Download john hewitt - University of Leeds

JOHN HEWITT
HUMOUR
its
Origins, Nature
and
Educational Significance
John A. Hewitt MA PhD (Cantab.)
Address for Correspondence
33 Hillyfields
Dunstable
LU6 3NS
UK
Paper presented at the BERA conference
Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh
September 11, 2003
Abstract
This paper presents the bioepistemic interpretation of humour. It argues that our liking for incongruity arose as a
mechanism for attributing relevance to different sections of a sensory data flow. Such a mechanism seems to
exist in many animal species giving rise to phenomena such as movement detectors in vision.
The functional role of incongruity selection is discussed and it is argued that, in higher animals, incongruity
selection has been coopted as an individual learning mechanism.
In humans, the linkage between incongruity and learning seems to have become adapted to create humour
which, in combination with laughter, has acquired social roles. Humour has become a means of synchronizing
group learning and, thus, a means of forming social groups; it came to serve as a broadcast social glue that
enables and rewards group formation.
Most characteristically, humour can be treated as an IFF, an Identification, Friend or Foe system that probes
group allegiance to ascertain whether other people should be treated as friend or as foe.
Introduction
General Comments
With The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin planted roots from which has grown almost all modern biological
knowledge - and his plant is still growing today. Almost all aspects of the human animal are clearer when seen
in the light modern biology sheds upon it but, despite its ubiquity and importance, humour is an exception.
Studies of humour as a phenomenon date back to Darwin himself, who devotes considerable space to it in
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Darwin (1872)). Remarkably, his work on humour
remains read and relevant to this day because the subsequent years of debate, discussion and experimentation
have not seen humour succumb to scientific investigation. It remains a puzzle - a phenomenon that stands
alone, with no obvious place in the scientific understanding of our species.
The extent of its isolation can be gauged from the way many of today’s large, university, psychology texts
contain no mention of humour or laughter. Even works specializing in cognitive psychology fail to mention it remarkable given that many theories for the origins of humour suggest that it comes from the process of
learning. Nonetheless, humour probably does arise as some kind of cognitive mechanism, a belief supported by
the widespread use of humour in educational materials and educational broadcasting.
There are two reasons for this absence of humour from the, scientific view of humanity. The first is that
science is a “serious” activity and seriousness tends to conflict with humour, making the design of
experimental protocols difficult. The second reason is the lack of any grand theory that brings humour into the
general framework of evolutionary biology - neither of Darwin’s selective mechanisms, natural selection and
sexual selection, lead to humour as an obvious consequence. The result is that, in essence, scientists have
simply lacked experimental or theoretical handles with which to grasp the problems that humour presents.
However, this author recently published his book The Architecture of Thought. which introduced
bioepistemic evolution, a generalized form of the evolutionary theory usually presented and it does suggest an
origin for humour.
Bioepistemic Evolution
Bioepistemic evolution regards data, information and knowledge as the most fundamental evolutionary
concepts. Genes are treated simply as holders for the data and knowledge involved in biological evolution. In
bioepistemic evolution, the workings of evolution involves three basic stages (data, information and
knowledge) and two basic processes (interpretation and selection) that interconvert them; a cycle of evolution
can then be summarized as “data is interpreted into information which is selected from to produce
knowledge.”
Data
is interpreted into
Information
which is selected from to produce
Knowledge
The output knowledge from each generation is stored and used as input data for the trials of another generation.
Bioepistemic evolution identifies the presence of these stages and processes in each of four ranks of
evolution, a picture that is adapted and extended from Plotkin (1994). The four ranks are :Rank1 Evolution
Rank1 evolution is biological evolution, or evolution by natural selection, during which data in genes is
interpreted into information in proteins and organisms. Evolution then selects from this information to produce
knowledge in the form of the reproductively fit genes that are passed on to the next generation. Rank1 evolution
produces level1 knowledge or genetic knowledge.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 0
Rank2 Evolution
Rank2 evolution occurs in the brain. Sensory data is transmitted to the brain from sense organs where it is
interpreted into sensory information. The brain then selects from the various possible interpretations to produce
level2 knowledge, or sensory knowledge.
Level2 knowledge is sensory knowledge and involves modes of interpretation and selection that are
confined to the receiving brain. As these modes of interpretation and selection have improved, the brain has
become a Darwinian machine - a machine that mimics evolution as a process but works much faster.
This idea that a form of evolution occurs in the brain began with the American scientist Gerald Edelman
and is now widely accepted. It implies that the brain produces knowledge that will never enter genes. Level2
knowledge is sensory knowledge that accumulates in one brain and dies with the organism possessing it.
Importantly, bioepistemic evolution suggests that one modality by which the brain attaches relevance to
level2 knowledge is incongruity selection. This previously unrecognized form of selection produces such things
as visual movement detectors, which detect incongruities between successive visual fields, or the brain’s ability
to detect changes in background noise patterns.
Bioepistemic evolution suggests that incongruity selection is implemented by causing animals to “enjoy,”
and therefore focus on, those aspects of their environment they do not presently “understand.” In this way,
incongruity selection, becomes the starting point for the evolutionary adaptations that have produced humour in
humans.
Rank3 Evolution
Level2 knowledge is sensory knowledge, selected entirely in a brain attached to sense organs. Level2
knowledge can be passed from one generation to the next by mimicry, where one animal copies the actions of
another. However, advanced animals, especially mammals, also select knowledge to transmit from one
individual to another, maternal teaching of young being a striking example.
