>> Eric Horvitz: Okay, we’ll get started. It’s really an honor to have Bob Mankoff back with us again.
Bob’s the Cartoon Editor of the New Yorker and Founder of the Cartoon Bank. You can read more about the Cartoon Bank. It’s a fabulous endeavor that Bob’s been the spirit and organizer, entrepreneur behind.
Bob developed a distinctive “dot’ style which you can see in some of his cartoons for his own vehicle of transmitting his ideas of sense of humor. He had his first cartoon published in the New Yorker in nineteen seventy-seven. He’s been serving as the magazine’s Cartoon Editor since nineteen ninetyseven. To date he’s had more than nine hundred of his cartoons published in the New Yorker. I asked him earlier why he hadn’t reached a thousand. I think he’s just nervous about you know dealing with success. He’s wrestling with that concept right now.
One of his cartoons is considered one of the most popular cartoons at the New Yorker of all time. He’s edited multiple volumes of cartoon collections including “The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker”.
About a month and a half ago, maybe two months, I forget now times going fast these days.
>> Bob Mankoff: Yeah.
>> Eric Horvitz: He was here and gave a book talk on his new book, “How Bout Never is Never Good for
You, My life in Cartoons”, published last year which will be out in paperback this October. There’s actually an HBO film coming out about Bob cartooning and the New Yorker cartoons. It’ll be in theaters in November. Then in December seventh to be precise or eighth I won’t say a celebration of Paul
Hubbard day or anything like that. It’ll be on HBO.
On some background that might interest folks here especially Microsoft Researchers, Bob graduated from Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences in nineteen sixty-six. He entered the Doctoral
Program at City University of New York to pursue a degree in Experimental Psychology. Hanging out with him this week and when he was here earlier, and doing research with him and Dafna Shahaf. It’s been really like working with a Senior Professor of Psychology in the field of humor. He’s just really, he seems to have more insights and in depth knowledge of literature and research than anyone else I’ve ever met.
This might interest people here especially people, interns who are at this talk. At age thirty just short of completing his dissertation, Bob decided to use his know how in a new way as a professional cartoonist.
That dissertation is still waiting to be drafted. I get the sense it might be drafted in another form some day. Forty years later, after learning a lot about humor from book and a lot from life as he told me in a note. He’s actually giving a psychology class. He’s getting more serious about psychology working with colleagues. He’ll be teaching a course at Swarthmore on the Psychology of Humor.
We found him very engaging here. We’re actually booting up a humor effort at Microsoft Research.
Hopefully involving Bob, I personally think that humor says a lot about human cognition. It gets at some of the mysteries I think we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what it all means for us, our

computational systems, the future of understanding of principles of cognition, and with that Bob
Mankoff.
>> Bob Mankoff: Thank you.
[applause]
Let’s scratch that surface. Let’s go a little bit further. Well, Taking Humor Seriously and you know humor is one of the profound questions. You know psychologists are interested for how much reveals about personality, cognitive scientists for how it actually works, personality, psychologists for what it tells you about humor.
I’m going to talk a little bit about the history of it. See, I said you know Taking Humor Seriously a hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed. That’s going to be impossible, too early, too early for a hundred percent, seventy-five percent. That’s my general advice about things. Kind of, in terms of humor here’s what a hundred percent satisfaction looks like.
[video]
[laughter]
That’s my first wife.
[laughter]
Try to think about why you laughed at that. Try to find, I think of one of the things that E.B. White said,
“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Nobody’s much interested and the frog dies.” I’m going to analyze it so I’m going to kill a few frogs.
>> Eric Horvitz: Is that really your first wife?
>> Bob Mankoff: No, of course not.
>> Eric Horvitz: Okay, alright. I had to ask.
>> Bob Mankoff: I have to think about humor. Humor violates Gricean Maxims, to tell the truth, to give only as much information, everything. Humor actually we lie to tell the truth. What truth did you realize in that when I said even though it wasn’t my first wife that? All sorts of things I could go on about.
Okay, now we think humor’s this great thing, this response you know. Good sense of humor wonderful thing, historically that’s not the case. Lord Chesterfield this is his advice to his son. Brilliant letters of all

things, you know how to behave, etiquette, politics. Here’s his advice about humor, “Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners. How low and unbecoming a thing laughter is; not to mention the disagreeable noise that it makes, and the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions. I have never laughed in my life.”
[laughter]
>> Eric Horvitz: Look at that face.
>> Bob Mankoff: Never laughed in his life. Yeah, of course he never laughed in his life. But this is not an uncommon attitude because when you looked at that response it’s a little scary in a way.
>>: What year is that?
>> Bob Mankoff: This is about sixteen fifty-six. Okay, but when we go back further Plato what humor is,
“It’s a mixture of pleasure and pain that lies in the malice of amusement.” The malice, okay. Aristotle,
“The “ludicrous,” is a species of ugliness which causes no pain or destruction.” Okay, Hobbes and this is
Superiority Theory, what laughter is it’s, “The sudden glory arising from some conception of eminency in ourselves, by comparison with others.”
Well, obviously some truth in all this, isn’t it. Watch TV; watch America’s Funniest Home Videos, look at pranks on YouTube, what’s happening there? They’re pretty you know, so that’s sort of historically.
Basically they thought all the humor was this, the Three Stooges, not really of course. They understand it was more complicated than that. You know when you look at it historically Plato will tell you,
Aristotle, well tragedy is about people better than ourselves. Humor’s about people who are worse than ourselves.
Now it doesn’t have to be people. Here’s me and a Microsoft robot here.
[video]
Let me see if I can get some directions. Hi, I’m Bob. What’s your name? Oh, it went to sleep.
>>: Hi there. Do you need directions?
>> Bob Mankoff: I do but I’m a little bit wary of taking them from someone who doesn’t know their own name. How do I get to Eric Horvitz office?
>>: Eric Horvitz’ office is three thousand one hundred and twenty-six. To get there walk to the end of that hallway, turn left and continue on to the end of the corridor. Eric’s office will be the last office on your right. By the way, let Monica his virtual admin know that you’re on your way. By the way, would you mind swiping your badge on the reader below so I know who I’ve been talking with?

