A proper repartee

Posted on March 25, 2015 by knlistman

Southern-belle-civil-warThe group of women sat around a table, discussing their mother’s instructions on being a “Southern Lady.” In their storytelling manner they competed with each to relate the most outlandish piece of advice.

“I never could understand that bit about making sure I had on clean underwear before going on a car trip in case I was in an accident,” one drawled.

“Me neither,” agreed a second woman with a honeyed giggle. “If I were in a car crash and bleeding, I doubt anyone would be worried about how clean my underwear was.”

The first woman continued. “Still, she would remind me every time we got in the car. Sometimes she simply would insist that I go back in the house and put on another pair, but I would have none of that.”

“My mother would insist that I put on clean underwear, too,” a third woman chimed in. “I simply refuse to do it.”

“Intentionally wearing dirty underwear–what a great way to stand up to your mothers.” I commented straight faced.

At first they looked confused, and finally the third woman shot me a dirty look. That is difficulty with using sarcasm as humor. It is a biting way of saying what I really don’t mean to say. It brings attention to a lack of logic in a backward manner. Unlike satire, a type of buffoonery expressed when the subject of ridicule is not there, sarcasm almost always requires the presence of the person caught in the mistake to make sense. The inflection of a sarcastic comment is subtle. It is not accompanied with “Let me tell you about…” or the guffaws that often mark brazen attempts at humor. Without these cues some people  are unsure how to respond.

Psychologist Penny Pexman from University of Calgary confirmed in her study that people are more likely to use sarcasm with their friends than strangers. She also found that children as young as five can be adept at picking up the real meaning behind facetious comments. They evidently learn it from their parents. But, then research has also have uncovered significant regional differences. A whopping 20% more Northerners in the U.S found sarcasm funnier than people from the South did.[1] So I suppose I shouldn’t look too harshly on the trio of “Southern” women not knowing the appropriate way to respond to sarcasm–they need to reply with an even wittier barb.

[1] Richard Chin, “The Science of Sarcasm? Yeah, Right” Smithsonian.com, November 14, 2011
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But am I funny?

Posted on March 10, 2015 by knlistman

A-fest12 022 cThere are advantages to being considered humorous, even if you do not want to spend your life in front of an audience as a comedian. People who communicate with humor are often perceive as being more socially attractive and more competent communicators. They also tend to be less lonely. Students feel that teachers who appropriately use humor are more in touch with them, and workers view bosses who crack a few jokes as having a great immediacy.

However, before you gather your collection of puns and one-liners remember that believing you are funny doesn’t necessarily make you so to others.  There is a skill involved here. Traits that are found in people who are considered humorous include: adaptability in communication, desire to make a positive impressions, orientation towards feeling/emotions, and being able to see the irony in a situation. So how do you know if you are funny? The Humor Orientation Scale has been developed by a pair of West Virginia University researchers so you can rate your Humor Orientation or HO. But there is a caveat, your peers must also think you are funny, so recruit a couple of acquaintance that will honestly rate you according to this scale.

Humor is not just the content of what you say, but also the manner of delivery. People who have high HO scores are perceived as being funnier than those with low HO scores, even when delivering the same jokes. However there are other dimensions to what is considered funny. For example, in a class room instructors who had the ability to get a group to laugh were considered more humorous by students also had high HO scores. The students with low HO scores simply did not see them as being as funny. But maybe they have stiffer requirements for humor, because instructors with low HO scores were not considered funny by either group of students.

A study from Baldwin Wallace University has linked decoding ability and humor orientation. Decoding ability involves three parts: conversational sensitivity, nonverbal sensitivity, and receiver apprehension. The more sensitive the person was to both verbal and non-verbal cues the higher the person’s humor orientation tended to be. However, sometimes sensitivity results in apprehension which led to a negative correlation to being perceived as funny.

Content of humor, however does still matter. Verbally aggressive people tend to use humor at the expense of others. Targeting others for laughs doesn’t necessarily cause a lower perception of their humorous ability but it caused their “likeability” or rating for social attractiveness to plummet according to research.