The inheritance of deliberately transmitted knowledge is different from inheritance by mimicry. In
mimicry it is the initially ignorant receiver who selects a behaviour to copy; with deliberate transmission it is
the initially knowledgeable transmitter who selects knowledge worth transmitting. Bioepistemic evolution uses
this shift in the point of selection to distinguish rank2 evolution from rank3. So, selection of knowledge by
transmitters gives rise to level3 knowledge, otherwise known as social knowledge or culture.
Animals select information to transmit with one of two related motives. They may want to educate their
young, e.g., by teaching them hunting and feeding techniques, or they may want to control the actions of other
animals. In social animals, a desire for control will most often mean a desire to control the actions of other
group members - that is, to exercise social power.
Hence, level3 knowledge accumulates to serve two underlying purpose, those purposes being :Educational and
Political
Level3 knowledge is social knowledge and therefore intimately associated with social groups. The education of
young consists of adults teaching group norms to their offspring. Human children are born with an instinctive
desire to learn such norms, a fact clearly demonstrated by the language instinct, the drive children have to learn
language. (See Pinker (1994)). The attachment of incongruity to speech is common feature of language
learning - “What’s this? It’s a heffalump.” More developed incongruities, in more obviously humorous forms,
are a major force in adult group formation. Both phenomena indicate that the incongruity-based learning of
rank2 evolution has become adapted to the needs of level3 knowledge and that, in humans, that adaptation
manifests as humour.
Rank4 Evolution
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 1
Bioepistemic evolution identifies another social rank of evolution, rank4 evolution. Rank4 evolution is the
ethical evolution that creates the level4 knowledge, which is the subcultural or professional knowledge that
distinguishes subcultures from the greater culture.
Rank4 evolution arises in the structuration of societies, when systems of rules or codes of ethics are either
agreed between partners or mandated by social authority. When followed, these codes govern the selection of
the knowledge transmitted between members of that subculture and so unite them into it.
Rank4 evolution produces level4 knowledge, which is ethically, subculturally or professionally validated
knowledge. Humour plays no direct, general role in rank4 evolution though it will be a part of some ethical
codes. Humour will often be a practical determinant of group membership without being formally specified as
such. Nonetheless, this paper will not consider the relationships between ethics and humour. It is concerned
with the origins of humour and its role in social groups.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 2
Incongruity and Relevance
This work will not further explore general bioepistemic evolution. Instead it will move forward through the
evolutionary record to a time when organisms already possess primitive brains connected to sense organs from
which to gain an image of their surroundings. This image is a model, a representation, of the world outside that
is stored in some kind of temporary memory in the brain - in RAM, if one wishes to use computer parlance.
The sense organ, which might be an eye, passes a continuous stream of sensory data to the brain. However
advanced this brain might be, it rapidly becomes overloaded by information from this copious data stream. The
brain has a problem; it must select those interpretations that seem relevant to its life and discard those parts that
seem unimportant. Remember that the eye views the world through reflected light and none of the objects
under observation choose to send these reflections. For the most part, the world does nothing to control the way
light is reflected. The whole burden of interpreting the data flowing into the brain and selecting the
interpretation that seems important falls on the receiving brain.
So, the input data stream must be interpreted on the fly and relevant parts of that interpretation selected for
closer examination. The question is, “What general criterion can a data receiver use to select for relevance?”
One answer, and the answer that is important for this view of humour, is that the most relevant interpretations
are those that are incompatible with, which can be rephrased to incongruous with, the brain’s pre-existing
representation of the world. This is the starting point for the way bioepistemic evolution interprets the origins
of humour.
An animal’s visual data stream is used to create a model, a representation of the world. Provided all visible
objects remain still, the animal’s representation of the world remains constant. If an external object begins to
move, the corresponding region of the animal’s representation will develop incongruities in moving from one
frame to the next. Whether the animal is prey or predator, these incongruities mark parts of its visual field that
are relevant and on which the animal needs to focus its attention. In general, to identify relevance, a receiving
brain needs to select interpretational incongruities from its input sensory data stream.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 3
Minimum Features of an Incongruity Selector
Incongruity selection has implications for how sense organs and the brain work together. In particular, an
incongruity cannot be detected unless an existing representation is stored in such a way that it can be compared
with ongoing interpretations.
So, data coming from the eye must be interpreted and the resulting interpretation compared with the
preexisting representation. When incongruities, incompatibilities between the stored representation and the
ongoing interpretation, are detected they must become the target for additional attention and the results used to
update the existing stored representation. A processing device able to do this needs to have certain minimum
features, which may be described by the following picture.
Visual data must be passed first to an interpreter that converts the data stream into a stream of
interpretations. These are passed to a region that will be called the I-module. The I-module is a short term
storage that maintains these on-the-fly interpretations for the fraction of a second needed to produce the next
interpretation.
This I-module is connected to an R-module, which is a longer term memory storage area where ongoing
representations are maintained. These may, or may not, be separate areas of the brain but, since they need to
hold and compare separate descriptions of the world, it seems likely that corresponding regions of each will be
connected in parallel. The R-module also receives an input from a desire, or self-interest module that provides
political direction and an indication of how this organism would like the world to be. The self-interest module
is a long term region of storage or instinct where the self-interest and desires of an individual are maintained.
The I-module and R-module communicate with one another and so provide inputs to one another. The Imodule also has input from the data interpreter and the R-module from the self-interest module. Therefore,
both I-module and R-module have two inputs and those two inputs can contradict one another, be incongruous
with one another, in either module.
This situation is represented in the figure, which is the I/R model (Interpretation/Representation model) for
learning and humour. In this model, incongruities in the I-module trigger pleasure, which causes the creature
concerned to focus its attention on the corresponding part of its input data stream. That attention continues
until a new interpretation is established in the R-module and the creature “understands” the incongruity. Once
this new interpretation is established in the R-module, incongruity can occur there if it is in conflict with input
from the self-interest module - if, for example, a moving object in the visual field is interpreted as possessing
sharp teeth.
