Theories of humor

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Although humor is a phenomenon experienced by most humans, its exact cause is a topic of heavy debate. There are many theories of humor which attempt to explain what it is, what social functions it serves, and what would be considered humorous. Although various classical theories of humor and laughter may be found, in contemporary academic literature, three theories of humor appear repeatedly: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory. Among current humor researchers, there is yet no consensus about which of these three theories of humor is most viable, though the incongruity theory is very often considered the most dominant. Some proponents of each of these most commonly known theories originally claimed that theirs and theirs alone explained all humor. There is, however, consensus that these theories, especially incongruity, have been building blocks for some later ones. Many theorists also now hold that the three main theories are of narrower focus than originally intended, and that there are examples of humor where various theories explain different aspects. Similarly, one view holds that theories have a combinative effect; Jeroen Vandaele claims that incongruity and superiority theories describe complementary mechanisms that together create humor. Another such combinative view involves incongruity and relief, that Terry Eagleton considers in his 2019 book, Humour.

Relief theory

Relief theory suggests humor is a mechanism for pent-up emotions or tension through emotional relief. In this theory, laughter serves as a homeostatic mechanism by which psychological stress is reduced. Humor may thus facilitate ease of the tension caused by one's fears, for example. Laughter and joy, according to relief theory, result from this release of excess nervous energy. According to relief theory, humor is used mainly to overcome sociocultural inhibitions and reveal suppressed desires. It is believed that this is why we laugh while being tickled, due to a buildup of tension as the tickler "strikes."

From the idea of humor being a release of tension, philosophers and researchers developed a relief theory, and a notion of comic relief over time.

In the eighteenth century, English drama theorists John Dryden and Samuel Johnson argued that relief theory was to be used as a dramatic tool. John Dryden (1668) believed mirth and tragedy would make for the best plots.

On the other hand, Shurcliff (1968) argued that humor is a mechanism to relieve tension. When in anticipation of a negative experience, one may begin to feel some heightened arousal. According to Shurcliff, the heightened arousal is then reduced through mirth or laughter. Comparably, an English Scholar, Lucas (1958), wrote that audiences respond better based on the "strain-rest-strain-rest" idea in which a tragic event may happen with moments of relaxation.

According to Herbert Spencer, laughter is an "economical phenomenon" whose function is to release "psychic energy" that had been wrongly mobilized by incorrect or false expectations. The latter point of view was supported also by Sigmund Freud. Immanuel Kant also emphasized the physiological release in our response to humor. Eddie Tafoya uses the idea of a physical urge tied to a psychological need for release when describing relief theory in his book The Legacy of the Wisecrack: Stand-up Comedy as the Great Literary Form. Tafoya explains "…that each human being is caught in a tug-of-war: part of us strains to live free as individuals, guided by bodily appetites and aggressive urges, while the other side yearns for conformity and acceptance. This results in every normal person being continually steeped in psychic tension, mostly due to guilt and lack of fulfillment. This tension can be relieved, albeit temporarily, through joking."

Superiority theory

The superiority theory of humor traces back to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. It is also very widely claimed to be associated with Plato and Aristotle. The general idea is that a person laughs about the misfortunes of others because they feel superior. There is a lack of consensus, however, as to exactly what the superiority theory means and the purpose of the claim it makes about humor.

Plato described the laughable as being both a pleasure and pain in the soul. One may experience these mixed emotions during the malicious person's happiness at the victim's misfortune. For Aristotle, we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals. Aristotle observed that many jokes relied on a combination of incongruity and hostility. He explained that jokes are funny because they catch the listener off guard, introducing a surprising and unexpected twist that amuses them. However, this incongruity alone does not entirely explain the mechanics of laughter. There also appears to be a component of hostility from both the comedian and the audience. What makes something funny often involves ridiculous features, such as a physical deformity or a slip-up. Therefore, whether through jokes, situations, or physical characteristics, while humor's laughter-inducing quality primarily stems from incongruity, aggression is also intertwined with it.

In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes described superiority theory in two pieces, Human Nature (1650) and Leviathan (1651), which have very similar views. Hobbes describes laughter as the sudden glory one feels that one is better than the target of the humorous narrative. The sense of glory comes from the recognition of power. Hobbes also mentions the theory of passion in which laughter is not passion; however, laughter is how the body manifests a particular emphasis. Hobbes proposed there are several which typically evoke this feeling of glory:

1. Success in one's actions beyond one's expectations.
2. The perception of infirmities and defects in others.
3. The perception of infirmities and defects in one's past.
4. The conception of some absurdity is abstracted from individual persons.

According to Hobbes, laughter evoked by these circumstances always has connections with the feeling of superiority.

While Kant is not usually recognized as a superiority theorist, there are elements of superiority theory in his account. Kant thinks that there is a place for harmless teasing. In addition, philosopher of humor Noël Carroll observes that even the structure of a narrative joke, on Kant's view, requires the joke teller to "take in" or outdo the joke receiver, even if only momentarily. Because such joking is recognized as joking and it is carried out in a playful way, it does not imply that the joker feels or thinks they are actually superior.

Criticisms of Superiority Theory

The main criticisms scholars make of the superiority theory, are the following. Philosophers, beginning with James Beattie in response to Thomas Hobbes, have objected that there are many types of humor that do not, in themselves, have anything to do with feelings of superiority (Beattie, 1778/79). More recently and broadly, it is argued that even in humor that is always directly accompanied by feelings of superiority, those feelings are in fact always distinct from the humor itself and they are never identical with it (Morreall 1983, Levinson 2006, Marra 2019). There is a wide consensus among theorists of humor that the feeling of superiority is extraneous to humor, and this discrepancy contributes to the dominance of the incongruity theory.

Disposition theory

Feelings of superiority in humor are examined more closely in disposition theory. Disposition theory is explained in Zillmann and Cantor's disposition theory, which states that in media and entertainment, audiences make moral judgments, and the attitude (disposition) towards a person can affect the audience's experience of humor. Audiences enjoy the attempts of humor more when good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Thus, for good characters, good fortune is hoped, or tragedy is feared—while characters who are disliked are the complete opposite. If what the audience hopes for is achieved, then they may feel a sense of enjoyment or, in this case, humor. Similarly, audiences may find a comedian's jokes more humorous if they like the person delivering jokes.

