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2013•Europe’s Journal of PsychologyOpen access

Why We Laugh and What Makes Us Laugh: 'The Enigma of Humor'

Arthur Asa Berger

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Abstract

Humor (and related concerns such as the nature of comedy and of laughter) is an enigmatic subject that has perplexed our greatest thinkers from Aristotle’s time to the present. There are four competing theories that explain humor, each of which argues that all humor is based on: superiority, incongruity, cognitive problems in processing humor and psychoanalytic perspectives (such as masked aggression).

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Humor (and related concerns such as the nature of comedy and of laughter) is an enigmatic subject that has perplexed our greatest thinkers from Aristotle’s time to the present. There are four competing theories that explain humor, each of which argues that all humor is based on: superiority, incongruity, cognitive problems in processing humor and psychoanalytic perspectives (such as masked aggression).

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OpenAlex reports 11 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

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Available abstract

Humor (and related concerns such as the nature of comedy and of laughter) is an enigmatic subject that has perplexed our greatest thinkers from Aristotle’s time to the present. There are four competing theories that explain humor, each of which argues that all humor is based on: superiority, incongruity, cognitive problems in processing humor and psychoanalytic perspectives (such as masked aggression).

Key concepts: Laughter, Humor research, Comedy, Aggression, Psychoanalytic theory, Psychology, Subject (documents), Psychoanalysis

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