The I/R model is a simplified picture of animal learning but has characteristics that might be useful in our
understanding of humour. It depends upon incongruity, which is a pivotal and little understood aspect of
humour in humans and it indicates that some incongruities should induce pleasure, again an important aspect
of humour whose purpose has not been altogether clear. The I/R model does not describe human humour in all
its complexity but does offer a foundation from which such descriptions might be developed.
Note on I/R model and neural networks
From the point of view of artificial intelligence
simulations, the I/R model implies that
incongruity, and thus humour, seem to be
switching between the “use” and “self-
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 4
training” or “learning” modes characteristic of neural networks. (I am indebted to my son for this insight.)
On this basis, incongruity detection might be used to switch between “normal use,” “pleasure/learning” and “distress”
modes in the actual brain. It is unclear how many other such modes, or switches between them, real brains may possess.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 5
From Rank2 to Rank3 (From sensory knowledge to social knowledge.)
Humans, like other animals, use incongruity selection as a learning mechanism; for example, we have motion
detectors that focus our attention on moving objects. Also, like other animals and especially while children, we
are curious, want to understand everything and minutely examine everything we do not currently understand.
To this end, we watch other people at work and mimic the things they do.
Such learning mechanisms help individuals but they do not amount to the uniquely human sense of
humour. Humour is not an individual trait, it is a social, group directed phenomenon whose evolutionary
pathway must be traced through further adaptation of these individual learning mechanisms to social roles.
Knowing the evolutionary origins or neurobiological mechanisms of incongruity selection in individuals will
not tell us about the social role of humour or the adaptive benefits it offers under group selection. Those
insights demand that we look at social structures.
We need now to make a point that conventional evolutionary theorists may contest because it concerns the
holistic properties of evolution. Holistic arguments have a rather chequered history and, because it may be
contentious, this one will be approached by analogy with the human hand - though any other organ could serve.
The hand is made from skin, bone, tendons, muscle, nerves and nails etc. Each tissue has its own, individual a
role in the hand’s function but also has its own, separate evolutionary and developmental history. Human
adaptation has merged their roles to create a whole, integrated function in the hand. Evolution has holistically
assembled them around the performance of such roles as gripping and holding etc. Each of the hand’s
component tissues cooperate to enable these roles to be performed.
Thus it is with humour. As time has passed, evolution has assembled its components from various starting
points and caused them to cooperate to produce an integrated “organ” of humour that functions at a social
level. Humour is an identifiable, integrated feature in human social behaviour. Whatever the evolutionary
origin of its component parts or its neurobiological mechanism, humour cannot be comprehended merely in the
context of these component parts or mechanisms. It must be understood in terms of the functions humour
performs in social evolution, that is the functions these components cooperate to perform once they are
assembled into the integrated whole that is humour. Further analogies could be drawn here with the way
between different protein molecules cooperate to produce cells or with the way, in multicellular species,
differently developed cells cooperate to produce an organism. Such things arise by holistic assembly through
the processes of evolution. (The relationship between evolutionary competition and cooperation is discussed in
Hewitt (2002))
As animals form social groups and become subject to group selection, they begin to cooperate with one
another. Then their brains, the locus of rank2 evolution, must change to create concern for the group as well as
for self.
Under pressure from group selection, social groups are assembled from solitary, individual animals. As
group formation proceeds the self-directed intellectual processes that characterize the brains of solitary animals,
are adapted by group selection to serve the needs of social knowledge. These group directed processes must
encourage social animals to do for their group’s endowment of social knowledge what all organisms do for
their genetic inheritance - protect and propagate it. As a social phenomenon humour must help to do this. Here
are some of the roles it is suggested humour plays in social knowledge :· Provides a physiological pleasure reward to individuals who unite into a group defined by the same social
knowledge. That is, humour is a social glue.
· Protects social knowledge by enabling its possessors to identify those who do not share it. In other words,
function as an IFF system.
· Taken together, humour and laughter help to synchronize the group knowledge and attacking those who do
not share it.
· Perpetuate social knowledge by encouraging its transmission down the generations.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 6
Humour seems to do all these things but the least recognized and, in many ways, most pivotal aspect of its
social function seems to be as an IFF system. This note will largely consider the implications of the IFF
description but first we must consider some physiological aspects of humour.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 7
Smiling and Laughter
Humour is felt as a state of being amused and is identifiable by two responses, laughter and smiling - laughter
being the more characteristic of the two and confined to humans (apart from traces in some higher primates.)
Without laughter we might not identify humour as distinguishable from simple enjoyment. Nonetheless,
humourous situations do not necessarily produce laughter, and laughter may occur in non-humourous
situations. Smiling and laughter are communicative acts and both are, in different ways, gestures of
submission.
Smiling
Smiling is a common act. People smile so often they develop wrinkles on their faces because of it - for
example, the ‘smile lines’ around the eyes. Smiles are silent, transient, directed signals - characteristics that
make them narrowcast rather than broadcast messages. Thus, fundamentally, smiles are acts of one to one
communication.
A smile involves a drawing back of the gums to expose the teeth. A similar gesture is a common act of
submission among primates, such as might be directed to an α-male. Hence smiling seems an act of
submission, a fact that explains why we like to be smiled at - we are, essentially, being submitted to.
When people smile at one another they are, effectively, submitting to one another, a mutual submission
that may be thought of as submission to the group ‘we’ of which both are a part. Mutual smiling is, therefore, a
group directed behaviour, an act that recognizes the person to whom the smile is directed as a fellow group
member and, sometimes, recognizes their hierarchical status.