However, when good things happen to people who deserve it, very little amusement is experienced by the audience. Thus, it is more beneficial to mirth in situations of misfortune rather than instances of fortune.

Disposition Toward Victim

1. The more intense the negative affective disposition toward the disparaged agent or entity, the greater the magnitude of mirth.
2. The more intense the positive affective disposition toward the disparaged agent or entity, the smaller the magnitude of mirth.

Disposition Toward the Victor

1. The more intense the negative affective disposition toward the disparaging agent or entity, the smaller the magnitude of mirth.
2. The more intense the positive affective disposition toward the disparaging agent or entity, the greater the magnitude of mirth.

These guidelines examine how amusement is expected when an extremely liked individual disparages an extremely disliked individual. On the other hand, one may experience less amusement when a disliked individual disparages the desired individual.

However, It is not in every instance of disparagement that humans experience mirth and laughter. In some cases, the comment or act of disparagement can be too much of a tragedy for such a reaction. Aristotle mentioned the emotions that come with instances of death, serious harm, or tragedy overpower laughter and instead evoke pity.

Superiority and disposition theories also play into the idea of punching up or punching down in comedy. Making jokes about someone who is superior to us is considered "punching up," while making jokes about someone who is inferior to us is considered "punching down". Due to these power imbalances, punching up is seen as ethical, where punching down is seen as the opposite. Note that punching up in this context is different to punching up a script (such as in improvements made by a script doctor).

Humor is complex, and different theories attempt to explain its various aspects. The disposition theory adds a psychological perspective by suggesting that individual differences play a crucial role in determining what people find funny.

Incongruity theory

A beer glass made by Camden Town Brewery (London). The physical presence of beer in the glass's lower part, exactly where the inscription is: 'HALF EMPTY', sets a collision between two frames of reference. This incongruity results in a humorous effect at the moment of its realization.

Incongruity theory, otherwise known as incongruous juxtaposition theory, suggests that humor and laughter rely on incongruity, which denotes anything contrary to expectation according to some norm. The type of humor most often described by this theory is that of a play on words. Zillmann (200) says that linguistic humor "requires the deciphering of ambiguities, a process that can be likened to problem-solving." For example, "What is black and white and re[a]d all over?" "A newspaper!" The part before the punchline can evoke puzzlement due to the cognitive dissonance of not anticipating the punchline. Subsequently, the punchline itself might puzzle the hearer until they see the resolution of incongruity, when humor is perceived.

Francis Hutcheson in Thoughts on Laughter (1725) was the first modern thinker to account for humor by the term "incongruity," which became a major concept in the evolution of this field. In this early version, incongruity was mostly a singular clash between two opposing ideas. It can be compared to Aristotle's notion of ugliness, but is much broader. After Hutcheson thus initiated the incongruity theory, later thinkers developed it. Now a dominant version states that humor is perceived in the realization of incongruity between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the concept. In that explanation, which is from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, he meant by a "concept," in most cases, a word. Hence, he was referring to the type of joke cited above. It is primarily due to Schopenhauer's fame that his expression on this topic is granted such prominence.

Accordingly, such a version of this theory is not original to Schopenhauer, so much as to the Scottish poet James Beattie who wrote only fifty years after Hutcheson. Although not widely read today, historically, Beattie's presentation of the theory has, consequently, been very influential. He made the theory more universal, and instead of incongruity per se, emphasized its partial appropriateness by the idea of "assemblage." In turn, incongruity has been described as being resolved (i.e., by putting the objects in question into the real relation), and the incongruity theory is often called the incongruity-resolution theory (as well as incongruous juxtaposition).

A famous version of the incongruity theory is that of Immanuel Kant, who claimed that the comic is "the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." Kant explained laughter at humor as a response to an "absurdity." We first expect the world. Still, that expectation is then disappointed or "disappears into nothing." Our response to humor consists of a "play with thoughts." According to Kant, humor must involve the element of surprise. It creates a sense of cognitive dissonance and builds up tension, which is a pleasurable relief or laughter.

While Kant is an incongruity theorist, his account also has elements of release theory (emphasizing the physiological and physical aspects). It also evokes the superiority theory. He thought that teasing was acceptable as long as it occurred in the right setting and did not harm the person being teased.

Schopenhauer argued that humor results from the sudden recognition of an incongruity between the representation of an object and its actual nature. He also proposes the more unexpected incongruity, the more violent one's laughter will be. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel shared almost the same view but saw the concept as an "appearance" and believed that laughter negates that appearance.

Henri Bergson attempted to perfect incongruity by reducing it to the "living" and "mechanical." He proposed that comedy/humor lies in the portrayal of situations experiencing mechanical rigidity. Bergson emphasizes that humor involves an inappropriate relationship between habitual or mechanical behaviors and human intelligence. In Bergson's many types of combinations of the mechanical and the living, there is much similarity with the incongruity theory.

There has been some debate attempting to clarify the roles of juxtaposition and shifting in humor, hence, the discussion in the series Humor Research between John Morreall and Robert Latta. Though Morreall himself endorses a cognitive shift theory, in this particular dialogue he indicated examples of simultaneous contrast, while Latta emphasized the mental shift. Humor frequently contains an unexpected, often sudden, shift in perspective, which the incongruity theory assimilates. This has been defended by Latta (1998) and Brian Boyd (2004). Boyd views the shift from seriousness to play. Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist; it is, however, in the areas of human creativity (science and art being the varieties) that the shift results from "structure mapping" to create novel meanings. Arthur Koestler argues that humor results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is engineered between them.

Benign violation theory

The benign violation theory (BVT) was developed by researchers Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren. Their ideas build on the work of Linguist Tom Veatch, who proposed that humor emerges when one's sense of how the world "ought to be" is threatened or violated. BVT claims that humor occurs when three conditions are satisfied:

1. Something threatens one's sense of how the world "ought to be."
2. The threatening situation seems benign.
3. A person sees both interpretations at the same time.