>> Bob Mankoff: I’m sorry I don’t have a badge. I’m a visitor.
>>: You’re looking for Van Cutler, correct?
>> Bob Mankoff: No, I’m sorry I said I’m a visitor.
>>: You’re looking for Mariah Christiansen, correct?
>> Bob Mankoff: Incorrect, I said I’m a visitor.
>>: What are you looking for?
>> Bob Mankoff: I’m looking for a robot who could intelligently respond to my questions.
>>: Sorry, you wanted the cafeteria, correct?
>> Bob Mankoff: No, I’m sorry that’s incorrect.
>>: You’re looking for Roland Fernandez, right?
>> Bob Mankoff: Oh, I’m sure Roland Fernandez is a very nice guy but I don’t even know who he is.
>>: Roland Fernandez is in office number three thousand four hundred and twenty-six. To get there walk to the end of that hallway, turn right and continue to the end of the corridor. Roland’s office will be the second last office on your left.
>> Bob Mankoff: Thank you, you’ve been very helpful within your own limited capacities, I do appreciate it.
[video ends]
[laughter]
Okay, so ones that have already seen it. Little bit of problem getting our computer system, yeah this is something they’re lacking. This is something actually we’re interested in. You know here’s this interesting thing on Jeopardy when Watson was on. You know and beat Ken Jennings, sort of interest something here.
[video]

William Wilkinson’s an account of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia inspired this author’s most famous novel, thirty seconds players, good luck.
[music]
Over to Ken Jennings now, eighteen thousand two hundred going in, Bram Stoker is what we’re looking for. We find who is Stoker? I for one welcome our new computer overlord.
[laughter]
[video ended]
>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, so that’s something Ken Jennings did that the computer couldn’t, interesting, right, how he handled that. Now, looking back on history humor even [indiscernible] sixteen fifty-seven, this is from eighteen seventy-five. This is George Vasey. He wouldn’t have been very happy with computers that didn’t have humor because he thought humor was quite a terrible thing. He said, “The
Superlative Laugh, or Highest Degree of Laughter”. You think well that’s good, he didn’t think laughter was good. He said, look, “The Sardonic Sneer, or Furtive Leer.”, ooh that’s bad, “The Self-conceited
Smile, or the Smile of Self-Esteem,”; “The Insidious Smile,” totally racist. He thought all humor was basically this, not all of it. But he basically it was going back to Chesterfield and the humor with the sort of you know rather low response.
Okay, now here this is great. This is from that book. He thought that we could just eliminate laughter if we stopped tickling children because that’s how we teach them to laugh. He did say that it was really bad because it could not infrequently ended in death.
[laughter]
Now, the view of humor wasn’t singular like that. Because first of all it wasn’t humor they were talking about. It was ridicule. Shaftsbury says, “Ridicule is the true test of truth,” which meant that in the exchange of ideas back and forth. If your idea couldn’t put up with ridicule in something, there was something fishy about it; it’s like a bullshit detector, right.
Okay and even at this time this is about in the eighteenth century where repartee and ridicule is very highly valued. Here would be an example, “Upon my soul, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die upon the gallows, or of syphilis.” “That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles, or your mistress.”
[laughter]

This was valued but its ridicule. It’s not what we think of humor. Here’s a Google Ngram that’s sort of interesting. For sense of humor, the phrase doesn’t really even exist as a common phrase until the eighteen sixties, okay. Here you know eighteen eighty arises huge in the forty’s, rising again here.
Now, why is that? If you actually put in a Google what you get is sense of ridicule. Ridicule is different than humor. I mean we might like it. We might think it’s interesting, it’s cognitive, it’s clever and everything but not necessarily admirable, right.
What is it that’s good about a good sense of humor? Okay, this is from eighteen seventy-six. Okay, so you could, by the eighteen sixty’s this idea of a sense of humor being a cardinal virtue. Something that you don’t have to be necessarily funny but if you said about someone they have no sense of humor, it becomes a real insult, right.
It says, “A fashion has sprung in late years regarding the sense of humor as one of the cardinal virtues.”
[indiscernible], “follows that everybody supposes that he possesses the quality himself, and that his neighbors do not. It is indeed rarer to meet a man, woman, or child, who will confess to any deficiency in humor than to a want of logic. Many people will confess that they are indolent, superstitious, unjust, fond of money, of good living, or of flattery; women will make a boast of cowardice and men of coarseness; but nobody ever admits that he or she can’t see a joke or take an argument.” What he’s saying there shows you that relatively recent. He’s making a point.
It is only really in the late nineteenth century. You say well why? What is it? Because it’s very different than Aristotle or Plato, they are looking and seeing what is funny is it’s out there. It’s out there. It’s not okay and so it’s ludicrous. It’s a hunchback, it’s someone who’s lame, it’s someone who stutters, it’s someone who’s ugly. It’s like looking at red we see funny, right.
Our view is it evolves to be able to see not only ridicule but a sense of the absurd. Okay, a sense that something is ridiculous. When I’m walking around all the time and I look at you know I look at things. I constantly see them as absurd. I got a message from classmates of you know you’re, you know it said you’re unforgettable; one person has looked at your profile. You know seeing the absurd in things.
But a good sense of humor means more than that now, right. It means being able to, rather than just cast out and look, to cast out and then see yourself as absurd. That’s why we value it because we just don’t think it means being able to get a joke or be funny. But it enables us to see ourselves in perspective.
Okay and then after, if you look at the rise of comedy as an industry that’s all after the Civil War. Not like there’s not comedy before and there’s not jokes before. There’s all of those things before of course.
But not until the sense of humor becomes valorized in this way to actually have Vaudeville, silent films, you know sort of where we are now. New Yorker comes about in nineteen twenty-five.
>> Eric Horvitz: Bob, quick question?

>> Bob Mankoff: What, yeah.
>> Eric Horvitz: Given how we’re immersed in our culture we don’t really see outside of it, it’s hard.
>> Bob Mankoff: Yeah.
>> Eric Horvitz: Given that there seems to actually be a shift fashion spike in humor going from an odd thing and something to express like a bad sneeze in a crowd to a virtue, a fashion of late. What about the cultural aspects? I mean this is like, I see, it looks like UK and America but it may not have been share by the world…
>> Bob Mankoff: You’re very, in fact humor; the word humor originally has to do with four you know it’s physiological. We have black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. It’s thought that the composition interaction is determined our health. But then we thought well you know what these interactions also determine our psychology. They need to be balanced.
Someone who had an extreme of one or the other was eccentric, a man of humor. Now a man of humor at that time was actually someone who’s eccentric, unbalanced. There’s a whole comedy of humors.
It’s an English word and then eventually someone who could create these characteristics was called a humorist.
Both in England and America it becomes very valuable. In France it’s much more positioned as ridicule rather than this. If you look up books that are supposed to be humorous it will say in the Library of
American Wit and Humor. It distinguishes the two. Wit is this type of clever stuff. Humor is something that comes out naturally of the personality of a human being. Of characteristic, if you think of old fashioned shows like the Andy Griffith Show, this warm type of humor.
It is, it definitely is, humors absolutely universal in that when you look at different nationalities, ethnicities, all the peoples of the world. Laughter looks the same, smiling looks the same, what they laugh at and the stimuli that produce it of course are very different.
But I want to go way back. What does Evolution tell us about humor? Well, this is a cartoon I did. Okay, it’s very, very deep in mammals. Laughter is very, very deep, okay. It’s social; it’s a form of communication. What it communicates is playing, all animals play. The play is usually aggressive. It looks like fighting, right, but it’s not fighting.
Okay, so I want to start with rats.
[video]