Finally, understanding the language and culture of your audience is crucial for being funny. On time I sat listening to an educational speaker who often managed to get a chuckle out of others bemoan the time he was presenting in China. “I was using the same jokes and puns that always get a laugh, but the just people sat their deadpan,” he complained. “So I asked the translator if she was translating me word for word or restating the meaning in her own words. She admitted she was restating the meaning. That’s why it wasn’t funny.”

I was taken back that he failed to comprehend that jokes and puns don’t translate well. These kinds of humor rely on words sounding similar in a particular language. I tried to explain that if she had translated his speech word for word it still wouldn’t have been funny and the Chinese audience might have thought his presentation was a bit nonsensical. However, he continued to whine about how the translator ruined his humor, which got eventually got a chuckle out of me.

Booth-Butterfield, S., & Booth-Butterfield, M. (1991). Individual differences in the communication of humorous messages. Southern Communication Journal, 56, 205–218.
Merolla, Andy J. Decoding Ability and Humor Production, Communication Quarterly 05/2006; 54(2):175-189.
Wanzer, M., Booth-Butterfield, M., & Booth-Butterfield, S. (1995). The funny people: A source-orientation to the communication of humor. Communication Quarterly, 43, 142–154.
Wanzer, M. B., Booth-Butterfield, M., & Booth-Butterfield, S. (1996). Are funny people more popular: The relationship of humor orientation, loneliness, and social attraction. Communication Quarterly, 44, 42–52.
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Laughter and learning

Posted on March 3, 2015 by knlistman
359px-shy_guy_imagicity_5A

Photo by Dan McGarry “Shy Guy” CC BY-SA 3.0 

Imagine two different college classes: in one the instructors is always logical and serious; and in the other the instructor throws in frequent jokes only tangentially related the subject. In which class do students learn more? According to research it depends the students. In one study, Melissa Bekelja Wanzer found that humor found offensive or directed at students interfered with learning. In another study, Mark Shatz, and Frank LoSchiavo discovered that when a professor made self-deprecating jokes and included subject-related cartoons in on-line classes, students said that they enjoyed the class more.

But that research doesn’t tell us in which class the students learned more. The problem is that most studies on how humor affects learning end up with mixed results. Wasner found that when professors use a dry sense of humor when instructing, the students perceived them as better communicators. (In the same manner doctors who occasionally spoke in a witty manner were viewed more favorably by their patients.) However, if instructors repeatedly put themselves down, some students viewed them as less competent. There is no escape from the differences in what students perceived as funny. What one person thinks is sufficient enough to arouse a chuckle may go over the head of another student. What brings up a belly laugh in one, may be considered overdone slapstick by another.

John Hopkins University professor, Ron Berk, PhD, uses humorous skits to promote learning in his biostatistics class. His goal is to help students with different learning styles see how statistics work and encourage divergent learning that is applicable in real life. But humor’s role in relieving stress is what makes it valuable in his estimation. “It helps relieve fear and reduce anxiety…prior to or during an exam, humorous directions or test items may relieve students’ tension and help them perform better.”

So remember to keep your best, most relevant joke to tell just before that killer exam.

 

Shatz,, Mark and LoSchiavo , Frank, Teaching of Psychology, Vol. 32, No. 4, pages 246-248, 2005
Stambor, Zak. How laughing leads to learning. Monitor , Vol 37, No. 6, June 2006
Wasner, Melissa. “Use of Humor in the Classroom” In Our Teaching Behavior, Communication Education, 48—62
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No laughing matter

Posted on February 24, 2015 by knlistman

StateLibQld_2_177635_Serious_faced_group_of_school_children_The support shown for the people killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office appeared wide spread throughout the news. Candle light vigils, crowds proclaiming “Je suis Charlie.” It would almost seem like a great show of solidarity. But of course if this satirical journal truly had such widespread support the attack would have never happened. Satire draws selected people and current events in an absurd perspective. People are more likely to pay attention to satirical lampooning than a serious discussion of flaws. The political humor makes people feel superior, as long as their group is not the ones being lampooned. But most people made to look absurd feel more wounded when they are mocked than when they are openly critiqued.