The act of smiling is largely voluntary - all the necessary facial changes can be made on command by
actors or workers who are so instructed, such as airline hostesses or supermarket checkout assistants.
Nonetheless, some aspects of smiling are very subtle and difficult to perform at will, allowing observers to
sense the differences between false and natural smiles. Hence it is fairly difficult, though not impossible, to
produce convincing, natural smiles on demand.
Laughter
Laughter is largely confined to humans, though some higher apes exhibit similar responses. Laughter is quite
different from smiling and actually bears striking similarities to crying - a very ancient gesture present in many
species.
Both laughter and crying are involuntary, both involve rapid exhalations of air that produce recognizable
sounds, both can involve tears, though tears are more normal in crying, and both are induced by experiences or
observations that are incongruous with expectation. Crying is induced by events that are incongruous with
desire or self-interest and which may be a serious threat. By contrast, laughter is induced by events that are
incongruous with existing perception but which seem to pose no threat. Given these similarities, and its relative
youth, laughter may best be seen as a modified form of crying.
Unlike smiling, laughter produces a sound and is involuntary. Hence laughter acts as a broadcast signal and
its involuntary nature suggests that the information laughter broadcasts is of a type that must be transmitted.
This fact, that laughter is an involuntary reaction producing a broadcast signal, is one of the main reasons for
identifying humour as an IFF.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 8
The Adaptive Significance of Humour
Before discussing humour as an IFF, earlier suggestions for its functions need to be considered and Vaid
(1999) briefly reviews these.
For present purposes we will lay aside her ‘psychological’ and ‘metaphysical’ categories and reorder the
remainder under headings designed to fit this work namely :Origins of attraction to incongruity.
Adaptive benefits to the individual.
Adaptive benefits to the group.
Origins of attraction to incongruity
There seem to be few suggestions as to why we find incongruity with existing ideas, rather than some other
feature of a data stream, attractive. Hence, so far as the author knows, the suggestion that incongruity can be
used as an indicator of relevance seems to be original and the only proposal in this area.
Adaptive benefits to the individual
Humour is undoubtedly a social phenomenon and most theories about humour recognize this social role.
However, humour could not have evolved if its component parts played only a social role. The traits from
which humour evolved must already have been common in the population, and therefore providing adaptive
benefits to individuals, when the first social benefits began to emerge. Were things otherwise, the first
humourous mutants would have enjoyed no social advantage over their humourless peers.
This work proposes that attraction to incongruity is part of a learning mechanism, arising from the need to
ascribe relevance to different parts of a data flow. This automatically provides an individual benefit that would
make attraction to incongruity common.
Koestler, discussed humour in The Act of Creation (Koestler (1964)) and suggested that humour achieved
a ‘bisociation’ of ideas that enabled the creation of new concepts by forming links and associations between
existing thoughts. It is true that the ability to develop new ideas this way might give an adaptive advantage to
individuals. However, the meaning of the term ‘bisociation’ is not altogether clear, neither is it obvious where,
in evolutionary history, this capability might have arisen.
Chafe (1987) has suggested that laughter arose to disable individuals and prevent them pursuing unwise
avenues but this proposal seems implausible. It is not obvious that disablement would be an evolutionary
advantage in any circumstances. Moreover, the idea implies that one function of the brain is ‘wise’ and gifted
with the foresight needed to detect and overrule ‘unwise’ policies conceived elsewhere in the same brain. It is
hard to see how this organ of wisdom would work or arise and especially hard to see why evolution, after
creating it, would render it unable to intervene except by disabling the entire creature. It is also unclear why
this faculty, if it exists, might be confined to higher primates.
Social adaptations of humour
It is clear that, in humans, humour plays a social role and most suggestions about its adaptive value reflect this.
Weisfeld (1993) suggests that humour supplies a social stimulation that motivates us to obtain fitnessenhancing inputs in the social, sexual or aggressive domains. This seems close to saying that humour is a social
glue.
Alexander (1986) writes supporting the case that humans are a group selected species. In so doing, he
suggests that humour is a means of status manipulation, at times a means of excluding certain parties from a
group and at other times of reinforcing the group’s cohesiveness by showing that they all share the same joke.
Alexander’s work seems very consistent with the picture to be presented here.
Dunbar (1996), in a work on the evolution of language, suggests that humour arose during physical
intimacies such as grooming, gossip etc.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 9
All these suggestions seem highly plausible and they must all contain large elements of validity, if only
because they are the commonplace of human experience. However, the fact that they all seem to have validity
indicates that no one of them can offer a complete analysis.
One cannot reject any of them and so, to go further, they must be integrated into a single, larger picture.
That picture needs to identify the greater social structures of which humour forms a part and the general role
humour plays in those greater structures.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 10
Group Selection and the Idea of an IFF
Humour’s social roles indicate that it has been shaped by group selection, in many ways a synonym for group
combat. Hence, it will help to consider the nature of group combat, which can most easily do by analogy with a
modern example namely aerial warfare.
Modern warplanes do not fight as individuals but as groups and they communicate extensively with one
another as they do so. These aircraft have weapons systems, to attack their enemies, radar sensors with which
to scan the field of combat for targets and radio communications systems through which to exchange
information with allied planes.
Just as important, and linked up to weapons, sensors and communications, modern planes have IFF
(Identification Friend or Foe) systems. IFF systems would serve no purpose for solitary combat aircraft but they
are vital for planes fighting alongside allies. An IFF consists of two electronic devices, an interrogator that
sends coded signals to aircraft detected by radar and a transponder, that receives and understands coded signals
from friendly aircraft or radars and automatically broadcasts its own coded signal in reply.