From an evolutionary perspective, humorous violations likely originated as apparent physical threats, like those present in play fighting and tickling. According to Benign violation, people often laugh when being tickled or play fighting because laughter signifies the situation is somehow threatening but safe. As humans evolved, the conditions that elicit humor likely expanded from physical threats to other violations, including violations of personal dignity (e.g., slapstick, teasing), linguistic norms (e.g., puns, malapropisms), social norms (e.g., strange behaviors, risqué jokes), and even moral norms (e.g., disrespectful behaviors).

There is also more than one way a violation can seem benign. McGraw and Warren tested three contexts in the domain of moral violations. A violation can seem benign if one norm suggests something is wrong, but another salient norm suggests it is acceptable. A violation can also seem benign when one is psychologically distant from the violation or is only weakly committed to the violated norm.

For example, McGraw and Warren find that most consumers were disgusted when they read about a church raffling off a Hummer SUV to recruit new members, but many were simultaneously amused. Consistent with BVT, people who attended church were less likely to be amused than people who did not. Churchgoers are more committed to the belief that churches are sacred and, consequently are less likely to consider the church's behavior benign.

One must have a slight connection to the norm that is being violated but, at the same time, cannot be too attached or committed. If a person is too attached, then there will be no humor. The violation will then not be considered benign. On the contrary, the violation will not be a moral norm if a person is not slightly attached. Thus, both of these must simultaneously be categorized as benign violations to emerge as humor.

The benign violation theory helps explain why some jokes or situations are funny to some people but not to others. It emphasizes the importance of context and individual differences in humor appreciation. A violation that one person finds amusing might be offensive or upsetting to another, and the perception of benignity plays a crucial role in determining the overall humor response.

Other theories

Script-based semantic theory of humor

The script-based semantic theory of humor (SSTH) was introduced by Victor Raskin in "Semantic Mechanisms of Humor", published 1985. While being a variant on the more general concepts of the Incongruity theory of humor (see above), it is the first theory to identify its approach as exclusively linguistic. As such it concerns itself only with verbal humor: written and spoken words used in narrative or riddle jokes concluding with a punch line.

The linguistic scripts (a.k.a. frames) referenced in the title include, for any given word, a "large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoked by it [...] a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker". These scripts extend much further than the lexical definition of a word; they contain the speaker's complete knowledge of the concept as it exists in his world. Thus native speakers will have similar but not identical scripts for words they have in common.

To produce the humor of a verbal joke, Raskin posits, the following two conditions must be met:

• "(i) The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different [semantic] scripts
• (ii) The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite [...]. The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text."

Humor is evoked when a trigger at the end of the joke, the punch line, causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding from the primary (or more obvious) script to the secondary, opposing script.

As an example Raskin uses the following joke:

"Is the doctor at home?" the patient asked in his bronchial whisper. "No," the doctor's young and pretty wife whispered in reply. "Come right in."

For this example, the two scripts contained in the joke are DOCTOR and LOVER; the switch from one to the other is triggered by our understanding of the "whispered" reply of the "young and pretty wife". This reply only makes sense in the script of LOVER, but makes no sense in the script of a bronchial patient going to see the DOCTOR at his (home) office. Raskin expands further on his analysis with more jokes, examining in each how the scripts both overlap and oppose each other in the text.

In order to fulfill the second condition of a joke, Raskin introduces different categories of script opposition. A partial list includes: actual (non-actual), normal (abnormal), possible (impossible), good (bad), life (death), obscene (non-obscene), money (no money), high (low) stature. A complete list of possible script oppositions for jokes is finite and culturally dependent. For example, Soviet political humor does not use the same scripts to be found in Jewish humor. However, for all jokes, in order to generate the humor a connection between the two scripts contained in a given joke must be established. "...one cannot simply juxtapose two incongruous things and call it a joke, but rather one must find a clever way of making them make pseudo-sense together".

General theory of verbal humor

The general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) was proposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo in the article "Script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model". It integrated Raskin's ideas of Script Opposition (SO), developed in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor [SSTH], into the GTVH as one of six levels of independent Knowledge Resources (KRs). These KRs could be used to model individual verbal jokes as well as analyze the degree of similarity or difference between them. The Knowledge Resources proposed in this theory are:

1. Script opposition (SO) references the script opposition included in Raskin's SSTH. This includes, among others, themes such as real (unreal), actual (non-actual), normal (abnormal), possible (impossible).
2. Logical mechanism (LM) refers to the mechanism which connects the different scripts in the joke. These can range from a simple verbal technique like a pun to more complex LMs such as faulty logic or false analogies.
3. Situation (SI) can include objects, activities, instruments, props needed to tell the story.
4. Target (TA) identifies the actor(s) who become the "butt" of the joke. This labeling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes of ethnic groups, professions, etc. This is an optional KR.
5. Narrative strategy (NS) addresses the narrative format of the joke, as either a simple narrative, a dialogue, or a riddle. It attempts to classify the different genres and subgenres of verbal humor. In a subsequent study Attardo expands the NS to include oral and printed humorous narratives of any length, not just jokes.
6. Language (LA) "...contains all the information necessary for the verbalization of a text. It is responsible for the exact wording ...and for the placement of the functional elements."

To illustrate their theory, the authors use 7 examples of the light bulb joke, each variant shifted by a single Knowledge Resource. Each one of the KRs, ordered hierarchically above and starting with the Script Opposition, has the ability to "determine the parameters below themselves, and are determined [circumscribed] by those above themselves. 'Determination' is to be intended as limiting or reducing the options available for the instantiation of the parameter; for example, the choice of the SO [script opposition] DUMB/SMART will reduce the options available to the generation in the TA (in North America to Poles, etc.)"

One of the advantages of this theory (GTVH) over Raskin's script-based semantic theory (SSTH) is that through the inclusion of the Narrative Strategy (NS) any and all humorous texts can be categorized. Whereas Raskin's SSTH only deals with jokes, the GTVH considers all humorous text from spontaneous one-liners to funny stories and literature. This theory can also, by identifying how many of the Knowledge Resources are identical for any two humorous pieces, begin to define the degree of similarity between the two.

As to the ordering of the Knowledge Resources, there has been much discussion. Willibald Ruch, a distinguished German psychologist, and humor researcher, wanted to test empirically the ordering of the Knowledge Resources, with only partial success. Nevertheless, both the listed Knowledge Resources in the GTVH and their relationship to each other has proven to be fertile ground in the further investigation of what exactly makes humor funny.

