Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why (Scott Weems)

In Ha!, neuroscientist Scott Weems seeks to uncover the science behind humor—why we laugh and so on. In his words,

Ha! is about an idea. The idea is that humor and its most common symptom—laughter—are by-products of possessing brains which rely on conflict.

The book has three broad sections:
- What is humor? ("what makes us laugh, how do our brains turn conflict into pleasure")
- What is humor for? ("what purpose does humor serve, and what does it say about who we really are?")
- So what? ("why should we care . . . and how does it influence our physical, psychological, and social well-being?")

In the first section, Weems argues that "humor has some very clear ingredients . . . they all depend on conflict and ambiguity resolution within our highly modular brains." He calls humor "a psychological coping mechanism . . . a way of dealing with conflict." It is "how we deal with complex and contradictory messages. It helps us resolve confusing feelings, and even connect with others in times of stress." He proposes that our brains go through 3 stages "when transforming ambiguity and confusion into pleasure:"

- Constructing: we build possible answers when solving problems
- Reckoning: we jettison mistakes to uncover new interpretations
- Resolving: we activate a new frame of reference. 

In short, "humor is our natural response to conflict and confusion," and "our humor must bring us someplace new, emotionally as well as cognitively."

In the next two sections, he looks at a variety of related topics and studies, to include creativity, physiological benefits, and other things.

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I mentioned in my 2023 Resolutions post that I might tackle humor this year, and this book seemed a good starting point. There is some value here. Weems brings up some interesting points, insights into how the brain works, and ideas or arguments that merit contemplation. His references to other studies is helpful for those interesting in further reading (at times, this felt more like a survey on humor studies as a result). And I could see grains of truth in some of his points and claims. Ultimately, though, I was disappointed for a host of reasons:

• Many of his claims take on more of an absolute or constant nature than I felt were warranted. Phrases like "every joke involves ___," "when ___ happens, we have no choice but to laugh," etc. In most cases, qualifiers ("most jokes involve," "our typical reaction is to laugh," and so on) would have made his arguments more tenable.
• It was replete with judgment calls and value statements paraded as absolute or objective truths. 
• The book is packed with logical non sequiturs—conclusions that do not follow from the observations or arguments presented.
• In some places, statements are flat-out wrong. 
• One example: in looking at instances of laughter in the Bible, and categorizing each as due to aggression, sadness, or joy, he claims "the winner by a landslide was aggression, at 45 percent," and "laughter due to joy occurred only twice." If that strikes you as a mathematically odd claim, it is; a quick BibleGateway search shows that words containing 'laugh' occur 44 times (in the ESV translation). If joy happens only 2 times, and aggression 20 (for the 45 percent he references), that leaves 23 times (or 51 percent) for sadness. But absolute numbers aside, one can see the error in his statement: if there are three categories, one has 45% and one has pitifully few results, the remaining category must have around 45% (plus or minus, depending on that 'pitifully few' category)—hardly the landslide he claims.
• He does well to cite numerous studies, but they, too, appear (given the summary shared with us) to have dubious elements—with some of their methodologies and/or conclusions. 
• In places, he appears to contradict himself with statements on the subjectivity and complexity of the topic, betraying the 'conclusive' studies or 'objective' claims he had made earlier. 

To be clear, I don't think he (or the researchers he cites) are idiots; I think they are fumbling around as they try to bring scientific rigor to a topic with a tremendous amount of variables and judgment calls.

Though there is some value here, this is neither a conclusive nor scientific work.

Rating: C