We had this internal playing. We have heard what appeared to be the sounds of laughter. We decided to tickle some animals. Then we realized that we had to look at the sounds at a very different register than we can hear. We could tickle animals and generate a lot of vocal activity that appear to be laughter. These animals would begin to enjoy our company. They will start to play with our hands.
Wherever we will put out hands they would follow it. When we tested these animals to ask whether they were enjoying this kind of activity the unambiguous answer was yes.
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: Now the most astounding result of that study is that he has talking rats.
[laughter]
That’s it. Okay, moving up sort of to primates. Now, the chimp is going to laugh. The laughter of the chimpanzee is different than ours because its laughter on the inhale and exhale, huhuhuhu. We laugh completely on the exhale. That’s why it’s also part of our speech. Because you think of laughter coming at the end or at the beginning, actually there’s laughter throughout speech. Its part, so all of our laughter is ha-ha. It’s like that different with chimps.
[video]
It’s going to get you, huhuhuh. It’s coming. It’s going to get you, huhuhuhu. Here it comes Elsie; here it comes Elsie. It’s going to get you, huhuhuhu.
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: They’re just like with a child really, right. I mean exact so that shows you, you know this a deep, deep response. This is up a little bit. This is more cognitive. What you’re going to see not so much is laughter and the chimp you’re going to see the play face. You’re going to see the daddy chimp playing with his son, kid. You’ll also see aggression but it’s more like a peek-a-boo thing, it’s different, watch, okay.
[video]
He bops him on the head. Now that, this relax is called the play face, sort of like a smile. But once again having the elements of sort of type of aggression. Whereas she came in and tickled the chimp right now he’s going in like that, right.
Okay, move up a little bit. There’s this kid, now he’s going, watch him.
>>: Here you go.

>>: Baby laughs.
>>: Whoa.
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, so you know a lot about humor just from that. Now, he did something different.
He wasn’t tickled. He did something wrong within a frame of play. He did something wrong. Then you and you laughed also because something wrong happened, okay, but was also okay.
Okay, so just the little one. Humor’s a type of play, not always. But to experience it we need to be in a playful state or mind. Now, we can switch out of it. But in general most humor will come when we’re moving back and forth between purposeful and playful states.
We mark that. We signal that all the time. We reverse back and forth. Serious is goal oriented, playful we enjoy things for its own sake. Serious we’re future oriented, we’re present oriented. When we’re serious high arousal is unpleasant. When we’re in a serious mood we don’t want to be you know incredibly loud. It’s the reverse when we’re at play. We actually want high arousal.
Here’s a good example. Okay, so once again this is pleasure arousal level. When we’re relaxed and purposeful if we’re all of a sudden highly aroused we’re going to feel anxious. When we’re playful we want to be excited. A good example is like a rollercoaster.
[video]
Whewwww.
>> Bob Mankoff: High arousal.
>>: Here we go.
>>: Oh, yeah.
>>: Yep.
>>: Whoohoo.
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: Interestingly laughs, interestingly so you’re having to hear this sort of synergy of you’re in danger but you’re safe, you’re in danger but you’re safe. A lot of humor will be in that frame, you’re in danger but you’re safe.

Now, the last time I was here Eric took me for a ride in his Tesla. In the parking garage he floored it.
[laughter]
[indiscernible] dead.
>> Eric Horvitz: [indiscernible]
>> Bob Mankoff: What happened, so I went up online and I said what happens to people in a Tesla when they have malicious friends?
[laughter]
Who want to do it, okay watch?
[video]
Might not go as fast but.
>> Eric Horvitz: I’m going to drop my phone on…
>> Bob Mankoff: Here’s the test.
>>: I’ve got you…
>>: We’re going to do a little launcher here. Are you guys ready?
>>: Yeah.
>>: Psyc, on three, I’m going to launch it, ready.
>> Eric Horvitz: Is it easier than the Ferrari?
>>: On three, one.
[laughter]
>>: Oh, my god.
>> Bob Mankoff: Once again like the rollercoaster, right.

[laughter]
>>: Oh, shit.
>> Bob Mankoff: This combination of danger and safety, danger and safety.
>>: Shoot, I just wasted frigging money on my passes at [indiscernible], ride an accelerator.
[laughter]
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: Then the laughter becomes social. Okay, so when you look at fear, anger, laughter, so you see clearly we’re looking at things even from just a physiognomy of it. Even some of the physiology of it they’re actually fairly close when you look at laughter and crying, and stuff. There are differences but they’re close.
Here’s a great thing that showed that, it’s almost like slow motion of showing you the thing with this kid.
The mom sneezes.
[video]
>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, mom sneezes and then.
>>: Hahahaha.
>> Bob Mankoff: He reacts with fear.
[laughter]
>>: Mom blows nose.
>>: Hahaha.
>>: Mom blows nose.
>>: Hahaha.
>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, see it becomes, it becomes adapted to it, right.
>>: [indiscernible] little baby.

>>: Hahaha.
>>: [indiscernible] baby.
>>: Hahaha.
>>: Is mommy’s nose scare you when I blow it? Does that scare you when she blows her nose?
>>: Hahaha.
>>: Yeah.
>> Bob Mankoff: In a way the kid also being trained to understand, trained really to understand that…
>>: Mom blows her nose.
>>: Hahahaha.
[laughter]
>> Bob Mankoff: This is clearly an unusual response.
>>: Hahahaha.
>> Bob Mankoff: Usually you don’t have that break.
>>: Hahaha.
>>: Silly [indiscernible].
[video ends}
>> Bob Mankoff: But here you do. Social aspects of Laughter, so a lot of times in laughter nothing from a real cognitive standpoint or a very big thing seem to be happening, we’re just having fun, right. It communicates this is play, gives pleasure, induces laughter in others.
That’s sort of an important response. It’s important what bonding response that people are having in the car. Yeah that’s their initial response. That initial response, one very simple theory of humor from an Evolution part it’s a false alarm response. It’s a false alarm in that something appears to be dangerous. It turns out very quickly not to be dangerous. It would be relief laughter. We loudly signal, both we regulate our emotions and we signal to others that it’s okay.

