tries to tickle you, probably you would not laugh. You'd probably run away in fear. So that's one example of more of a physical type of violation.

But violations can be linguistic. So many puns, one used in humor studies. Like, when is a door, not a door, when it's a jar. So there's a logic violation. The door isn't a jar, like the object, a jar, but there's a second meaning of a jar, which does apply to the door. So there's a linguistic violation mistake, but at the same time it seems correct according to an alternative interpretation.

Is there a, is there a some sort of evolutionary benefit, do you know? I mean, it doesn't, doesn't it seem that humor kind of takes the edges off the day, that humor kind of brightens the day, that, you know, laughter's the best medicine, that there's some sort of therapeutic effect here that it's other than just, you know, it's not serious, so it must be funny? The evolutionary story behind humor and amusement and laughter and why they evolved, it's still debated. So one piece of evidence is you see laughter before you see language.

Babies laugh before they can speak. And laughter is also far more common when other people are around. So it suggests that some form of communication that it might serve a communication function. And if it does, then what would you want to communicate? That would be so important that it would be one of the first things to communicate. I mean, sort of crying, sort of help me, is one of the first things, at least the babies happen. But laughter happens after and before words, so it's probably still something important.

And if we look at when people laugh, a lot of times it's when there's something that seems like it's a threat, that it's wrong, but it's not. And my sense is laughter is a way to signal something that could be bad is actually okay. And this is useful in a number of situations. When you hear other people laughing, you know, okay, there's no, you know, that wasn't actually a bear. It was actually just a funny, it was actually just a shadow. It can help people sort into different groups. If you appreciate the same type of humor, then you can know like, all right, they're more likely to be on my side. They're a better alliance partner, a better friend.

So I think humor can have multiple adaptive benefits, but my belief is the most likely reason humor initially involved was as a way to communicate that something that seems like it could have been a problem is actually okay. So you can relax. I've always thought it was interesting how, as you just talked about, how you can watch something, say, at home on TV. And it's funny, but you don't laugh. But if you're in a group watching that same thing, people seem much more likely to laugh because there are other people in the room.

And I've always found that interesting and never really understood why. Yeah, that's absolutely the case. There is a researcher, I believe he's passed, but he did fantastic research on laughter. And he basically went out into, rather than studying jokes, which is what, you know, 95% of humor researchers do. He went out and with a microphone and, like, recorded when people actually laugh. And he did diary studies or I don't know. He did a number of things to get where people were actually laughing rather than either where they said they laughed or looking in a lab where is not a natural case for people to laugh. And by far the best predictor of whether someone's laughing is when they're with someone else. And usually it's at these really mundane comments.

Like, hey, I'll see you later, which kind of, I think, suggests that laughter serves some sort of social function. And even if you take some of the same thing, like a joke from a stand-up routine, for example, that make a person laugh. And you put it, you know, you might read it on your own in text when there's no one else around. You might think, oh, that's funny, but you're a lot less likely to laugh. So that's repeating what you said. But I think the reason is that because humor serves these social functions, it helps show, like, look, we don't need to worry here, or look, we're on the same page. We have the same understanding. We have the same goals. I'm friendly. I'm not threatened by you.

So it has all these, I think, social signals. And what about that phrase, you know, laughter is the best medicine? I've always felt that laughter has some benefit, that physiological benefit that you just don't get from anything else. I don't think laughter is the best medicine in most situations. Well, right. I mean, if you have heart disease, a few laughs isn't going to help you much. Yes. But there does seem, don't, you know what I mean, though, that like when you have heart disease.

have a like a really good laugh. There's something that just feels good, even afterwards, that there's a lingering, the stressless, God, that was funny. Yes. I think there's two caveats to this. Laughter is the best medicine. The first one is it really depends what you're trying to cure. And so if we're talking, I don't know, if you just had a heart attack, there are better cures to, you know, get someone's heart beating again. Probably. But caveat two is it depends on what you're laughing about. And so there are many different types of humor. When there's no victim in humor, when there's no target, when there's no butt of the joke,

it's a lot more likely to benefit someone's health. The third caveat to this laughter is the best medicine. There is incredibly strong evidence that as people cope with loss, as they get over, say, the loss of a loved one, they laugh more often. The evidence for the causal direction is less clear. So it could just be that humor is more like a thermometer, meaning like once you've already coped with something that's bad, you're able to laugh about it.