Charlie Hebdo had a particularly irreligious brand of mockery. They been sued jointly by Islamic organizations – the Grand Mosque, the Muslim World League, and the Union of French Islamic Organizations – but not as often as they had been sued by the Catholic Church. However, this journal tended to avoid anti-Semitism. Cartoons with anti-Jewish sentiment had appeared frequently in Nazi Germany while the holocaust was going on. So this subject was no longer a laughing matter.

Which brings us to the power that satire actually has. Satirical works, whether they are cartoons and articles, or full blown books and movies, deride some person, group or belief. The idea is to shame the target so that the object of the attack seems ridiculous or grotesque.  Satire has the power to cause disregard or even hatred for the target. There is no requirement for the satirical work to be true – in fact it almost never is – but it must only be funny to a large enough group. If satire wakes the public to a great wrong, offering a backhanded viewpoint that would right that wrong, such as in Daniel Defoe’s Modest Proposal, it has a strength that simply preaching against the problem does not have. But satire’s power to be destructive is just as potent. There is little way to combat the ideas expressed by satire, other than by government suppression, which seems unthinkable to those who so proudly cling to freedom of speech.

As I was watched CNN with their constant coverage after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, I heard a man interviewed in France compare it to the September 11 attack on World Trade Center in New York. I winced. He couldn’t possibly believe these two events were similar in scope. The masses of people who died in the twin towers did nothing to provoke the attack. I could have mocked him; making him look ignorant. But satire doesn’t work that way. It is an offensive game; you must strike first. Speak back in a serious manner and you are seen as humorless. Squash it with any sort of power and it is seen as an affront.  Once satire has been attacked it takes on an aura of respectability. The best thing to do is simply not to laugh.

 

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He laughs, she laughs

Posted on February 10, 2015 by knlistman

 

Self Portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn
Officer and laughing girl by Johannes Vermeer

Once I heard a bit of advice spoken by one adolescent boy to another. “Do you want to know if a girl likes you? Tell a really stupid joke, the stupider the better. If she laughs, she likes you.” It has been obvious for eons that laughter has a sexual side. I am not referring to sex as the subject of humor, but the differences in the way that people of different genders perceive what is funny and how they respond with laughter.

Allan Reiss and colleagues of Stanford University studied the response of male and female brains when reading comics. To a large degree they used similar parts of the brain–the part that makes sense of semantics and juxtaposition of ideas. The difference is brain function between genders existed but barely. It was not possible to tell who was male or female by viewing the response results. The part of brain that deals with executive processing were activated more in the women’s’ brains than the men’s. The reward center in the female brain was also more active when they found a comic funny.  But this increased activity was minimal.

Let’s return to our first example. If an adolescent boy told a really stupid joke, a typical female laughing in response would be an indication of approval. His male peers would be more likely to respond with a kind of laughter known as scoffing, to show him how stupid the joke really was. Boys, and even men, commonly use humor as a kind of competitive social tactic. We ignore the way males poke fun at other males. However, when adolescent girls laugh at other girls in a ridiculing manner, they are considered “mean girls,” the kind of cliquish queen bees who use cruel humor to maintain their superiority over others.

Women’s humor is expected to be socially supportive, whether they are laughing at a man’s not so funny joke, or laughing with their female friends about a common situation. According to Don Nilsen, a linguistics professor at Arizona State University, a woman who employs the typically aggressive or competitive male sense of humor will find both men and women critical of her.

So what about men who laugh in the way that society prescribes for women, in an appeasing manner that shows support? Men do laugh that way often–in front of their bosses. Humor is not affected as much by the way genders perceive what is funny–their brain function have very minute differences according to the Stanford study–as it is by role society has assigned them. Most people will laugh at humor based what their society sees fit for their gender and their status.

A. Reiss, MD, the Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research. Dean Mobbs, Nov. 7 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
W. Lawson, “Humor’s Sexual Side” Psychology Today, article 200508, published on September 1, 2005 – last reviewed on December 20, 2012

 

 

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The giggling girls have power

Posted on January 27, 2015 by knlistman

It's_so_funny_cropWhy can’t we be all like adolescent girls, and laugh more? The topic of the discussion thread caught my attention. Evidently girls between the ages of 11 and 18 all over the world laugh more than any other group. In the past, I have often been in classrooms where teenage girls were unable to suppress their laughter. Most of the time there was nothing particularly amusing to start the laughter. However, the very sound of an initial giggle seemed to generate the impulse for laughter to spread. It frequently turned into a high pitched and disruptive twitter, bringing the class to a halt. I suspected that was the reason the girls were giggling so much.