This interesting book by a guy Robert Provine and that’s in there about laughter. Some fact just about laughter as it occurs. Its thirty percent time more frequent when with people than alone. Almost all of your laughter or humor responses will be either social or pseudo-social. People laugh very, very rarely when they’re alone.
With the experiments we did here people were looking at cartoons, caption contest cartoons and rating them. But you’re very rarely going to get any laughter you know in that situation. People don’t realize how much they actually laugh when talking. It’s about six times just in normal conversation. It’s interesting if you have people keep a diary of how often they’re laughing it’s like a dieting diary they have no idea. Okay, in conversation you’re much more likely to laugh after what you say than in response.
Okay, also when we look at jokes and stuff. Most humor does not occur. Most humor occurs in the social, you know in social reactions. Okay, so there’s all different types of laughing, laughing with and laughing at.
These are all these audience factors. I won’t go through them but it sort of details the things that potentiate humor and the opposite. If an agent, object, and audience are all sort of, there’s a commonality you’re likely to get laughing with. Here’s a video of Orrin Hatch at a Prayer Breakfast, okay.
[video]
Ah, my home sweet home.
[applause]
[music]
>> Whoops, oh dear.
[laughter]
>> Bob Mankoff: His cell phone works.
>>: Did that go along with for prayer?
>>: I never learned how to turn that alarm off.
[laughter]
[video ends]

>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, so this is the type of laughter that is a bonding type of laughter within a group that tells everything is okay. Okay, let’s look at something different. This is Jon Stewart ridiculing Jim
Cramer during the Financial Crisis of two thousand and eight. Very different here because okay, we’ll look at it, the audience share a commonality. Okay, but not with the object, okay and so let’s watch it.
[video]
We did it and saved a lot people.
>>: Let’s show the tape that he, from last night, okay.
>>: Why not.
>>: What he said about you.
[another video]
>> Jon Stewart: Jim Cramer I apologize that was out of context. Technically you were correct you weren’t suggesting to buy Bear Stearns. That was something that you did five days earlier in your buy or sell segment.
>> Jim Cramer: I believe in the Bear Franchise. You know what a sixty-nine bus I’m not giving up on the thing.
>> Jon Stewart: He’s not saying literally I’m asking you to buy Bear Stearns. That you’d have to go back a full seven weeks before the stock completely collapsed.
[laughter]
>> Jim Cramer: I’m asking people who are watching this video to buy Bear Stearns.
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, so you can see one of the things you know. Is laughter contagious? Well, it’s not contagious if it’s about you, now is it? Because we saw his face fall, right.
[laughter]
Originally, it’s not contagious about you, so that’s interesting. We understand that what one laughter or humor in general is very, very, has multipurpose. It can bond but it also it can criticize, it causes

conformity. That’s one of its main purposes also. Simple model here is so if you like Jon Stewart and you ridicule someone you didn’t like. You get maximal humor, the other way the reverse.
This is dispositional humor. It will explain a lot about what people laugh at and implement. Whereas someone, so rather than thinking the stimulus this thing is absolutely funny. This thing is unfunny. We have to understand the functions of humor, so that would be minimal humor.
Okay, one of the things humor does besides you know ridicule. It maintains hierarchy. Some cartoons,
“Honestly, fellows, I only laughed that hard because his remark struck me as funny.” The boss is funny.
“All right, Rogers! I know I made a humorous remark, but in my opinion you’ve laughed hard enough.”
Okay, so we know that also. I have no doubt that I could listen to a board meeting or a committee meeting in another language for an hour. By seeing who laughed, at what, how long they talk you know you would know who was the leader, actually.
Isn’t it interesting to say, okay, so the boss is funny, right? Oh, I got to go back one, sorry. The boss is funny. Now, here’s a really interesting experiment. That’s a lame joke. That’s the joke they use in the experiment, so there are two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it’s hot in here!”
And the other replies, “Holy cow! A talking muffin!”
Here’s the experiment. You make a fake boss and a fake underling. Right there you’re doing a task and I pay you. You, in that experiment you either have the boss of the underling tell that joke. You just made the boss, this fake boss, and there’s a huge difference in who laughs. Okay, not only that people who are not even in the experiment looking through a panel think the boss, this temporary boss is funnier.
You know that also will explain a lot of humor. I don’t have the video of this here because I cut it out for time purposes.
But if you watch Jon Stewart on his show versus Jon Stewart at the Academy Awards, you’ll see on his show he needs very little to get a laugh. The Academy Awards where he’s not the boss and Jack
Nicholson doesn’t give a shit about him it’s a lot harder.
One model of humor is you know it’s a set-up. We tell the joke. We can predict it. We’re not going to think it’s funny. If we do predict it we find out that we find the rule. Now, jokes actually go back quite a long way. Here’s some of the, this is a guy performing jokes from the Philogelos, the world’s oldest joke book from twenty-five hundred years ago.
[video]
[Music]
He goes to the doctor and says, doctor when I wake up I’m all dizzy. Then after half an hour I’m okay.
Well, wait half an hour before waking up.

[laughter]
>> Bob Mankoff: This is from twenty-five hundred years ago.
>>: What of a pair of twin brothers dies? When a student [indiscernible] runs into the surviving twin he asks, did you die or was it your brother?
[laughter]
Someone tries to needle a quit witted man by telling him I had your wife for free last night. But he just says, me I’m forced to put up with this. What’s forcing you?
[laughter]
>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, so we see how that, now actually jokes actually pretty much disappeared through a long, long time. Romans revived it but in the Middle Ages they become these much longer narratives.
>>: Gettysburg is a resident…
>> Bob Mankoff: Old Jews telling jokes.
>>: He’s ready to go to Florida for the winter. He goes into see Dr. Schwartz and Internist. The doctor said, what’s the problem? He said, well I’ve been having these silent gas emissions and I just don’t know what to do with it. It’s causing a lot of problem and a lot of embarrassment. The doctor said, well tell me about it. He said, well the other night we were playing Bridge. My wife and I were at the
Grossman’s. During the course of the evening I probably had six or eight of these silent gas emissions. It created a little bit of a notch and soda but they were all silent so there were really no problems. We went home. It happened again the other night at dinner. I decided to come see you. As a matter of fact
I’ve had eight or ten of these incidents as I sit here before you today. He said, what can you do for me doctor? He said, well the first thing I’ll do is send you to a hearing specialist.
[laughter]
[music]
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: You know these older guys, now, see this joke actually is a different joke. The other ones, these other ones are sort of these moron jokes and stuff. In this joke there’s a hidden narrative.
Okay and I’ll tell the one that I better like then, Phil Derek, maybe he likes it.