Or it could be that laughing about something bad that's happened makes you feel better about it. It helps you cope with it. Most likely the effect goes in both directions, but it's unclear which is stronger. And the evidence that humor absolutely helps, even mental health, where I think the effects are strongest and most promising is not airtight.

We're talking about what makes things funny. And my guest is Caleb Warren, assistant professor at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. And he is lead author of a study called What Makes Things Funny. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca.

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From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. So Caleb, when you think about the people you get along with, one of the things that bonds people to get them to get along is having a shared sense of humor. that, you know, if you just sit around and talk about war and disease, you know, it's hard to connect with somebody, but over something funny, it's easier to connect. Absolutely. But even, you know, the war and the pandemic can be sources of humor after some distance time. So distance, psychological distance, which can come from time, reduces threat. So using the language I talked about earlier, it can make these threats or violations seem more benign. And that's why a lot of times when we're talking about, you know, war. stories is sort of the genre name. People are often laughing about them, like these terrible things that happen when you're recounting them years later, in part because the distance has helped cope.

But to go back to another point you made, like, you know, when we're meeting with friends or people we connect with, there's, you know, we often laugh, we want to laugh. I think that's very true. And I think one reason, one reason humor is particularly effective, whether it's a sort of measure of that you've bonded or a tool for helping people. bond is it does signal you have similar beliefs and similar values. So if what we laugh at is something that we see as wrong, but also we're okay with, it sort of gives you double information about what this person's beliefs and values are in the world and what they think is okay and what they don't think

is okay. So it can help you sort into these groups of people who share the same values, beliefs, and goals. Right. Because how many times have you been with someone who has said something that they think is funny and it's just not funny to you. It's inappropriate or it's too soon or something. And man, you just, it's like a punch in the face that I want to, I want nothing to do with this person. Absolutely. I mean, you start hearing someone tell jokes that they think is funny and, I mean, like, for

me, they sound super racist or sexist. I'm like, ooh, I don't know that I want to, I don't know that I want to be friends with this person or. at least I question their beliefs in this area. And humor, like one of the downsides of it is it often provides cover for that. It can provide cover for really nasty behavior and someone can just say, oh, you know, I was joking. And maybe they were, but that is one of the, especially with this type of humor that's sometimes called aggressive humor or disparagement humor, it can be used as a form of social control

where you know you like even the playground bullies like they'll keep down weaker weaker kids by you know by laughing at them by making fun of them and it sort of helps keep that social structure in place where the dominant class of people can sort of in some ways socially oppress others and say like oh it's not really oppression and it's just a joke. You know, we don't really mean it, but they do.

But there's also this, you can't say that culture that we live in today. People are so easily offended that it makes it hard to know, you know, what's funny, where's the line? And comedians complain that they're being silenced to some degree. A lot of comedians, even ones that I see as kind of benign like Jerry Seinfeld, have been complaining like they won't perform on college campuses anymore because there's a lot of people who are not accepting this is just a joke. Right.

I think in many cases it's a very good thing, but it's it can also go too far where, and who gets to decide where the line is is one of the problems. But comedians who are joking about things that they see as innocent or, you know, they're not punching down. Others will see as, oh, you know, you're making fun of this community or that's not okay to hold that belief. And it's really difficult to say, it's impossible to say where that line is because everyone has a different, everyone has a different view of what's, what's okay and what's not. And that often comes out with humor. If you're laughing at something, there's somewhere there

where you're signaling like, that's okay with me. And if you're not, and the violation's clear, as it is if there's sort of a joke making fun of somebody, laughter signals a bit about your beliefs about what's okay and what's not for that reason. What is it about this, this topic, that in your research, because you, you know, most people don't explore this as deeply or as seriously as you do that you found or that you find or that people ask you about that is so surprising. Anything? One thing that has surprised me is how difficult it is to get people to be funny, like when you prompt them.