When a radar detects an unknown aircraft, the operator needs to know whether this blip is a friendly plane
or an enemy. To find out, the radar’s IFF transmits a coded interrogation
signal to which a friendly aircraft’s IFF replies with another code that will be
read as “friend.” Failure to respond with the proper code leads to
identification as “foe” and possibly to attack with a missile. Hence, it is very
important that interrogated, friendly aircraft positively respond with the
correct code and IFF systems are automatic - pilots do not hear the
interrogation signal or decide whether to reply.
The name and initials IFF are a modern terminology to describe the
electronic systems installed on both military aircraft and, increasingly, on
military ground vehicles but these electronic devices are recent innovations.
Less sophisticated IFF systems have been part of warfare for centuries and are
used in all team games. The hails and passwords used by sentries are an IFF system - the traditional cry being,
“Halt, who goes there, friend or foe?” which is followed by a demand for the current password. Easily
recognizable uniforms are an IFF system that tell everyone on the battlefield the side on which a soldier fights
(and his rank), as do the quickly identifiable colours worn by members of football teams etc. During world war
II, the crosses and roundels carried by opposing aircraft were also an IFF system. In most of these cases, IFF
devices signal their group attachment automatically. Hence, an IFF system seems essential for any group that
hopes to emerge victorious from team ‘games,’ and war is, for these purposes, a serious, team game.
The IFF system can be thought of as sitting between sensors, communications systems and weapons
systems. The IFF decides the group allegiance of other aircraft and hence whether weapons, or help and
information, should be directed at other planes.
Recent aircraft are equipped with very powerful computers and groups of combat planes actually form
computer networks. These may be peer to peer networks, if all planes have equal roles, or they may be clientserver networks if one aircraft has a command and control role. (The American AWACS is an aircraft with
such a command role.) Most systems seem to be some hybrid of the two types but the client server architecture
is notable because, like human groups, it contains a small hierarchy. The server is at the top with client aircraft
below, non-friendly but neutral aircraft lower still and enemy planes at the bottom.
In these networked combat groups, the IFF system decides the nature of communications with other planes.
Aircraft identified as friend are joined to the network and allowed to upload sensor information about the battle
zone, either directly or via the control aircraft. In return, the network ‘teaches’ all its members about the
battlefield, which means that the network synchronizes the way its members ‘learn’ about their world.
Aircraft that are not identified as friend will, at the very least, not be drawn into this learning network.
They will be assessed for any potential threat they may pose and labeled accordingly. Depending on that
assessment and label, non-friendly aircraft may, or may not, be attacked and destroyed.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 11
In short, an IFF system determines group membership and the targets for aggression but, and here is where
education comes in, it also comes to synchronize the learning of the group whose membership it controls.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 12
The Functions of Humour in Humans
Incongruity, it has been argued, can be used as a marker of relevance in different sections of a data flow and
hence, attraction to incongruity will improve the efficiency of sensory learning and such attractions exist in
many animals.
Humans, it is argued passed through a period of group selection that gave incongruity selection uniquely
human features. In humans the incongruity-based learning mechanism has become adapted to social roles
which are probably best indicated by the properties of laughter, the most obviously unique marker of the way
humour has developed in humans.
It is suggested here that humour plays several social roles in human, rank3 evolution. This section will
mention three of them.
· Humour is a social glue, a source of pleasure and satisfaction through group membership that is otherwise
unavailable.
· In adults and children, humour serves to aid communication and individual learning and to synchronize
group learning.
· Humour serves as an IFF system, a way to distinguish friend from foe by their social knowledge set.
It is humour as an IFF that seems best to summarize its observed properties but the biological and military
situations are different in several ways.
· Military IFFs did not evolve. Rather, they were designed by aircraft engineers and military planners.
Humour is an IFF only so far as evolution adapted it to that role and it will have evolutionary forebears
whose other roles may still be visible.
· Military planes do not fight for status in a hierarchy but humans do fight for status in their groups. Hence
humour, as a biological IFF, would be expected to look for targets within its own group, something a
military IFF would never do.
· Military aircraft are machines and simply do their job. Humans are not machines and need to be motivated.
The need for motivation is answered by the a social glue properties of humour - by the way humourous
activities are a source of pleasure obtainable only within community. This motivates people to form the social
groups needed for social knowledge to grow.
Humour as aid to communication and individual learning
“Beware the jabberwock my son, the claws that scratch, the teeth that bite.” This is a funny sentence. We know
it is funny because many people find Lear’s nonsense verse so and their reaction is the only criterion.
Lear’s sentence is a communication, ostensibly from father to son. It is the word “jabberwock” that creates
the humour and on which the reader’s attention becomes focused. Replace “jabberwock” with “dog” and the
sentence loses its humourous content, becoming neither funny nor interesting. One can imagine a teenager’s
response if his father so advised him to fear a dog, “Yes dad, I already know that dogs have claws and teeth
that scratch and bite.” But what is a jabberwock? It is something to be feared because it has claws and teeth
with which it scratches and bites and dad says I should fear it. But what is a jabberwock?
The focus on ‘jabberwock’ arises from incongruity selection. The nonsense word, the incongruity with
existing understanding, attracts attention and causes readers to think twice. The implication is that the
incongruity selection mechanism from rank2 has become adapted to processing social knowledge at rank3. At
rank2 incongruity selection is a means of attributing relevance, directing attention to different sections of a data
flow. It has a similar role at rank3, engaging attention to a communications and saying, in effect, “pay attention,
there is something here you do not understand.”