It turns out that I was not far from right. Girls don’t giggling all the time because they are having fun, but because they are building their first line of defense. Giggling is an attempt to gain allies in a conflict. They are waging war from a position of weakness as evidenced by their weapon of choice, laughter, but waging it nonetheless.

The gigglers sense that they have little authority over others. They may be a female in a male dominated society, a youth in culture where older people are acknowledged leaders, or less educated and experienced in a world espousing intellectual ability and technological savvy. Delicate chortling is a way of seducing those in power into helping and not attacking them.

The people for whom the giggling is performed are often well aware that it is done to appease them rather than for any humorous words they have said. Still they are flattered. John Morreal, a professor of religion at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, noted that the “degree to which a woman laughed while talking to a man was indicative of her interest in dating him. How much the woman laughed also predicted the man’s desire to date her.”

The gigglers live within a hierarchical framework, a kind of caste system based on power in society. They have discovered that the placating nature of a chuckle usually works better than attempting a rational discussion, which places both parties in a position of equality. Laughter is their choice tool for manipulating others. They typically laugh to appease someone they view as having a superior position. However, if you observe a giggler talking to someone that they feel they are above (such as a younger sibling or child) and the laughter frequently disappears, and is sometimes replace by a demanding voice.

While researching the psychology of laughter, I found an interesting Radio Lab called “How Does Laughing Affect Us?” Vanderbilt University associate professor of psychology JoAnne Bachorowski concluded that men laugh more around their bosses and women laugh louder around men they don’t know because “the giggling girls have power.”  They use excessive laughter to shield themselves, by gaining the attention and protection of those who are stronger in society. If you want to know more you can listen to the program – http://www.radiolab.org/story/91593-how-does-laughing-affect-us/

Photo by Emanuele Spies. CC by 2.0
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The unprincipled conformist

Posted on January 20, 2015 by knlistman
char1012_imagery

Illustration by S.L. Listman

The rebel with a cause is one of favorite heroic types in fiction. But the “foil” of the principled nonconformist, the unprincipled conformist, is also a common antagonist. What makes this character so villainous? Conformity requires that a person at least appear to follow a set of rules. So how can a conformist be unprincipled? A required similarity within a group can mask controlling force that is actually harmful to the people within the group.

The nature of this harm can express itself in a number of ways. One of the most common is the exclusion of people for insignificant reasons. In order to create the strong camaraderie a common enemy needs to be found. There are two reasons groups do this: one is the age old reason that wars exist, to take something of value from another person. Exclusion allows the group to gain. The second reason is to shift what the group doesn’t want onto the shunned people. Blame for any problems is shifted onto the scapegoats.

The difficulty with both of these actions is that in the end they destroy the group. Whether the exclusion is used as an excuse to take away wealth or credit or influence from the other person, or simply a social snub, it results in physical pain. This pain tends to cause the excluded people to avoid interacting with those people, even if they would prefer to conform in order to fit in. [1] This results in the group seeking out a fresh scapegoat, and this process continues until an apparently cohesive group crumbles from the inside out. The other “harm” caused by unprincipled conformity is the squelching of individuality, leading people to become rigid in their behavior.

How is the unprincipled conformist brought to a demise? By persuading this trickster’s followers that they have been following a leader that will use and destroy them. This job falls on the rebel with a cause. Often it is the stirring speech of revelation, not the physical knock-down drag out fight, that brings an end to the unprincipled conformist.

[1] Eisenberger, N. I.  (2012)  Broken hearts and broken bones: A neural perspective on the similarities between social and physical pain.  Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21, 42-47,

 

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Rebel with a cause

Posted on January 8, 2015 by knlistman

Lego_StarWars_Han_Solo_on_ice_planet_HothAs much as people may be willing to mimic the behavior and appearance of others in order to fit in, secretly they often envy those who show intentional dissent. According research  we admire the person who has the guts to do what we dare not do–challenge group norms–as long as the person is not challenging our own norms.