Computer model of humor

The computer model of humor was suggested by Suslov in 1992. Investigation of the general scheme of information processing shows the possibility of a specific malfunction, conditioned by the need that a false version should be quickly deleted from consciousness. This specific malfunction can be identified with a humorous effect on psychological grounds: it exactly corresponds to incongruity-resolution theory. However, an essentially new ingredient, the role of timing, is added to the well-known role of ambiguity. In biological systems, a sense of humor inevitably develops in the course of evolution, because its biological function consists of quickening the transmission of the processed information into consciousness and in a more effective use of brain resources. A realization of this algorithm in neural networks justifies naturally Spencer's hypothesis on the mechanism of laughter: deletion of a false version corresponds to zeroing of some part of the neural network and excessive energy of neurons is thrown out to the motor cortex, arousing muscular contractions.

The theory treats on equal footing the humorous effect created by the linguistic means (verbal humor), as well as created visually (caricature, clown performance) or by tickling. The theory explains the natural differences in susceptibility of people to humor, the absence of humorous effect from a trite joke, the role of intonation in telling jokes, nervous laughter, etc. According to this theory, humor has a purely biological origin, while its social functions arose later. This conclusion corresponds to the known fact that monkeys (as pointed out by Charles Darwin) and even rats (as found recently) possess laughter like qualities when playing, drawing conclusions to some potential form of humor.

A practical realization of this algorithm needs extensive databases, whose creation in the automatic regime was suggested recently.

Misattribution theory

The misattribution theory of humor describes an audience's inability to identify precisely what is funny and why they find a joke humorous. The formal approach is attributed to Zillmann & Bryant (1980) in their article, "Misattribution Theory of Tendentious Humor." However, they derived ideas based on Sigmund Freud. Initially, Freud proposed that audiences do not understand what they find amusing. Freud suggested the tendentious elements paired with the jokes evoke people to experience laughter. It is the taboo and hostility that create such a reaction. Thus, the theory explains how individuals misattribute their responses and believe they laugh at the innocent elements; in reality, the hostility has individuals rolling on the floor.

Freud made distinctions between tendentious and non-tendentious humor. Tendentious humor is that of a victim, someone whose shortcomings are used for humor. Non-tendentious humor is victimless. Although Freud determined tendentious elements pushed individuals to potential laugh attacks, innocuous elements were still essential. Hostility alone cannot be enjoyed because society deems it wrong. In society, one cannot laugh when told a story of tragedy. The only way it is accepted is if they are embellished with jokework. Freud argued that innocent jokework was a disguise for the hostility in humor. The elements of innocuous (innocent) features make such wordplay socially acceptable.

Zillmann and Bryant (1980) conducted a study to test Freud's ideology and combine or separate non-tendentious and tendentious humor. The results confirmed their expectations. Amusement was high when 'good comedy' was presented. As predicted, participants laughed at instances of victimization and demise of the individuals. Zillman and Bryant proved Freud's finding to be accurate. Innocuous cues only amused to double in response to the misfortune.

Ontic-epistemic theory of humor

The ontic-epistemic theory of humor proposed by P. Marteinson (2006) asserts that laughter is a reaction to a cognitive impasse, a momentary epistemological difficulty, in which the subject perceives that Social Being itself suddenly appears no longer to be real in any factual or normative sense. When this occurs material reality, which is always factually true, is the only percept remaining in the mind at such a moment of comic perception. This theory posits, as in Bergson, that human beings accept as real both normative immaterial percepts, such as social identity, and neological factual percepts, but also that the individual subject normally blends the two together in perception in order to live by the assumption they are equally real. The comic results from the perception that they are not. This same result arises in a number of paradigmatic cases: factual reality can be seen to conflict with and disprove social reality, which Marteinson calls Deculturation; alternatively, social reality can appear to contradict other elements of social reality, which he calls "Relativisation". Laughter, according to Marteinson, serves to reset and re-boot the faculty of social perception, which has been rendered non-functional by the comic situation: it anesthetizes the mind with its euphoria, and permits the forgetting of the comic stimulus, as well as the well-known function of communicating the humorous reaction to other members of society.

Sexual selection

See also: Sexual selection in human evolution

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller contends that, from an evolutionary perspective, humour would have had no survival value to early humans living in the savannas of Africa. He proposes that human characteristics like humor evolved by sexual selection. He argues that humour emerged as an indicator of other traits that were of survival value, such as human intelligence.

Detection of mistaken reasoning

In 2011, three researchers, Hurley, Dennett and Adams, published a book that reviews previous theories of humor and many specific jokes. They propose the theory that humor evolved because it strengthens the ability of the brain to find mistakes in active belief structures, that is, to detect mistaken reasoning. This is somewhat consistent with the sexual selection theory, because, as stated above, humor would be a reliable indicator of an important survival trait: the ability to detect mistaken reasoning. However, the three researchers argue that humor is fundamentally important because it is the very mechanism that allows the human brain to excel at practical problem solving. Thus, according to them, humor did have survival value even for early humans, because it enhanced the neural circuitry needed to survive.

Humor as defense mechanism

According to George Eman Vaillant's (1977) categorization, humor is level 4 defense mechanism: overt expression of ideas and feelings (especially those that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about) that gives pleasure to others. Humor, which explores the absurdity inherent in any event, enables someone to call a spade a spade, while wit is a form of displacement (level 3). Wit refers to the serious or distressing in a humorous way, rather than disarming it; the thoughts remain distressing, but they are "skirted round" by witticism.

Sense of humor, sense of seriousness

One must have a sense of humor and a sense of seriousness to distinguish what is supposed to be taken literally or not. An even more keen sense is needed when humor is used to make a serious point. Psychologists have studied how humor is intended to be taken as having seriousness, as when court jesters used humor to convey serious information. Conversely, when humor is not intended to be taken seriously, bad taste in humor may cross a line after which it is taken seriously, though not intended.

Metaphor, metonymy, and allegory

Tony Veale, who takes a more formalised computational approach than Koestler, has written on the role of metaphor and metonymy in humour, using inspiration from Koestler as well as from Dedre Gentner's theory of structure-mapping, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor, and Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier's theory of conceptual blending.

