The puzzle of joking: Disentangling the cognitive and affective components of humorous distraction

Madelijn Strick*, Rob W. Holland, Rick B. van Baaren, Ad van Knippenberg

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Studies in cognitive psychology, marketing, and education indicate that humor distracts attention from non-humorous information presented at the same time. Two experiments investigated why humor distracts attention. The two basic components of humor comprise (1) incongruency resolution, which poses cognitive demands and (2) positive affect. We disentangled the contributions of cognitive demands and positive affect on distraction based on the notions that (a) both components ore possible sources of distraction, and (b) the components were always confounded in previous research. In an evaluative conditioning paradigm, novel products were consistently paired with humorous stimuli, whereas other products were paired with stimuli that were either (1) equally demanding but neutral, (2) equally positive but undemanding, and (3) undemanding and neutral. The results showed that cognitively demanding stimuli distracted attention, irrespective of stimulus positivity. These findings suggest that the cognitive demands of humor: not the positive affect it evokes, underlie the distraction effect. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)43-51
Number of pages9
JournalEuropean Journal of Social Psychology
Volume40
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2010

Keywords

  • CONTINGENCY AWARENESS
  • MERE ASSOCIATION
  • ATTENTION
  • MEMORY
  • ADVERTISEMENTS
  • INFORMATION
  • BELIEVE
  • CANT

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