There’s this firm, Schwartz, Schwartz, Schwartz and Schwartz. The guy calls him and says, I’d like to speak to Mr. Schwartz. He said, I’m sorry Mr. Schwartz is ill. Well, then please let me speak to Mr.
Schwartz. Sorry, Mr. Schwartz is on vacation. Well, then can I speak to Mr. Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz is in a meeting. Well, then could I speak to Mr. Schwartz. Speaking.
[laughter]
Well, so in that joke there’s a hidden narrative. Okay, there’s something else happening. Those types of narrative jokes, these called tricoline jokes where you build are relatively sort of relatively recent development.
Okay, cartoons are jokes. Okay, French Army Knife.
[laughter]
Okay, Einstein in bed, “To you it was fast.”
[laughter]
Okay, this is Hamlet’s Duplex.
[laughter]
Now one of the things what we’re building on now is we have to get those jokes. There’s a moment when you get it, right. This was stuff I did at the university.
[video]
You can take a seat here.
>> There’s a saying in comedy that timing is everything. Well, in this lab comedy is timed alright in the milliseconds. Actually it’s the reaction to a joke that’s being studied here thanks to this contraption. It’s called an eye tracker. It will monitor the eyes every moment, even a change in pupil size as the volunteer looks at various cartoons. Why? Well, it turns out that the eyes are much more than a window to the soul. They also could reveal if and when you get a joke.
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: The stuff we did there was, so here look at this. It says, “Many women are more at ease with a female doctor. That’s why I’m wearing the wig.”

[laughter]
This is pupil size, okay. In these, I mean I’ve cherry picked this a little bit because actually the data is a lot more variable. But when you look at it watch it move. They read the caption and then at that point is also when they tend to get the joke. When the pupil size when they realize when they put the two things together. Pupil size was related. How much the pupil popped was related to how funny it was.
Lots of different types of humor, I mean different ways to look at it. One of them is you know in congruity, how, weirdness. Some humors sort of based pretty much in reality. “Yes, he has deep pockets. But I never realized how short his arms are.” You know you get the joke there.
Here much more absurd, “The ringing in your ears – I think I can help.” We’re putting the two things together. Here much more absurd, “That’s what I hate about this city. You roast in summer, you freeze in winter, and the rest of the time its carnivorous pig bats.”
[laughter]
Okay, now you understand there’s nothing necessarily to put together, right. Nothing really necessarily in that way to put together like French Army Knife, Hamlet’s Duplex, and yet people find it funny. Now, of course it’s the sequence.
Now, the interesting thing is, so we look at what we call incongruity resolution, although the incongruity still remains. That actually is a personality variable. People, it’s not like you don’t, if you don’t you know you don’t like this joke, you can still think is a joke. But people who have a preference for this type of thing if they’re asked to like create patterns. They’ll create more regular patterns rather than more random ones. They’ll tend to like more abstract. In other words they’ll be more open to various types of experience that they don’t necessarily have to explain. They don’t have the need for this complete closure. It’s more like that. They’ll be more likely to vote this way.
Absolutely, if you actually look at the type of stuff, so you can see the continuum between corny, absolute. You know I mean I get the joke, completely, everybody can get it. I enjoy it. I enjoy a certain randomness, a certain openness to experience.
Here’s another thing. Okay, this is the classic comedy triangle. You have a source, you have a punch line. It doesn’t have to be a divided source. This is the work you have to do over here to put it together.
Okay, so you’re going to have to put it together.
Here Hamlet’s Duplex is the set-up. The punch line is this and you have to do some sort of cognitive work. Now, the cognitive work is actually more than just saying oh, that’s from Hamlet’s Soliloquy. You also have to actually put into be and not to be that works for the thing. What’s interesting about how much, how quickly we do all this type of cognitive work. How jokes die.

[laughter]
There’s lots of different ways. You can have, in the punch line, set-up, you can tell too much. There’s lots of different ways. I mean this is from an interesting book, What Are You Laughing At by Guy Dan
O’Shannon who was a comedy writer for Modern Family and stuff. But he’s got a million diagrams and they’re interesting.
Now, a joke can die in a lot of ways. Here for instance you might not have sufficient information to understand this joke, right. You might not know that wagging a tail is a signal to go for a walk. That in baseball pitcher is going for a walk.
Another way joke, so this is a joke of mine. Accounting Department, Legal Department, Jail, okay it’s actually got to work that way. It can’t work this way. Although the incongruity if we were just talking about incongruity theory it would be the same, right. All of a sudden you have a Jail. Yet you don’t have the sequence. You don’t have the surprise that you need.
That’s how a lot of jokes work. “I started my vegetarianism for health reasons, then it became a moral choice, and now it’s just to annoy people.”
[laughter]
Or it’s like those three doors. I could not start, I could not reverse that and it be a joke. Lots, so the book is interesting. You know lots of diagrams, it’s not, these are schematic. It would be, while it does make a lot of sense to actually then operationally define you know on each side. But we sort of know that’s the case. We do know that there can be high, medium, and low levels of incongruity. That things could happen right within the frame of reference. How probable is this in the real world?
On the other side we might, we would know well how much cognitive work does it take you to put it together? It’s not, you would think wow oh we want the most incongruity and the most, not necessarily. You can have very complicated jokes. In a way I think diagrams like this are heuristic for saying, well, how might we explore? How might we actually explore you know the phenomenon?
Now, incongruity itself, I mean it’s weird because I’ve said the idea you need resolution, right. This is not very incongruous, right. It’s just a talk show, talk show, okay. Now it’s a little incongruous. There’s a prisoner over there, right. Now it’s weirder. You sort of think it’s funny but there’s no resolution, right. Most people will still think this is funny even though there’s no resolution.
Now it maybe going back to my psychology background and saying, well why? Because sometimes I do find if you just show this to people they’ll actually laugh. There’s no joke to it. Interestingly, if I went back to make a joke you’re best off with two levels of association. My feeling is that it’s sort of a generalized response to things that we normally respond to is funny.

Oh, even worse, okay. Now, we have even more incongruity, right. But it would be an impossible problem to solve as a joke because now you would have to think of all the frames of reference. Going back to humor theory, Arthur Koestler was a Novelist and came up with this idea of bisociation. The idea is that in most jokes and in most humor which has this cognitive element you’re putting in together two frames of reference, two different frames of reference. “You slept with here, didn’t you?”
[laughter]
Okay, you’re putting in the frame that you know about human sexual behavior, what you know about
Praying Mantises. Here, “Lassie! Get Help!!” Lassie gets help.
[laughter]
Now the other part of this idea of appropriate incongruity, it’s appropriate in a way we get it. Yet it’s also spurious. One of the markers that it’s funny is that it’s illegitimate. The logic is illegitimate. None of this works. This, you know what he’s dead.
[laughter]
He can’t be talking to her. You know what he can’t be talking. Here also this couldn’t happen. Humor is different let’s say than just straight metaphor where you can have incongruity. You can bring together different frames of reference because we understand there’s also illegitimacy to the logic. There’s pseudo logic involved.
The other thing that happens in humor is Script Opposition. One of the things I’m trying to do is to look at the cognitive parts of it and look at the emotional parts of it. Now Script Opposition is, this goes back to cognitive theory. How the world works. When you see a doctor a doctor is supposed to be solicitous, he cares about you, and whatever. When you see a cartoon of the doctor the script is interesting.
You’ve got two scripts in your mind now. One of the scripts is what we know about doctors which is they’re good and they care. The other thing it can’t be because it’s a cartoon. It has to be about something bad, some danger even though it’s a pseudo danger here. “You’ll be awake during the entire procedure. The anesthesiologist is on vacation.”
[laughter]
How much of the humor there is due to the Script Opposition, the arch from good to bad? How much is there’s another cognitive element? Being awake during the operation can, that’s what we’re putting together, is the joke, right. It’s not just like the doctor says I’m going to be very bad to you. Oh, you thought I was going to be good but I’m bad. That’s not it. There’s other cognitive element of that being awake during the operation usually means one thing. We have to put together something cognitive.