Mikhail Bakhtin's humor theory is one that is based on "poetic metaphor", or the allegory of the protagonist's logosphere.

O'Shannon model of humor

The O'Shannon model of humor was introduced by Dan O'Shannon in "What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event", published in 2012. The model integrates all the general branches of comedy into a unified framework. This framework consists of four main sections: context, information, aspects of awareness, and enhancers/inhibitors. Elements of context are in play as reception factors prior to the encounter with comedic information. This information will require a level of cognitive process to interpret, and contain a degree of incongruity (based on predictive likelihood). That degree may be high, or go as low as to be negligible. The information will be seen simultaneously through several aspects of awareness (the comedy's internal reality, its external role as humor, its effect on its context, effect on other receivers, etc.). Any element from any of these sections may trigger enhancers / inhibitors (feelings of superiority, relief, aggression, identification, shock, etc.) which will affect the receiver's ultimate response. The various interactions of the model allow for a wide range of comedy; for example, a joke need not rely on high levels of incongruity if it triggers feelings of superiority, aggression, relief, or identification. Also, high incongruity humor may trigger a visceral response, while well-constructed word-play with low incongruity might trigger a more appreciative response. Also included in the book: evolutionary theories that account for visceral and social laughter, and the phenomenon of comedic entropy.

Unnoticed fall-back to former behavior patterns

This model defines laughter as an acoustic signal to make individuals aware of an unnoticed fall-back to former behaviour patterns. To some extent it unifies superiority and incongruity theory. Ticklishness is also considered to have a defined relation to humor via the development of human bipedalism.

Bergson

In Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, French philosopher Henri Bergson, renowned for his philosophical studies on materiality, memory, life and consciousness, tries to determine the laws of the comic and to understand the fundamental causes of comic situations. His method consists in determining the causes of comic instead of analyzing its effects. He also deals with laughter in relation to human life, collective imagination and art, to have a better knowledge of society. One of the theories of the essay is that laughter, as a collective activity, has a social and moral role, in forcing people to eliminate their vices. It is a factor of uniformity of behaviours, as it condemns ludicrous and eccentric behaviours.

In this essay, Bergson also asserts that there is a central cause that all comic situations are derived from: that of mechanism applied to life. The fundamental source of comic is the presence of inflexibility and rigidness in life. For Bergson, the essence of life is movement, elasticity and flexibility, and every comic situation is due to the presence of rigidity and inelasticity in life. Hence, for Bergson the source of the comic is not ugliness but rigidity. All the examples taken by Bergson (such as a man falling in the street, one person's imitation of another, the automatic application of conventions and rules, absent-mindedness, repetitive gestures of a speaker, the resemblance between two faces) are comic situations because they give the impression that life is subject to rigidity, automatism and mechanism.

Bergson closes by noting that most comic situations are not laughable because they are part of collective habits. He defines laughter as an intellectual activity that requires an immediate approach to a comic situation, detached from any form of emotion or sensibility. Bergson finds a situation to be laughable when the attention and the imagination are focused on the resistance and rigidity of the body. Bergson believes that a person is laughable when he or she gives the impression of being a thing or a machine.

Complex systems theory

A budding area of interest within humor studies is the application of complex dynamic systems theory. Also referred to as complexity or chaos theory, complex systems theory "aims to account for how the interacting parts of a complex system give rise to the system's collective behaviour and how such a system simultaneously interacts with its environment", with "change [being] central to theory and method" (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008).

In his 2020 book The linguistics of humor: An introduction Attardo calls for a pivot toward transdisciplinary research in humor studies, noting the potential that complex systems theory has in regard to this. Applications of this theory include Tschacher and Haken's (2023) study of incongruity and resolution using visual puns or verbal jokes, in which they connected the results of their research with dynamics seen in psychotherapy. Demjén (2018) also applied complex systems theory to conversational humor to better describe how jokes, puns, and memes originate in a discourse community using complexity based models of understanding language and language use.

Catharsis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis

Catharsis is from the Ancient Greek word κάθαρσις, katharsis, meaning "purification" or "cleansing", commonly used to refer to the purification and purgation of thoughts and emotions by way of expressing them. The desired result is an emotional state of renewal and restoration.

In dramaturgy, the term usually refers to arousing negative emotion in an audience, who subsequently expels it, making them feel happier.

In Greek the term originally had only a physical meaning, describing purification practices. In medicine, it can still refer to the evacuation of the catamenia ("monthlies", menstrual fluid). Similarly, a cathartic is a substance that accelerates the defecation of faeces.

The first recorded uses of the term in a mental sense were by Aristotle in the Politics and Poetics, comparing the effects of music and tragedy on the mind of a spectator to the effect of catharsis on the body.

The term is also used in Greek to refer to the spiritual purging process that occurs in the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Greek Neoplatonists also used the term to refer to spiritual purification.

Catharism was used by outsiders to describe the thinking of a Christian movement, named because of its interest in purity.

In psychology, the term is associated with Freudian psychoanalysis where it relates to the expression of buried trauma (the cause of a neurosis), bringing it into consciousness and releasing it, increasing happiness.

Purification ritual

The term "kathairein" and its relatives appear in the work of Homer, referring to purification rituals. The words "kathairein" and "katharos" became common in Greek. It is thought that they are derived from the Semitic word "qatar" ("fumigate").

Aithiopis, a later epic set in the Trojan War cycle, narrates the purification of Achilles after his murder of Thersites.

Later, the Greeks took certain new measures to cleanse away blood-guilt—"blood is purified through blood", a process in the development of Hellenistic culture in which the oracle of Delphi took a prominent role. The classic example—Orestes—belongs to tragedy, but the procedure given by Aeschylus is ancient: the blood of a sacrificed piglet is allowed to wash over the blood-polluted man, and running water washes away the blood. The identical ritual is represented, Burkert informs us, on a krater found at Canicattini, wherein it is shown being employed to cure the daughters of Proetus from their madness, caused by some ritual transgression.

To the question of whether the ritual obtains atonement for the subject, or just healing, Burkert answers: "To raise the question is to see the irrelevance of this distinction".