Like try to, try to create a funny advertisement, try to write a funny story, try to write a joke. Most people can't do it. And there's, and I mean, I should have, this is one where I could have internalized. Like, even, like, I study humor, but if you ask me to be funny, I'm going to fail. Comedians spend years honing their crafts, and it's not like athletes where they peak

in their young 20s or mid-20s. Like, most comedians peak much later because it takes so much longer to both learn the skills, but even learn the material. Most comedians, they have sort of an empirical approach to build, their sets. Like they try something out and if people laugh, they keep going with it. And if they don't, they scrap it and come up with a new idea. So I guess one of the surprising findings to me

is that there's this idea that if we can create more laughter and comedy and amusement in the world, the world will be a better place. And I don't disagree with that, but I think it's very hard to do. And it takes a lot more than just encouraging people to be funnier. And one of the places where I think this idea is most dangerous is the workplace. So there's, you know, consult and some scholars peddling this idea like, oh, we need to encourage people to use more humor, more comedy in the workplace. I'm very skeptical of this idea. Although workplaces where people laugh tend to be happier, and workers and managers who make others laugh tend to be better managers, I don't think that this is the answer because encouraging people to try to be funny,

if they're not already funny, is more likely to fail. And when people try to be funny, but aren't, there can be huge consequences. My go-to example is a woman named Justine Sacco who wrote this tweet trying to be funny about before she got on a plane to Africa and by the time she landed, the tweet had blown up. Going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS, just kidding, I'm white, was the tweet.

It was her attempt at a joke. And we don't know how many people found it funny, but even if it was only like 10% who didn't find it funny, they blew up Twitter and people were like, this is so racist, how could you say such a things? And she was fired from her job by the time she landed. And this sort of thing,

I think, happens fairly regularly, even if half of the people appreciate your joke, half might be offended. And the costs of trying to be funny and failing are huge. And it's really difficult to try to be funny. And even the people who are funny, who are successful in the workplace, it's probably not because they're trying to be funny more.

It's probably because they have higher intelligence, higher creativity, understanding of the culture. They have these other skills that in addition to making them be funny are also making them good managers or not good managers because they're funny. One thing I'd like quickly to have you talk about is humor in advertising because it's used a lot and we hear stories that it fails a lot. It may be funny but it didn't really sell the product. So can you talk about that? There are all sorts of caveats. One, people laugh at the funny thing, but they're less likely to pay attention to everything else in the same environment. So if you have an ad where you're like,

you do a joke and then say, oh, by the way, buy my product, people will remember the joke, they won't remember your product. That's problem one. Problem two is most attempts to be funny fail. Now advertisers will hire agencies who are very good at creating humor. But even then, a lot of them, even if they're funny to some of the audience, it's likely to upset other people because in order to create humor, you need this violation. And not everyone's going to see it as but are funny. And when that happens, and even when people think it's funny, they can dislike the brand or the advertiser as a result. So in one of our studies, Volkswagen has these very dated old ads where they show this crunched car and everyone's okay. And the message is it's, you know, it's a

safe car. But the way they deliver it is they say sooner or later, your wife's going to drive this home. The implication is drawing on the sexist stereotype that women can't drive. And presumably men found that funny. And we did an updated version of this only with men as an audience. And men do think it's funny. And they look at the ad and they find it funny, but they're less likely to like the brand that uses this sort of sexist advertising, even when they think the sexist advertising is funny. And I think this is also true socially. If you're using sort of put down or aggressive humor or even self-defeating humor, people might be laughing, but they're not going to like you anymore. And there's also a true in advertising. Well, I don't think I've ever taken such a serious

look at something so light as humor, but it's fun to do it. Caleb Warren has been my guest. He's an assistant professor at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, and he's the lead author of a study called What Makes Things Funny? And in the show notes for this episode, there's a link to that study. Thanks for being here, Caleb. This was fun. Thanks so much for having me on and for taking this topic. seriously. You bet. I'm Mike Rothers. Thank you for listening to this SYSK trending episode of Something You Should Know.