A woman is giggling to herself. She is standing in the subway watching a video on her cell phone. The laughter bursting out of her gets louder and louder. Some passengers look irritated, some dismissive, others smile. But the corners of more and more people’s mouths start turning up, and more and more people start laughing with her. After a few minutes, almost all the passengers in the carriage are shaking with laughter.

This is the kind of scene circulating on YouTube. And they show the infectious and unifying energy that laughter can have. We can probably all remember similar moments in our lives when we have gotten into fits of laughter with family or friends and can hardly stop – even though we don’t know exactly what’s so funny. Laughter is a reflex. And thus kicks in before our mind does.

Humor from a scientific perspective

Laughter and humor are the subject of research and scientific exploration. First and foremost in psychology, which has long recognized the health-promoting effects of laughter, but also in cognitive science and neuroscience.

“Humor is an important outlet for relieving the constant pressure, especially in authoritarian states.”

Ali Sonay

Philosophers and writers, on the other hand, have developed various theories of comedy that try to explain exactly why we laugh when we read a commentary or satire, look at a caricature, hear a joke, watch a comedy or a farce, watch clowns or stand-up comedians. These theories play a role, for example, in theater and literary studies, where the creation of comedy is analyzed professionally. Literary scholar Oliver Lubrich once said: “Humor is a very interesting, but also very complicated phenomenon. This is because it is particularly difficult to understand across temporal and cultural boundaries.” Why? Because it is full of social codes and subtle allusions that need to be recognized. Sociologist Wojtek Przepiorka is also interested in this as well as the social functions of humor. Humor can act as a social lubricant – or as a divisive force.

Humor also functions as a reflection of social change and power relations, as theater expert Alexandra Portmann observes. And humor is used as a political weapon. In his research on the topic, Middle East specialist Ali Sonay has discovered the subversive ways people find to undermine censorship. “Humor is an important outlet for relieving the constant pressure, especially in authoritarian states.”

Theories of comedy: Why we laugh

But let us start at the beginning, in Roman antiquity, in the first century BC. At that time, it was Cicero who shaped rhetoric, i.e. the art of speaking or writing effectively, the original form of literary studies, so to speak. And even in those early days, Cicero recommended humor as a rhetorical tool. “To gain approval, rhetoric aims at emotional effects – and humor is an excellent tool for this,” says literary scholar Oliver Lubrich. “This way, wit can be used to win the favor of the audience and ultimately influence a vote.”

Different theories of comedy explain why exactly something is perceived as funny. The three most well-known relate to either incongruity, superiority or relief. According to the first approach, it is incongruent, i.e. mismatched, things that create the joke. For example, when a person throws a cake into another person’s face in a particularly stiff atmosphere. Or when someone talks about speed – but performs in slow motion. On the other hand, according to the theory of superiority, we are amused by the mishaps of others. The French writer Stendhal saw a cathartic and educational effect in this: First we laugh at others, but then we see ourselves in them and laugh at our own weaknesses. The theory of relief or unburdening goes back to the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who believed that repressed fears or desires come to the surface when we laugh. Humor therefore serves to relieve psychological tension.

Cultural differences in humor

Empirical studies also confirm the importance of the non-verbal level in comedy: In addition to wordplay, facial expressions, gestures, intonation, tempo, rhythm and body language also make us laugh. Nevertheless, literary scholar Oliver Lubrich says: “Humor is the phenomenon that is most difficult to communicate across cultures and epochs.” It turns out that you need a lot of cultural background knowledge to understand jokes. This is confirmed by a study by literary scholar Franco Moretti on the international reception of different film genres. According to this study, American action films, for example, are much easier to market abroad than romantic comedies. “Even 2,500-year-old Greek tragedies are easier to understand than Greek comedies from the same period,” says Lubrich. He grew up in West Berlin when the city was still divided and personally noticed that people laughed at different things in East Berlin. And when he moved to Switzerland more than ten years ago, Lubrich quickly noticed: “When I was using something ironically, it tended to be taken literally. And maybe I did that the other way around, too.”

“Humor can influence how we make decisions.”

Oliver Lubrich

Jokes as a test of who belongs to the group

Sociologist Wojtek Przepiorka also notes that jokes need a lot of background or even insider knowledge to be able to laugh at them. The Professor of Sustainable Society is interested in humor as a phenomenon that draws boundaries: “It can make you part of a group but also exclude you from it.” On the one hand, laughing together can unite us because it creates emotional closeness. On the other hand, laughing in groups can also exclude people: for example, those who can’t join in laughing because they don’t find it funny or don’t understand the joke. This is obviously the case with many jokes about mathematics,for example when asked “Why was the function so sad?”, the answer that makes mathematicians smile is: “Because it didn’t have an argument.” This is because mathematical functions require input values, known as arguments.