Platonism

In Platonism, catharsis is part of the soul's progressive ascent to knowledge. It is a means to go beyond the senses and embrace the pure world of the intelligible. Specifically for the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, catharsis is the elimination of passions. This leads to a clear distinction in the virtues. In the second tractate of the first Ennead, Plotinus lays out the difference between the civic virtues and the cathartic virtues and explains that the civic, or political, virtues are inferior. They are a principle of order and beauty and concern material existence. (Enneads, I,2,2) Although they maintain a trace of the Absolute Good, they do not lead to the unification of the soul with the divinity. As Porphyry makes clear, their function is to moderate individual passions and allow for peaceful coexistence with others. (Sentences, XXXIX) The purificatory, or cathartic, virtues are a condition for assimilation to the divinity. They separate the soul from the sensible, from everything that is not its true self, enabling it to contemplate the Mind (Nous).

Passive psychological

Catharsis is a term used in dramatic art that describes a particular effect of a performance on its audience.

The first recorded use of the term being used in the mental sense was by Aristotle in his work Politics, regarding the use of music:

And since we accept the classification of melodies made by some philosophers, as ethical melodies, melodies of action, and passionate melodies, distributing the various harmonies among these classes as being in nature akin to one or the other, and as we say that music ought to be employed not for the purpose of one benefit that it confers but on account of several (for it serves the purpose both of education and of purgation [κάθαρσις]—the term purgation we use for the present without explanation, but we will return to discuss the meaning that we give to it more explicitly in our treatise on poetry—and thirdly it serves for amusement, serving to relax our tension and to give rest from it), it is clear that we should employ all the harmonies, yet not employ them all in the same way, but use the most ethical ones for education, and the active and passionate kinds for listening to when others are performing (for any experience that occurs violently in some souls is found in all, though with different degrees of intensity—for example pity and fear, and also religious excitement; for some persons are very liable to this form of emotion, and under the influence of sacred music we see these people, when they use tunes that violently arouse the soul, being thrown into a state as if they had received medicinal treatment and taken a purge [καθάρσεως]; the same experience then must come also to the compassionate and the timid and the other emotional people generally in such degree as befalls each individual of these classes, and all must undergo a purgation [κάθαρσις] and a pleasant feeling of relief; and similarly also the purgative [κάθαρσιν] melodies afford harmless delight to people). (As translated by Harris Rackham)

In his treatise on poetry, Poetics, he describes the relief brought about by a staged tragedy:

We must now treat of tragedy after first gathering up the definition of its nature which results from what we have said already. Tragedy is, then, a representation of an action that is heroic and complete and of a certain magnitude—by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief [κάθαρσις] to these and similar emotions. (As translated by Harris Rackham)

Purgation or purification?

In his works prior to the Poetics, Aristotle had usually used the term catharsis purely in its literal medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the katamenia—the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material) from the patient. F. L. Lucas opposes, therefore, the use of words like purification and cleansing to translate catharsis; he proposes that it should rather be rendered as purgation. "It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions."

Gerald F. Else made the following argument against the "purgation" theory:

It presupposes that we come to the tragic drama (unconsciously, if you will) as patients to be cured, relieved, restored to psychic health. But there is not a word to support this in the "Poetics", not a hint that the end of drama is to cure or alleviate pathological states. On the contrary it is evident in every line of the work that Aristotle is presupposing "normal" auditors, normal states of mind and feeling, normal emotional and aesthetic experience.

Lessing (1729–1781) sidesteps the medical attribution. He interprets catharsis as a purification (German: Reinigung), an experience that brings pity and fear into their proper balance: "In real life", he explained, "men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean." Tragedy is then a corrective; through watching tragedy, the audience learns how to feel these emotions at proper levels.

G. F. Else argues that traditional, widely held interpretations of catharsis as "purification" or "purgation" have no basis in the text of the Poetics, but are derived from the use of catharsis in other Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian contexts. For this reason, a number of diverse interpretations of the meaning of this term have arisen. The term is often discussed along with Aristotle's concept of anagnorisis.

Elizabeth Belfiore held an alternate view of catharsis as an allopathic process in which pity and fear produce a catharsis of emotions unlike pity and fear, which she described in her book, Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion.

Intellectual clarification?

In the twentieth century a paradigm shift took place in the interpretation of catharsis: a number of scholars contributed to the argument in support of the intellectual clarification concept. The clarification theory of catharsis would be fully consistent, as other interpretations are not, with Aristotle's argument in chapter 4 of the Poetics (1448b4-17) that the essential pleasure of mimesis is the intellectual pleasure of "learning and inference".

It is generally understood that Aristotle's theory of mimesis and catharsis represent responses to Plato's negative view of artistic mimesis on an audience. Plato argued that the most common forms of artistic mimesis were designed to evoke from an audience powerful emotions such as pity, fear, and ridicule which override the rational control that defines the highest level of our humanity and lead us to wallow unacceptably in the overindulgence of emotion and passion. Aristotle's concept of catharsis, in all of the major senses attributed to it, contradicts Plato's view by providing a mechanism that generates the rational control of irrational emotions. Most scholars consider all of the commonly held interpretations of catharsis, purgation, purification, and clarification to represent a process in which pity and fear accomplish the catharsis of emotions like themselves.

D. W. Lucas, in an authoritative edition of the Poetics, comprehensively covers the various nuances inherent in the meaning of the term in an Appendix devoted to "Pity, Fear, and Katharsis". Lucas recognizes the possibility of catharsis bearing some aspect of the meaning of "purification, purgation, and 'intellectual clarification,'" although his approach to these terms differs in some ways from that of other influential scholars. In particular, Lucas's interpretation is based on "the Greek doctrine of Humours," which has not received wide subsequent acceptance. The conception of catharsis in terms of purgation and purification remains in wide use today, as it has for centuries. However, since the twentieth century, the interpretation of catharsis as "intellectual clarification" has gained recognition in describing the effect of catharsis on members of the audience.

Attempts to avoid passive catharsis

There have been, for political or aesthetic reasons, deliberate attempts made to subvert the effect of catharsis in theatre.