Okay, there’s a whole theory called the General Theory of Verbal Humor by Victor Raskin, which is all about Script Opposition, which is that all that’s happening is that one script we’re going from one script to the other. This is Groucho Marx on Dick Cavett in nineteen, I don’t know, sixty-eight. Okay, come on, come on.
[video]
Speaking of Vaudeville, those old jokes they survived because they’re so good. They’re great, that’s why they survived. There use to be a joke about an actor was playing in Vaudeville in a small town. He got laryngitis and looking for a doctor. He didn’t know anybody. He walks along the suburbs of this little town. He finally comes to a cottage and there’s a sign outside that says Dr. Smith or Brown, or something. He can’t talk very well. He rings the bell and a very pretty woman comes to the door who is the wife of the doctor. She opens the door. He says, is the doctor in? She says, no come on in.
[laughter]
[video ends]
>> Bob Mankoff: Okay, so there, so the script, so you know, so when we look at script out of good versus bad, real versus, this is from Raskin, rich versus poor, smart, dumb, high status, obscene versus non-obscene, compassionate versus callous. We see that. We see that happen. But also there’s the other element that we’re putting together.
Okay, so one of the things the Script Opposition tells you is that humor deflates, right, it deflates. Art, that’s art, beautiful, blah, that’s not, right.
[laughter]
Okay, that’s funny because it’s essentially a Script Opposition. It’s going from one to the other. Okay, so the Benign Violation Theory of Humor is a little bit like Script Opposition. It’s saying, for something to be funny we both have to think it’s wrong and right at the same time, wrong and right at the same time.
Now, my feeling is humor is more than that. But that’s a potentiator of humor that when this happens it’s not all that’s happening because it’s the joke itself that’s happening. But that’s the idea to have some interesting applications.
One of the things is Benign Violation so that, you know the obvious thing is you know when you have a tragedy it has to be distant. The other prediction it makes is that for a mishap, a little thing going wrong it has to be close, it has to be close.
You know when the New Yorker, when there was a real tragedy in two thousand one at the New Yorker we didn’t produce any cartoons. Then what was the cartoon we were going to do right after it. You

would need something that actually wasn’t really funny, but actually dealt with things mildly. First cartoon was, “I thought I’d never laugh again. Then I saw your jacket.” So mild, mild because she didn’t really do that. About a year later, “I wouldn’t mind living in a fundamentalist Islamic state.”
[laughter]
You couldn’t do that, after nine eleven, one week or two you couldn’t do that. Because all of a sudden this is such a serious event you had to try to intercept with it differently.
Okay, this is some more Benign Violations Study I find interesting. Okay, so here’s this picture. Now
Peter McGraw who’s done this, originally he investigated you know emotions that we find shameful or disturbing. He found that when e showed some of these things disturbing, people actually laughed.
Okay, so let’s look at this picture here. It turns out that the distance that you move the picture from the retina actually determines whether or not people think it’s funny. The closer it is the more disturbing.
Here because it’s less gruesome it needs to be closer to be funny, with the icicles. Also, if, you know also besides that if you Photoshop the first gruesome picture, people think it’s funny if they say, if they know it’s Photoshop. If they think it’s a real picture they don’t think its funny and the reverse for the other. I think it’s an interesting idea that tells you a lot pragmatically about how you deal with jokes and what you can do with them.
Look at this joke from the New Yorker, okay. Now, that seems, most people would think that’s a fairly benign joke. But the New Yorker, this is a story about Katrina, so people are in actually an empathetic mood. Now most people didn’t react to it but here’s how someone, “Another joke on old white males.
Haha. The wit, it’s nice, I’m sure to be young and rude, but some day you’ll be old, unless you drop dead as I wish.
[laughter]
The New Yorker is a very sensitive environment. Here’s another thing, an online study I did. It says,
“Discouraging data on the antidepressant.”
[laughter]
A lot of people liked it. But here are the different reactions you know these people liked it. This person didn’t, “I like animals”, you know five exclamation points, that’s a lot. “I don’t want to hurt them. That doesn’t seem very funny to me. I don’t like to see animals suffer, even in cartoons.” You know I wrote back to this person. I said, they don’t suffer, they can’t suffer, they’re cartoons.
[laughter]

But this just shows you, you know this environment. Look at this, “I’ve only been gluten-free for a week, but I’m already really annoying.” It’s like that, okay.
[laughter]
Here’s the letter, okay. Within the New Yorker you know. “We live with a serious auto-immune disease.
Try walking a mile in our shoes!” There’s a great joke that really applies to this, that especially with these people that makes sense because you’d be a mile away from them and you’ll have their shoes.
Okay, here’s another one, the original, okay.
[laughter]
Now, so this is a little bit edgy for the New Yorker, right, a little bit edgy. You were also having the wrong and right feeling, right, wrong and right, wrong and right. But there’s a cognitive part to because you’re under, but you’ll have the wrong, I shouldn’t be laughing at this, right, yet I am laughing at this.
Now it would be completely, it wouldn’t work at all if we did that. It was important that I supplied the distance.
Here’s another example, so when Cecil the Lion was killed originally. You know really there’s no jokes originally because everyone said it’s sad, it’s bad, it’s all these bad things. As you move a little bit away from the event you will have jokes. The original joke that came into the New Yorker, I’m sorry I got a little thing. I’ll tell what this is.
One of the things I’ve said, this is a slide that popped in there but it makes a point. That humor has this danger involved into it. That’s what we like about a zoo there’s some danger. This would be a bad zoo, or not a good one, or a boring one. That also would be boring. That would be worse.
But going to Cecil this is the cartoon that actually came in.
[laughter]
I felt you know what this is too severe because you know it’s a little bit too severe. To move it back a little bit, to make it more benign but make the same point. What I had the artist do was that. Just by thinking about it rather than that it changes the sort of gruesome thing that the guys head is actually on the wall.
Okay, now you know what’s funny and why, next, how to be funny. Well, you’re computer people so I thought I would make it easy for you. There it is.
[laughter]