And it does more; as a reward for paying attention and learning the new things this sentence contains, the
incongruity selector engages the pleasure centres of the brain. Not only does the individual learn, he or she
enjoys doing so. The pleasure causes the recipient to smile or laugh, subordinating gestures that please the
transmitter and encourage the two to form a single social group.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 13
For evidence of pleasure in learning, observe many young mammals playing near their den but note that
this is an individual learning process, not a social adaptation. Observe also the enjoyment exhibited by children
as they learn language and other social norms from their carers - this is social learning, with level3 knowledge
being transmitted from carer to child. Also, the social knowledge these children learn makes them part of their
group and ensures that, in due course, their laughing response to jokes within will identify them as a group
friend not foe.
Humour and laughter as a way of synchronizing group learning
Rank3 evolution is about communication but words alone do not induce pleasure in the recipient of a
communication. The insertion of an incongruity into the message does. A submissive gesture by the recipient
returns that pleasure and is a way of signifying that the recipient has learned the content of the message.
Submission is also appropriate as a learned message will control the learner.
Smiling is an apt response to communication within a social pair because a smile is a narrowcast
communication, one smiles at one person but not, generally, at a group of people. Sending a message of
amused learning to a group requires a broadcast communication, another submissive communication but one
that involves sound. In humans, evolution seems to have achieved this broadcast communication by modifying
that other ancient gesture of submission, the cry, to create laughter.
Children laugh incessantly while they are playing and their laughter sends signals to anyone within earshot.
To any caring adults in the vicinity laughter says, “I’m OK; I’m happy and not worried.” Generally speaking,
the adult will not intervene.
The laughter says to other children in the group, “This is interesting. I get pleasure from it and from
thinking about it. You too may get pleasure from it.” So, other children come and investigate and learn from
the same observation. In the end, the whole group learn the same things and derive shared pleasure while doing
so.
The net effect is a pattern of humour, attention and laughter that synchronizes group learning. Incongruitybased learning means that children who grow together laugh together and, even though they may be genetically
unrelated, come to share the same social knowledge set. Humour and laughter drive and synchronize their
group’s learning.
The evolutionary point of this synchronization is group selection. The group that grew together shares the
same level3, social knowledge. As a result, they become allies in competition with other groups possessed of
different level3 knowledge sets and, in that competition, humour will help these groups decide who are their
friends and who their enemies.
Biological IFF systems
Many social, group-selected animals have IFF systems based on scent, each group developing its own
characteristic odour. For example, badgers that occupy the same set urinate on one another and come to share
the same, rather pungent smell. Group members are recognized by smell and fights occur with other badgers
who intrude onto a territory. Canines likewise recognize pack members by their smell and, so it is said, the
reason dogs dislike taking a bath is that they fear being attacked if other group members cannot recognize their
smell. (The author is not aware of the term IFF being previously used for these behaviours.)
For animals living in small groups and with a keen sense of smell, odour works well as an IFF system.
Scent would work less well as an IFF for any animal living in larger groups and possessed of a worse sense of
smell, such as humans. We cannot even identify friends by sniffing them or signal recognition by tail-wagging.
Nonetheless, any IFF system must have certain properties:1. It must send signals to interrogate the group allegiance of other individuals.
2. The signal must be group specific and not easily replicable so that intruders will be able neither to respond
positively nor elicit positive responses from existing group members.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 14
3. The responses should be automatic - individuals should be unable to control whether the positive response
is transmitted. (Odour is a signal, not a response, but canine tail-wagging may be the automatic, positive
response needed to signal that a doggie friend has been recognized.)
4. The response must be broadcast and detectable by all individuals in the vicinity.
Nonetheless, like any group selected species, our evolutionary games are played in teams. We need an IFF but
our lives revolve around vision and our communications use speech. A human IFF will use one or more of
these faculties. Vision plays a role because we can simply recognize group members and are physically heterogeneous to make this recognition easier. Also, humour can be visual but it is mostly based on verbal
communication.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 15
Properties of Humour Suitable for an IFF
Many aspects of humour can be judged from laughter, its most characteristic manifestation. Three important
laughter inducers are tickling, childhood play and humourous communications, jokes being the most distinctive
of the latter.
Tickling and ticklishness are thought linked to the grooming behaviour that serves as a social glue in many
primates . These clearly induce pleasure and, presumably, humour stimulates the same pleasure centres.
Childhood play has already been discussed and the laughter it induces seems likely to be an early, broadcast
reaction to pleasure from incongruity and a means of synchronizing group learning. These can now be laid
aside to consider jokes as laughter inducers. All the following properties are familiar aspects of jokes and of
our response to them.
· Jokes are communications. Only communicated jokes are funny. We rarely laugh at our own jokes because
they cannot be incongruous with our own knowledge set.
· Jokes are specific to a social knowledge set, so that jokes like puns and logical incongruities cannot be
translated from one language to another. Laughter is only induced in recipients possessed the social
knowledge needed for incongruity. Thus jokes are like coded signals that interrogate a recipient's group
membership through their social knowledge. To ‘get’ a joke a receiver must share group knowledge with
the joker and that shared knowledge is, effectively, a code.
· When we ‘get’ a joke we laugh audibly, thus broadcasting the fact that the responder and joker are in the
same social group.
· Laughter is involuntarily, or at least hard to control. In other words, we are automatically amused and our
automatic laughter broadcasts the fact of our amusement, and thus of our group allegiance, to everyone
within earshot.
Together, these properties of humour, are those of an IFF system that selects friend from foe according to their
social knowledge set. Laughter, the positive response to jokes, identifies the amused person as sharing the
linked knowledge set and as friend to the joker. The negative response of failing to laugh identifies the
unamused person as not sharing that knowledge set, not a group member and, therefore, as foe to the joker.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 16
Comparison of IFFs and humour
For ease of comparison, it will be useful to lay out the general properties of IFFs and humour side by side.