For example, Bertolt Brecht viewed catharsis as a pap (pabulum) for the bourgeois theatre audience, and designed dramas which left significant emotions unresolved, intending to force social action upon the audience. Brecht then identified the concept of catharsis with the notion of identification of the spectator, meaning a complete adhesion of the viewer to the dramatic actions and characters. Brecht reasoned that the absence of a cathartic resolution would require the audience to take political action in the real world, in order to fill the emotional gap they had experienced vicariously. This technique can be seen as early as his agit-prop play The Measures Taken, and is mostly the source of his invention of an epic theatre, based on a distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt) between the viewer and the representation or portrayal of characters.

Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal, inventor of the Theater of the Oppressed, which seeks to eliminate the distinction between spectator and actor, also considers this kind of catharsis "something very harmful". “In me, too, and in everyone else, there is the power to change. I want to release and develop these skills. The bourgeois theater oppresses them.”

Active and conversational psychological

Psychoanalysis

Jakob Bernays was a German philosopher who wrote books about Aristotle's views of drama in 1857 and 1880. These prompted a lot of writing about catharsis in the German speaking world.

In this environment, Austrian psychiatrist Josef Breuer developed a cathartic method of treatment using hypnosis for persons who have intensive hysteria in the early 1890s. While under hypnosis, Breuer's patients were able to recall traumatic experiences, and through the process of expressing the original emotions that had been repressed and forgotten (and had formed neuroses), they were relieved of their neurotic hysteria symptoms. Breuer became a mentor to fellow Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (who was married to Bernays' niece). Breuer and Freud released the book Studies on Hysteria in 1895. This book explained the cathartic method to the world, and was the first published work about psychoanalysis.

The injured person's reaction to the trauma only exercises a completely 'cathartic' effect if it is an adequate reaction as, for instance, revenge. But language serves as a substitute for action; by its help, an affect can be 'abreacted' almost as effectively.

As Freud developed psychoanalysis, catharsis remained a central part of it. After trying hypnotherapy and finding it wanting, Freud replaced it with free association. Catharsis has remained an important part of "talking therapies" ever since.

The term cathexis has also been adopted by modern psychotherapy, particularly Freudian psychoanalysis, to describe the act of experiencing the deep emotions associated with events in the individual's past which had originally been repressed or ignored, and had never been adequately addressed or experienced.

Psychodrama

Psychodrama involves people expressing themselves using spontaneous dramatization, role playing, and dramatic self-presentation to investigate and gain insight into their lives. Psychodrama includes elements of theater, often conducted on a stage, or a space that serves as a stage area, where props can be used.

The therapy was developed by American Jacob Moreno (a psychiatrist previously from Romania and Austria) and later also his wife Zerka Moreno (a psychologist previously from the Netherlands and the UK). Jacob was a contemporary of Freud, but rejected many of his ideas of psychoanalysis. He developed psychodrama in New York from 1925. In 1929, he founded an Impromptu Theater at Carnegie Hall. In 1936, he founded the Beacon Hill Sanitarium, and the adjacent Therapeutic Theater. The Morenos established the Psychodramatic Institute in New York in 1942.

A psychodrama therapy group, under the direction of a psychodramatist, reenacts real-life, past situations (or inner mental processes), acting them out in present time. Participants then have the opportunity to evaluate their behavior, reflect on how the past incident is getting played out in the present and more deeply understand particular situations in their lives.

Other forms of cathartic drama therapy have since been developed, including Theater of the Oppressed.

Playback Theatre is a form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. This can have therapeutic uses.

There are additionally other forms of expressive therapies which make use of various kinds of art.

Primal therapy

Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy created by American psychologist Arthur Janov, who argues that neurosis is caused by the repressed pain of childhood trauma. Janov argues that repressed pain can be sequentially brought to conscious awareness for resolution through re-experiencing specific incidents and fully expressing the resulting pain during therapy. Primal therapy was developed as a means of eliciting the repressed pain; the term Pain is capitalized in discussions of primal therapy when referring to any repressed emotional distress and its purported long-lasting psychological effects. Janov criticizes the talking therapies as they deal primarily with the cerebral cortex and higher-reasoning areas and do not access the source of Pain within the more basic parts of the central nervous system.

Primal therapy is used to re-experience childhood pain—i.e., felt rather than conceptual memories—in an attempt to resolve the pain through complete processing and integration, becoming real. An intended objective of the therapy is to lessen or eliminate the hold early trauma exerts on adult behaviour.

Social catharsis

Emotional situations can elicit physiological, behavioral, cognitive, expressive, and subjective changes in individuals. Affected individuals often use social sharing as a cathartic release of emotions.

Bernard Rimé studies the patterns of social sharing after emotional experiences. His works suggest that individuals seek social outlets in an attempt to modify the situation and restore personal homeostatic balance. Rimé found that 80–95% of emotional episodes are shared. The affected individuals talk about the emotional experience recurrently to people around them throughout the following hours, days, or weeks. These results indicate that this response is irrespective of emotional valence, gender, education, and culture. His studies also found that social sharing of emotion increases as the intensity of the emotion increases.

If emotions are shared socially and elicits emotion in the listener then the listener will likely share what they heard with other people. Rimé calls this process "secondary social sharing". If this repeats, it is then called "tertiary social sharing".

Stages

Émile Durkheim proposed emotional stages of social sharing:

1. Directly after emotional effects, the emotions are shared. Through sharing, there is a reciprocal stimulation of emotions and emotional communion.
2. This leads to social effects like social integration and strengthening of beliefs.
3. Finally, individuals experience a renewed trust in life, strength, and self-confidence.

Motives

Affect scientists have found differences in motives for social sharing of positive and negative emotions.

A study by Christopher Langston found that individuals share positive events to capitalize on the positive emotions they elicit. Reminiscing the positive experience augments positive affects like temporary mood and longer-term well-being. A study by Shelly Gable et al. confirmed Langston's "capitalization" theory by demonstrating that relationship quality is enhanced when partners are responsive to positive recollections. The responsiveness increased levels of intimacy and satisfaction within the relationship. In general, the motives behind social sharing of positive events are to recall the positive emotions, inform others, and gain attention from others. All three motives are representatives of capitalization.

Bernard Rimé studies suggest that the motives behind social sharing of negative emotions are to vent, understand, bond, and gain social support. Negatively affected individuals often seek life meaning and emotional support to combat feelings of loneliness after a tragic event.