Really, you know it’s a piece of cake. You do, really every time you want to be funny; you’re at a party, social. You’re having a drink, you’re at a bar, you want to pick somebody up. This is really it. You’ll come up with jokes like, “why is an alone region different from a sole habitation? One is a lonely air; the other is an only lair.” Okay, no that’s not okay, that’s a very bad joke, that’s a very bad joke.
Right now there is no algorithm for being funny, really being funny. You need a brain and it says, “It never ceases to amaze me what little brains people have.” But I want to conclude by saying our brains are very little but they go a long way when it comes to humor. Thank you.
>> Eric Horvitz: Thank you.
[applause]
Any questions or comments, or humorous quips?
>> Bob Mankoff: Yes.
>> Eric Horvitz: Gloria.
>>: You showed a slide earlier where you showed arousal and positive/negative. It reminds of Stanley
Schachter who you might know…
>> Bob Mankoff: I know exact, so what he injected, right.
>>: Exactly, so that an emotion is a function of both arousal and a cognitive interpretation. I was wondering you also talked about how people tend to laugh more in social situations. Is it because there’s an arousal because social situations create more of an arousal which means…
>> Bob Mankoff: Just to go back to the experiment. The Schachter experiment was this; they showed people humorous clips and things like that. They gave them control of things, nothing, a sedative, or an amphetamine. When they were more stimulated they joked.
Now, along with that there are other experiments which show that if you read either a horror story, pornography, or a neutral thing. Anything that stimulates you before will actually lead to greater potentiation of the joke. In humor theory it’s called transfer of excitation. There’s just transfer of excitation.
I think absolutely that, so just being aroused that’s why for example I think we can agree the talk was great. But it would be greater like at five o’clock in the afternoon. No, I guess your responses, your arousal and all that. But what’s happening in conversation in social situations is really multiple determined also. Because one of the things that’s happening in conversation because it’s improvised is

that everything is surprising. Surprise itself, also we’re a species that both most have to collaborate and compete.
There’s an enormous, so social situations are fraught with tension and everything. That’s why to some, so all of those things are you know absolutely, the transfer of excitation is very interesting to think about when you think about what’s funny. It’s why people get warmed up for a comedy club. It’s why comedians curse; just saying fuck causes a certain amount of arousal. A lot of the evolution of comedy towards this sort of strong stuff and things like that is all due to transfer of excitation. Yeah, go ahead.
>>: It’s like kind the, yeah every comedy club that I’ve been to makes you buy drinks so you’re aroused and more ready to be…
>> Bob Mankoff: Well, more aroused and more disinhibited.
>>: Yeah.
>> Bob Mankoff: That you’re, so you’re both aroused and also in terms of the Benign Violation your sensor. This, you know there’s a whole other part of Freudian Theory in which the essential function of jokes is to slip by the super ego. The sensor, so that you can have the enjoyment of impulses that would later, yeah you were going to say.
>>: Another question was, so to me there’s like different kinds of laughing too. When you spoke about this was like people who have power are laughed at more often. There’s like I don’t know someone like chuckling, like side splitting laughter, and nervous laughter like we saw with the baby. What are the different kinds of laughter that…
>> Bob Mankoff: Well, this is sort a debate within the community. Is there really, are there that many different kinds of laughter? Or is it more the context of almost the same laugh that we interpret. My feeling is there are absolutely, you know there is a variety of laughter. There’s combination laughs because we know there’s a voluntary laugh, right. I would think that if you had the right audio equipment you’ll see all sort of blend that you problem can tell an awful lot about you know the blending.
In general you’ll see for a laugh to a joke because the joke works in this punctate way. The laughter is also punctate. You know what I mean it’s ah, ha. You know its a few things, it’s limited. Whereas in the event in the car, in the Tesla and stuff it goes on because it starts as the reaction, and then you know performs those other functions. Other questions?
>>: What do you go for in the New Yorker? I mean kind of laughter you go for.
>> Bob Mankoff: Smile of the mind. What do we go for in the New Yorker? Well, the humor is general benign. It doesn’t you know punch down or punch up too much. It elbows to the side because it’s

reflective use of the social class that’s reading it. It has to work within that. It’s primarily either absurd or cognitive. In fact it’s hard to do because it doesn’t pull on the usual historical levers of laughter which are obscenity and aggression.
For me it’s more interesting that way because it’s definitely not the funniest in a way. The funniest in a way, the funniest stuff that people laugh at are what happens to them and are mishaps. Or actually if you looked at just volume of laughter they’re laughing at people falling down on America’s Funniest
Home Videos. You had a question? Yeah, go ahead, I’ll…
>>: Okay, so I was, I’ve always wondered actually about the placement of the cartoons in the magazine.
Is that something that you control directly? Do you actually take into account you know the…
>> Bob Mankoff: All done algorithmically, no.
>>: That makes sense.
[laughter]
>> Bob Mankoff: Maybe the placement echoes on right at the very end. The cartoons do many functions. One of them is humor. One is just like adjusting for the text, how long the articles are, the size of them, and like that. That’ll come at the, the only thing about the cartoons is they can never relate to anything in the magazine or to the article even peripherally. They have to have their own sort of you know separate space, so that is interesting. If it’s a completely topical cartoon it will usual occur up front, that’s that, yeah.
>>: I’m under the impression that shorter captions are funnier than long ones.
>> Bob Mankoff: Well…
>>: [indiscernible] the economy of expressions…
>> Bob Mankoff: Well you know when Eric and Dafna, and I did this stuff in general you will find that depending on what the person wants to communicate. If they’re just dealing with the image themselves you know you want the minimal stuff. If they’re showing off so this is not only a caption context, it’s an anti-caption context in which the captions will be long and crazy. There’s all different things that will depend on the context.
In general shorter is better but let’s just look at the, my cartoon that Eric referred to is the executive on the phone. He’s looking at the appointment book and he’s saying, “No Thursday’s out, how about never, is never good for you?” It could end with, “How about never?” But it’s better if it goes on. Why?
Because when we’re looking at the two areas of associating we’re looking at politeness and rudeness.