IFF
Humour
Interrogation
signal
Initial interrogation is
coded to be readable only
by friends
Jokes are readable only
within a shared social
knowledge set or language.
Response signal
Positive response is
coded
Positive response is not
coded.
Positive response is
broadcast. (Engineers
might like a narrowcast
response but that is not
feasible.)
Positive response is
broadcast as the sound of
laughter.
Response is automatic
Response is automatic to the
extent that laughter is
involuntary.
Negative response
identifies non-friend.
Negative response identifies
out-group.
Linkage to
weapons
IFF is linked to weapons
systems.
Humour has aggressive
modes.
Linkage to
comms.
Planes identified as
friend take a place in the
communications network
and share information.
Individuals who share
humour take a place in the
group hierarchy, are
informed and listened to.
Unidentified
targets.
Planes identified as foe
are excluded from the
network and may be
attacked.
Individuals who do not
share humour are excluded
from groups and may be
mocked, sneered at or
attacked.
Linkage to
hierarchy
Planes in client server
network “know their
place,” do not try to
change it and do not
attack friends.
Humour is strongly linked to
the struggle for hierarchical
status and thus to intragroup aggression.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 17
Humour, Aggression and Social Status
Humour is linked with aggression - as is to be expected given that an IFF’s job is to identify targets for
aggression - and many modern missile systems can automatically engage targets identified as foe.
Joking and laughter do demonstrate group membership and shared knowledge but human humour must do
more than a military IFF; it must help in the struggle for position on a hierarchy. Human groups are headed by
dominant α-males (usually males) who exercise political control over the hierarchy below them. The α-male’s
word is law and his controlling actions are very influential in establishing the group’s social knowledge set.
Hence, a group’s communicative links resemble, but are more complex than, those of a client-server network,
with the α-male taking the role of controlling server. Much of human life involves the struggle for status on
such hierarchies and aggression is often targeted within them.
Any human IFF, be it humour or otherwise, will not just identify members of other groups as targets but
will also find targets in its own hierarchy against whom aggression can be directed. Many forms of humour
manifest this aggressive struggle for status.
So, for example, a bully or group of bullies might comment about aspects of some quarry’s person or
personality. The victim does not laugh but the bullies find it funny and their laughter may recruit onlookers to
join their efforts. The consequences may be a demotion of the target down the social group or their expulsion
from it. The victim may even be identified as a group foe and labeled as a legitimate target for physical attacks.
Aggressive humour is usually directed at subordinates or equals. Humour directed at social superiors can
be risky and α-males are not usually chosen as targets. Conversely, it is doubtful whether nominal
superordinates who lack the power to retaliate for misdirected humour can retain any real superordinate status.
Hence, some aspects of humour will be aggressive. When aggression is directed at out-groups, humour’s
role will be similar to that of a military IFF. However, as a biological IFF, humour must also find in-group
targets as part of the struggle for group status. In directing aggression within the group, humour will display
properties that reflect the hierarchical nature of human groups and, in these respects, humour will have few
parallels in electronic IFFs.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 18
The Educational Significance of Humour
This picture of humour concerns shared group knowledge, something with clear relevance for pedagogic
theory. The purpose of this section is to bring out three lines of that relevance.
· Incongruity as an individual learning mechanism.
· Laughter as a mechanism that synchronizes group learning.
· Aggressive humour as a determinant of hierarchy and the direction of group learning.
Readers should note that, thus far, the author has found little literature relating educational method and
humour.
However, he is not only a highly qualified scientist but has spent many years in education. Anyone who
has spent time in the classroom knows how important humour is to the relationships that form there, both
within the student body, between pupils and teacher and even between the teachers.
The comments made in this section are not derived simply from the evolutionary theory developed in The
Architecture of Thought - they also attempt to systematize a great deal of educational experience.
Enjoyment of incongruity and individual learning
According to the theory outlined here, humour originates in the need for an organism with sense organs to
attribute relevance to different parts of its sensory data flow. If an animal is to gain maximum benefit from this
data flow, it should mark for special attention those sections that are incongruous with existing understanding
and be motivated to pay them that special attention.
So, animals should have structures in their brains that make them enjoy elements in their sensory data flow
that are incongruous with their present understanding, they should pay special attention to those elements and
learn from them until the incongruity is resolved. On this basis, incongruity is an ancient, animal learning
mechanism that manifests, in humans, as humour.
The implication is that educational materials might be more effective if they engaged this learning
mechanism and most modern educational books contain humourous illustrations. Educational TV is also
peppered with jokes or set in amusing scenarios. Presumably these materials are in some way more effective
than humourless equivalents, possibly improving retention, concentration span or class cohesion, but the author
has yet to find comparative studies of their advantages. Such studies would be worthwhile.
One also notices that those teachers who enjoy good relationships with their learners commonly crack
small jokes during their teaching, something that is as true in one to one teaching contexts, such as coaching
and mentoring, as it is the classroom.
It seems then that good teaching materials, even those written by teachers, might use humour to attract the
interest of learners. When possible, that is when good order permits, pedagogic practice should include
elements of humour. In so doing, teachers can engage a deep-seated, incongruity-based learning mechanism
that causes learners to enjoy learning.
Laughter and synchronized group learning
Laughter is a communicative act that attracts the attention of other group members, makes them curious about
the cause of the laughter and eager to learn its origins. The resulting dialogues ensure that group members
come to share any new knowledge that emerges from the humourous event. The result is that groups who play
together, share laughter and learning. They become friends and the possessors of a shared, mutual knowledge
set which, at some later date, might make them allies who will work well together.