But many other jokes also require a common background. If you don’t understand a joke and can’t laugh with it, you don’t feel like you belong. “In this sense, jokes can also function as a test of whether someone belongs to a group,” says Wojtek Przepiorka. For people who can laugh together, jokes create an identity. “In my opinion, US President Trump, for example, makes targeted use of this identity-building element,” says Wojtek Przepiorka. “When he makes fun of a journalist with a disability or transsexuals, everyone who laughs also realizes: We belong to the same camp – and there are many of us.” This offensive type of humor, which disparages other people, for example, because of their gender identity, disability or origin, is another, more obvious way in which humor can exclude and divide.

Good and bad humor in transition

This raises the question of what humor is allowed to do. What is good or desirable, what is bad or undesirable humor? In recent years, voices denouncing sexist, racist or otherwise discriminatory jokes have become louder. Since then, conservative and right-wing circles in particular have been complaining that it is no longer possible to say anything at all and that wokeness has gone too far.

Theater expert Alexandra Portmann says: “The so-called wokeness debate is currently being charged politically by the right. But it is a necessary social negotiation about discriminatory language.” And just as language is debated, so too are taste and the question of what is good and bad humor. “This is nothing new, as debates like this have always taken place,” says Portmann. At the beginning of the 18th century, for example, Harlequin was banished from the stage in Germany in the wake of the Enlightenment. This figure was considered carnivalesque and vulgar and contradicted the ideas of a bourgeois, enlightened, literary theater. “This example shows how humor is used to negotiate an understanding of theater, which in turn reflects a social self-understanding,” says Alexandra Portmann. And she adds: “Social change can also be seen in the question of what is good humor and what is bad humor.” This reflects the respective balance of power. “Who is part of it, who is allowed to have a say, who is allowed on stage?”

Humor as a political weapon

Humor also has a high political impact and can be used as a political weapon. This is evident in the US, where political late-night shows satirically criticize and mock the Trump administration. The president tries to use his power to cancel the shows and silence the satirists. This is a common pattern, as Alexandra Portmann knows: “In times of political crisis, late-night shows, stand-up comedy, satire formats and theater performances are very popular.”

In countries where there is censorship, the theaters are one of the few places where political issues can be discussed. “Because improvisation is possible in theater, and improvisation is unpredictable and uncontrollable,” says the theater expert. “As a result, there is more freedom in the theater than on TV or in the movie theater.” Middle East specialist Ali Sonay adds: “When governments censor humor in the media, these formats often become even more popular.” This was evident in Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show in the United States, which had more than three times the viewing rates when it re-aired after being taken off the air for several days in September. Another example is a satirical magazine in Türkiye, which was banned for four weeks after the military coup in 1980 and gained significant popularity in the meantime.

An outlet in authoritarian states

Middle East specialist Ali Sonay researches how social movements use the media in the struggle against authoritarian regimes, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. In doing so, he noticed the important role humor plays in these protest movements, especially on social media: in YouTube videos, photos, memes and caricatures. This was the case in Egypt during the Arab Spring in 2011 and in Algeria during the second wave of protests from 2019 to 2021.

“In general, there is a tradition in the Middle East to criticize politics in a humorous way,” says Sonay. “Humor is an important outlet for relieving the constant pressure, especially in authoritarian states.” This need is so strong that people look for ways to circumvent censorship. In Türkiye, for example, insulting the president is punishable by imprisonment. That is why the phrase “the well-known person” has become established there in order to criticize Erdogan without risking a prison sentence.

Different traditions of humor

When Ali Sonay, who has lived in Switzerland and Germany and researched humor in Türkiye and Arab states, compares traditions of humor, the first thing he notices is common patterns. Just as there is a tradition in Germany of making jokes about “the East Frisians”, people in Türkiye laugh at people from the Black Sea region. The debate about when humor is offensive, racist or sexist is also similar. The cultural references are different: “You need a local context that you must know to understand an anecdote, a story or a joke.”

On the other hand, everyday situation comedy, in other words the small absurdities and funny moments of everyday life, works interculturally and across borders explains Sonay. For example, when two people try to avoid each other on the pavement and get in each other’s way all the more. Or when you walk around with your umbrella open and suddenly notice that the sun has been shining for a long time. Or if someone walks past you and says “Yes, hello?” on the phone and you automatically answer “Hello?!” yourself. The more open we are to such funny situations, the more opportunities we will discover in our daily lives to laugh – at ourselves and with others. Independently of theories and scientific analyses, simply from the bottom of our hearts.