“Indeed, people may speak up and dissent from important group norms not because they want to be difficult and destructive, but because they care for the group and its future.” [1]

The heroes of novels are often principled rebels, not lacking in loyalty but willing to speak up against those with power for the benefit of the others. In the world of fiction, the hero often sways the fence-riding group to abandon the person doomed to be the villain by the use of stirring altruistic words. And, sometimes the hero engages in a knock-down, drag-out physical fight, too. But in real life? In a true uphill struggle by the minority to voice dissent and influence the majority, the rebel with a cause must be consistent. Consistency is not necessarily the hobgoblin of small minds.

Group dynamics affect the challenge of being a real-life rebel with a cause. Social groups tend to seeks consensus so that everybody can get a long. Even if this consensus is not rooted in reality, the fact that everybody else holds the same opinion provides enough validation for most people. They have committed themselves. They don’t really want to hear some one who questions their ideas. If you question the consensus, you run the risk of being excluded. If you back someone who is asking the difficult questions, the group may exclude you, too. [2]

Persistence on the part of the minority is their major weapon. The majority group starts with the assumption that the rebel is not correct but the persistence on his or her part creates a conundrum. ‘How can they be so sure and yet so wrong’? [3] If the rebel view is going to have any chance of gaining a following the supporters must remain consistent over time. If sticking to their guns is seen as attention seeking, or a rigid belief rather than consistency, it will fail.

Also the rebel with a cause does not have the luxury of both ‘winning friends’ and ‘influencing people.’ Rebels may influence others by remaining adamant in their position, but most people will not like them. And, the rebel hero must remain strong when punished by the status quo. An attempt to gain support through appeasement is typically seen as giving in. If the rebel gives in the chance to influence others goes down the drain. [3]

Basically, the uniform view of the majority is never as solid as it appears. Most people are conformist as they fear exclusion. They try to appear to adopt the majority position even if they privately disagree with it. But, timing is everything when trying to convert private dissenters into open rebels. The hero must speak up before members of the group have a chance to follow through with any action based on the mistaken belief of the majority. When people comply with group demands, and then someone criticizes the beliefs of the group, they do not climb on board behind this person. Rather they take the criticism personally and preemptively reject it.

So it is those fence-sitters still clinging tightly to their fence that are most willing to admire the person who dissents for principled reasons. When the rebel with a cause voices an opinion that they secretly hold, they might slide off the fence in his direction, with a sense of liberating relief that they have done the right thing [3].

“Lego StarWars Han Solo on ice planet Hoth” by Klapi – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
[1] Monin, B.and and O’Connor, K. (2011) Reactions to Defiant Deviants-Deliverance or Defensiveness? In J. Jetten, and M.J. Hornsey,(eds) Rebels in Groups: Dissent, Deviance, Difference, and Defiance. 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
[2] Levine, J.M. and Vernon L. Allen, V.L. (1968) Reactions to Attitudinal Deviancy, Report from the Per Group Pressures on Learning Project. Vernon L. Allen, Principal Investigator. Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning, The University of Wisconsin
[3] Nemeth, C. J. & Jack A. Goncalo, J.A. (2011) Rogues and Heroes: Finding Value in Dissent.  In J. Jetten, and M.J. Hornsey,(eds) Rebels in Groups: Dissent, Deviance, Difference, and Defiance. 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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Technological component

Posted on January 6, 2015 by knlistman

BinaryData50Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking a psychological with an eye to creating realistic characters. Frequently I’ve been hearing a lot about how the millennial generation is different from other generations.  I really have not found any creditable research describing exactly what the difference is. Writers on this topic seem to be making it up based on what they think is logical for people who have grown up with computers and the internet.

Of course I have my own logic based on working with millennial age students and my own children who were born in the 90’s. Recently I was reviewing research I used for a literacy program developed as a consultant in 2005. What struck me as ironic was that one of the major points of the research was that this program required “a technological component.” However, the research paper was vague concerning the kind of  actual kind of technology needed or the results it was suppose to achieve. I showed this attempt to be cutting edge without specific information to my millennial age daughter.