When we want to match those up we need the syntax of politeness to go on to say, “Is never good for you?”
You know it’s a general rule. What we’re looking at when we did the stuff with Eric and I, and Dafna is often the footprint of humor. But often different humor has different you know footprint. I think you had a question.
>>: No I just had…
>> Bob Mankoff: You decided to…
>>: I just interjected.
>> Bob Mankoff: Yeah, go ahead.
>>: What about the difference between cartoons that have a caption and those that do not have a caption at all? Or videos for example, like back in the days in the Charlie Chapman short movies you didn’t have any…
>> Bob Mankoff: Well, I would, yeah we have captionless cartoons. Now, often there is a setup in a joke and you’ll see you know there’ll be a sequence also that you’ll see. There’ll be something or there’ll be the same type of bisociation.
If Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton I would really advise you to look at those things closely and you will see essentially what are setups and jokes. There’s a sequence. If you look at a Buster Keaton movie every, all, there will always be a setup and a payoff.
Now, some times of course laughing will just be the, be almost no cognitive work. Someone will throw a pie in someone’s face. Then really you’re back to the kid in the thing or the rollercoaster. Something bad has happened and then there’ll be the whole sort of social context as well. Anything more, yeah go ahead?
>>: I often hear people claim that the New Yorker cartoons have sort of an upper middle class tone to them. They’re snobbish. They’re in board rooms and things like that. Are you guys’ sensitive to that?
Do you worry about sort of appealing to the…
>> Bob Mankoff: This is the shortest best joke I know. It says, “Ah, pretentious, moi?”
[laughter]
I, not intentionally, actually the New Yorkers really interesting, we actually think the audience and us are the same. There’s no condescension at all. We are doing, the general thing is we do what we like and

we hope you like it. When a new cartoonist comes in we say don’t do cartoons for us. Do what you like, hope that we like it, and then we hope you like it. It really is like that. We don’t focus group. We don’t do that. We just do it.
Obviously the readership of the New Yorker is upper middle class. It is intelligent, so the things are going to like are going to be you know different than what Donald Trump would like.
[laughter]
Yeah?
>>: When you’re thinking of a joke does the theory help you? Or do you just seat of your pants?
>> Bob Mankoff: Theory is very inhibiting. The, it has to be a level below that that’s incorporated. The, going back to the playful mode and the purposeful mode, so the mode that you have to be in is playful essentially to generate humor. To the degree to which you are in the purposeful mode it’s actually inhibiting. It’s actually useful for the analysis. Also it just shows the limitations that this is a bigger phenomenon than those diagrams. Than my explanation of it, you know what I mean? It’s an attempt to look at it. Those diagrams, if I’m saying, oh man I don’t, I’m too benign. I need more of a, you know there’s no way to do that.
But you do sense those things because all, look all of psychological theory comes out of our intuitions from the start. You know it’s not like string theory. Each of these things is saying, oh yeah setup or punch line and it will come down.
I do actually find it inhibiting. Or one way it can work is to understand it in a way and then put it away.
You know like a lot of theory of sports and other, you saw it and you know you’re working on it. Then if it exists on an unconscious level because you, to rift, to come up with jokes you have to associate really quickly. You can’t have any formula stuff in between it. It just has to happen you know automatically.
I do it through play, when I, so I just try to play. When I went by the robot I just started to play with it. I wanted to see what would happen. Anymore questions, anybody? Yeah.
>>: On the pupil study, I mean there was a very limited context in terms of humor or like there’s an image and a caption.
>> Bob Mankoff: Right, right.
>>: Does like people’s eyes change like for just like purely auditory and humor or is…

>> Bob Mankoff: I think pupil size always; I was amazed here I think pupil size actually is often indicative of cognitive strain, of any type, in a broad way. What I think will be more revealing; one of the things we like was something that isn’t mediated ratings, how funny you thought.
Now the clearest thing of course is laughter. But in studies and subjects you’re not going to get that.
But what I was talking to Eric about is you know high speed, high resolution video of the face. I believe that will be very revealing about whether people really like it or not.
Then there’s a question how much relation there is between judgment when you judge. Let’s say the gallows joke with the handicapped. Let’s ask you to judge that. Now your judgment of what you might think is right and wrong might come into your perception rather than how you actually reacted to it.
Anymore, yeah?
>>: Actually this is a question about share some analysis because transforming from psychologist to a cartoonist is; to me it’s a big change, right. How did you figure it out? How did you have the, I mean you have the…
>> Bob Mankoff: Well, I was kicked out of psychology. It wasn’t like, so a boot in the butt will transform you from one situation to the other. No, I was too creative for psychology because I had pigeons and it was experimental behaviorism. It was the seventy’s and they just wanted me to do reinforcement schedules and me and the drugs that I was on told me to do something else.
[laughter]
But what happened is interesting was actually what’s called a Zeigarnik Effect. I was interrupted in this that I was actually really interested in psychology. I was like crazy Jewish obsessed with the things I was obsessed with. Then it got interrupted because I wanted to do these experiments and I was on drugs.
Then, so this is actually a funny story. What I was doing was putting pigeons in a skinner box which they pecked at, okay. You had to put the pigeons in for one hour a day. Your Ph.D. took you a whole year. I was looking at these pigeons and I realized they didn’t have a union.
[laughter]
This was the drug talking. Why couldn’t I just put them in the box twenty-four hours a day, give them the right amount of food, the right amount of water. I would speed up my dissertation by a factor of you know that factor? Well, I did that. I just put them in there and I was up late at night with the skinner box, looking at it and everything. But remember there was the part about I had to feed them correctly and give them enough water. I had the wrong schedule and the pigeon died.

That actually led to my exit from psychology. Although I thought it was very creative. But I came back to it. The Zeigarnik Effect is you’re interrupted in doing something. Then I don’t know it was about the year two thousand and stuff. I’d always be keeping these databases of stuff.
I started to see in my mind what was known in a way about these overlapping maps. I kept seeing them, actually I kept dreaming them. Oh, I see what I’m doing. Here, I’m associating this whole thing with this whole thing. I started to read up on it. Then in two thousand and, I went to University of Michigan. I convinced them to let me teach a course.
Now, I’ve been, the Zeigarnik Effect works very, very well for me. One of the disappointments I find in theory and in humor theory when I go to the conferences is that everybody’s in their own little silo.
They don’t really want to know. They don’t really; the Benign Violation people don’t want to talk to the incongruity. Everybody sort of made their bones with their papers. They’re desperate to defend their little area and stuff.
But there’s very little collective stuff so I’m actually quite frustrated. One of the reasons why it’s nice you know to come out to Microsoft and do this. Is that you get this whole other energy going and you know we have no dog in the fight. We’re going to try to see you know what was happened. Anything more, yeah go ahead?
>>: Black humor, are there studies that show the same kind of demographic or personality differences, or among people that appreciate black humor, and those who don’t?
>> Bob Mankoff: I think what you’re going to, you’ll see a longitudinal arch from youth to age. As you yourself you know have been subject to the thousand you know a natural shock that fleshes air too.
Your relations are you’re less likely to like humor about cruelty and death and really bad things happening.
Most adults aren’t going to like dead baby jokes. Okay, so I think that’s there what they say. Look, thank you all. I really appreciate you coming.
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