This picture, it is argued, describes the pattern of events likely to occur when groups of learners engage in
group projects. It implies that the patterns of laughter emerging from group activities are likely to be both a
pointer to the joint learning taking place and, potentially, a means of assessing it. This is an area that seems to
merit systematic observational investigation.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 19
Humour, hierarchy and the direction of group learning
This brings us to the last and, perhaps, the most contentious aspect of humour and its educational implications,
one that enables us to consider the role of the teacher in the classroom environment. The classroom situation is
a group situation and groups learn in synchrony, following a direction determined by the group leadership. This
picture does not support the idea that a school can enable every child to achieve his or her individual
educational potential. Rather, it suggests that the school and its performance very largely determine a child’s
educational potential. It also indicates that the ideal classroom situation is one in which the teacher is, in a
biological sense, also the group leader and able, through that role, to set and synchronize the class’ learning
direction. Finally, one argues, the teacher’s leadership position needs to be strong enough that he or she can,
without fearing loss of face or class leadership, bring humour into the classroom. This offers a major means of
performing the leader’s synchronizing role and linking the group’s learning process to the school’s educational
agenda. That, at least, would be the optimum social structure of the classroom but it is very doubtful whether
modern schools achieve it or whether teachers are actually perceived as being in charge.
Teachers sometimes direct disparaging humour at learners and humourous disparagement, directed at
learners, may have an educational role if it reinforces the student’s subordinate status and hence willingness to
learn. Even so, the circumstances in which it is appropriate merit discussion, though that is a discussion that
will not be pursued here.
Most worryingly, today’s teachers are often the target of humour and can be reluctant to crack their own
jokes for fear of losing such little classroom authority as they may possess. In a biological sense, teachers often
do not seem to be pack leaders and it is very questionable whether, in an organizational sense, modern schools
enable them to take that role. Aggressive, disparaging humour is often directed by learners at teachers. Such
humour runs counter to the hierarchy that would indicate a willingness to learn from that teacher and, in “one
to one” teaching situations, such as tutoring or mentoring, it would justify ending the relationship.
The response of removing a teacher from a class is not available in schools, thus making misdirected
student humour an even greater concern. Such humour seems to indicate that the wrong kind of hierarchy is
forming, that, in the absence of a hierarchy forming under the teacher, other hierarchies are forming around
leaders emerging from within the student body. Then it is their power, their humour and their agenda that come
to synchronize class learning and the results are likely to be damaging to the educational attainment of every
member of the class.
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 20
Summary and Conclusions
This essay concerns the evolutionary origin, social functions and educational significance of humour. The
problem of evolutionary origin has been addressed by recognizing incongruity selection as part of normal
sensory information processing. Humans use their senses and brain for social communication. It is argued that,
as these faculties have adapted to social life, incongruity selection has become modified to serve social roles
and that, in humans, incongruity based selection has come to be expressed as humour.
Pointing this out is original, plausible and, probably, correct but it alone leaves many important questions
unanswered. All discussion of humour must recognize its social nature, its pervasiveness and that it plays
many, often seemingly contradictory, roles in human communities.
This makes it very difficult to give a general description of humour’s social roles but any such description
must recognize :1. The underlying use of incongruity for information selection.
2. Humour’s social nature, universality and aggressive content.
3. The physiological properties of laughter.
The social description that best summarizes the resulting picture is humour as an IFF, a device whose job is to
direct communications or weapons to targets or synchronize learning in a social group. This view is supported
by the way the physiological properties of laughter match the signaling processes needed for the IFF role.
Humour, it is argued, is a biological IFF that uses incongruity based information selection to determine
whether a target does, or does not, subscribe to a given social knowledge set.
It is also suggested that observations of the patterns of laughter might provide a data set that could be used
to analyze the information selections and learning taking place in social groups. This possibility was briefly
explored in the context of classrooms but more studies seem needed of the relationships between, humour,
laughter, social dynamics and educational performance to be found in the small social group that is the
classroom.
Acknowledgments The author is indebted to Prof.Jyotsna Vaid of Texas and to Ann Snowden for
correspondence and, especially, to Prof. Willi Ruch of Zurich for advice. A version of this paper was presented
at the BERA conference and at the humour workshop, both in Edinburgh, 2003. The paper has benefitted
from comments made by other attendees
J. A. Hewitt
--------- Origins and Nature of Humour
Page 21
References and Suggested Further Reading
Alexander R. (1986) Ostracism and Indirect Reciprocity. The Reproductive Significance of Humor Ethology
and Sociobiology 7 253-270
Chafe W. (1987) Humor as a Disabling Mechanism American Behavioral Scientist 30 16-25
Darwin C. (1872) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Reprinted by Univ. of Chicago Press,
(1963), Chicago, Ill.
Dunbar R. (1996) Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language Faber and Faber, London.
Hewitt J. A. (2002) The Architecture of Thought A New Look at Human Evolution Holmhurst House Press,
Bedfordshire.
Koestler A. (1964) The Act of Creation Hutchinson, London.
Pinker S. (1994) The Language Instinct Allen Lane, London.
Plotkin Henry (1994) The Nature of Knowledge: Concerning Adaptations, Instinct and the Evolution of
Intelligence Allen Lane, Penguin Books, London.
Vaid J. (1999) The Evolution of Humor: Do Those Who Laugh Last? In The Evolution of the Psyche Rosen D.
H. and Luebbert M. C. Eds. Praeger, Westport Conn.
Weisfeld G. (1993) The Adaptive Value of Humor and Laughter Ethology and Sociobiology 14 141-169
Also, see the author’s website at www.sexandphilosophy.co.uk