Her response “Technological component? It could be a digital clock,  or one of those reading toys with a tiny computer inside.” The millennial generation often look with a jaded eye on the idea that technology by itself is a solution to any problem. They have grown up with instant Internet access and still see a world full of problems. Instead they want to know what specific technology will be used because they feel the pressure to know how to use it.

Of course millennials use electronic technology more than the previous generation, because it is around in greater abundance. But they are no more likely to adopt new technology as they get older than the past generations. In fact I have seen many millennials disgruntled with new versions of electronic products and software programs (or apps as they are now called).  It’s not just a matter of older generation not learning technology, younger people are getting tired of constant change also. They simply are already accustom to a set of technology that was developed later.

So I find the differences in generations is more a matter of environment heightened by superficial appearances  that people adopt because they want to belong to a group.  As a child I watched TV more than my parents did, who listened to radio more than their parents did, who probably read penny novels more than their parents did. Attention spans, persistence and people skills really do not change with generations, rather it is the unwritten rules on what is acceptable that changes.

Despite the major technology emphasis in classes, companies think students coming from college are less prepared for the workplace than in the past – in the sixties any degree was good enough to show you could learn on the job – because change in industry always outstrips change in education. There is a good reason for this; education is supposed to provide problem solving skills which is a far more classic and non-specific skill. If you want to see where education is headed, you can look to the workplace. Computer assisted instruction and learning simulators have were employed in the workplace when Roddenberry was writing the Star Trek scripts (no he didn’t make up the computer based schools on his own). The corporate world threw itself into e-learning because of the reduced expense of not having trainers on the road, only to find that their employees simply were not learning as well from e-learning. The pendulum is swing back to learning face to face.

So maybe the millennial generation will look at their own children and ask “Why do you actually want to be with your friends to talk to them?”

Image by W.Rebel (Own work) CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

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What kind of deviant?

Posted on December 30, 2014 by knlistman

DSCN0668c1Authors are well aware that readers favor the rebel who follows a different drummer or stands defiant before the crowd. Social psychologists and sociologists have actually done  a good deal of research on groups’ reaction to this kind of person. The kind of person whom they describe as exhibiting deviant behavior.

Researchers have even categorized these deviants. The first group  are the passive deviants, who differ from the majority group due to forces not in their control. Whether they fail to follow the unwritten rules of society through ignorance, inability or a psychological compulsion. They are excluded socially. Sometimes it is simply the matter of an atypical intelligence, learned behaviors from another social class, or differences in appearance that causes society to exclude these people. In real life, many people tend to avoid passive deviants like the plague, almost as if they could catch whatever unavoidable factor causes these passive deviants to differ from the acceptable norm.

Of course, fiction is different than real life and these passive deviants form the ranks of the underdog heroes found in many stories. In real life the goal is often to help the passive deviant blend into the average population and be accepted by the group. In fiction this simple outcome is almost always unacceptable. Instead the underdog is expected to rise to lead their own group or overthrow and replace the leadership of the original rejecting group  – basically avenging themselves on the “in group.” Ironically in fiction the readers expects the passive deviant to exclude the others in the same manner as they were excluded by taking vengeance on members who found their differences objectionable. This actually gives a bit of insight into most people’s heavy dependence on being part of a group.

The second kind of deviants are intentional in their action. There are some that are considered harmless nuisances or eccentric. These defy convention for originalities’ sake or purposely flaunt group rules to promote themselves.  Others are considered criminals because of the harmful intent and result of their deviant actions.  However the lines between these types of deviations from society is not always clear. The intentional deviant that we cheer on in stories we read is the principled deviant, the person who speaks up against wrong doing, who rebels against the group when it treats others unfairly. However, as we look into this in more detail we find that in real life our relation to this principled kind of rebel is not related to their actual moral stance much as it is to our own behavior.

 Monin, B.and and O’Connor, K. (2011) Reactions to Defiant Deviants-Deliverance or Defensiveness? In J. Jetten, and M.J. Hornsey,(eds) Rebels in Groups: Dissent, Deviance, Difference, and Defiance. 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 

 

 

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