Reactions to emotional events

When communities are affected by an emotional event, members repetitively share emotional experiences. After the 2001 New York and the 2004 Madrid terrorist attacks, more than 80% of respondents shared their emotional experience with others. According to Bernard Rimé, every sharing round elicits emotional reactivation in the sender and the receiver. This then reactivates the need to share in both. Social sharing throughout the community leads to high amounts of emotional recollection and "emotional overheating".

James Pennebaker and Kent Harber defined three stages of collective responses to emotional events:

1. a state of "emergency" takes place in the first month after the emotional event. In this stage, there is an abundance of thoughts, talks, media coverage, and social integration based on the event.
2. the "plateau" occurs in the second month. Abundant thoughts remain, but the amount of talks, media coverage, and social integration decreases.
3. the "extinction" occurs after the second month. There is a return to normalcy.

A critical perspective of collective catharsis

Frantz Fanon, in his book Black Skin, White Masks, provides a multi-dimensional and critical analysis of the manifestations and implications of colonial racism in early 1900 France, including a critical conceptualization of collective catharsis within the context of colonial states. Fanon’s perspective on collective catharsis highlights the psychological impact of cultural and social narratives on white as well as black individuals in European-colonized contexts, exploring how these narratives serve as a means of channeling collective aggression and establishing social norms and attitudes that perpetuate racial stereotypes and negative self-perceptions among black individuals.

Intertwining social psychology and psychoanalysis, Fanon conceptualizes collective catharsis as a release of aggressive impulses, “a channel, an outlet through which the forces accumulated in the form of aggression can be released," and analyzes how this aggressive release manifests for the white colonizers in the ‘civilized’ context. In an era where overtly cruel acts of racism such as lynching and slavery are frowned upon and no longer a commonplace reality, Fanon explores how the white population finds more subtle outlets for their aggressive impulses through acts of collective catharsis.  

“Did the little black child see his father beaten or lynched by a white man? Has there been a real traumatism? To all of this we have to answer no. Well, then?

If we want to answer correctly, we have to fall back on the idea of collective catharsis.”

Fanon highlights how popular entertainment, such as children's magazines or comic books, often portrays "Evil Spirits" as black individuals and other racialized figures and thereby serves as a cathartic release for the collective aggression of the white colonizers. In these stories, the socially unacceptable racist desires of white individuals are sublimated through fiction and pop culture, allowing for the dehumanization and derogation of black individuals. And so too, in this way, are the establishment of social norms and attitudes that perpetuate racial stereotypes argued as acts of collective catharsis by the dominant white hegemony.

Fanon underscores that because the black individual is immersed in this white-centric hegemonic state, they are implicated in this collective catharsis as not only the target of the aggressive release but also as the perpetrators. In engagement with these derogatory fictions or channels of collective catharsis, the black individual identifies with the white hero and encourages their defeat of the ‘uncivilized’ black antagonists. This co-perpetration and identification with the white protagonists (of fiction and society) results in the black individual internalizing these oppressive narratives, thereby developing an incongruence between their actual and ideal selves that is inherently unbreachable.

Effects

This cathartic release of emotions is often believed to be therapeutic for affected individuals. Many therapeutic mechanisms have been seen to aid in emotional recovery. One example is "interpersonal emotion regulation", in which listeners help to modify the affected individual's affective state by using certain strategies. Expressive writing is another common mechanism for personal catharsis. Joanne Frattaroli published a meta-analysis suggesting that written disclosure of information, thoughts, and feelings enhances mental health.

There has been much debate about the use of catharsis in the reduction of anger. Some scholars believe that "blowing off steam" may reduce physiological stress in the short term, but this reduction may act as a reward mechanism, reinforcing the behavior and promoting future outbursts.However, other studies have suggested that using violent media may decrease hostility under periods of stress.

Legal scholars have linked personal "catharsis" to "closure" (an individual's desire for a firm answer to a question and an aversion toward ambiguity) and "satisfaction" which can be applied to affective strategies as diverse as retribution, on one hand, and forgiveness on the other.

Some studies question the benefits of social catharsis. Catrin Finkenauer and colleagues found that non-shared memories were no more emotionally triggering than shared ones. Other studies have also failed to prove that social catharsis leads to any degree of emotional recovery. Emmanuelle Zech and Bernard Rimé asked participants to recall and share a negative experience with an experimenter. When compared with the control group that only discussed unemotional topics, there was no correlation between emotional sharing and emotional recovery.

Some studies even found adverse effects of social catharsis. Contrary to the Frattaroli study, David Sbarra and colleagues found expressive writing to greatly impede emotional recovery following a marital separation. Similar findings have been published regarding trauma recovery. A group intervention technique is often used on disaster victims to prevent trauma-related disorders. However, meta-analysis showed negative effects of this cathartic "therapy".

Attachment disorder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_disorder

Attachment disorders are disorders of mood, behavior, and social relationships arising from unavailability of normal socializing care and attention from primary caregiving figures in early childhood. Such a failure would result from unusual early experiences of neglect, abuse, abrupt separation from caregivers between three months and three years of age, frequent change or excessive numbers of caregivers, or lack of caregiver responsiveness to child communicative efforts resulting in a lack of basic trust. A problematic history of social relationships occurring after about age three may be distressing to a child, but does not result in attachment disorder.

Attachment and attachment disorder

Main articles: Attachment theory and Attachment in children

Attachment theory is primarily an evolutionary and ethological theory. In relation to infants, it primarily consists of proximity seeking to an attachment figure in the face of threat, for the purpose of survival. Although an attachment is a "tie", it is not synonymous with love and affection, despite their often going together; a healthy attachment is considered an important foundation of all subsequent relationships. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain consistent caregivers for some time. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment which in turn lead to "internal working models" that guide one's feelings, thoughts, and expectations in later relationships.

A fundamental aspect of attachment is called basic trust. Basic trust is a broader concept than attachment in that it extends beyond the infant-caregiver relationship to "the wider social network of trustable and caring others" and "links confidence about the past with faith about the future". "Erikson argues that the sense of trust in oneself and others is the foundation of human development" and with a balance of mistrust produces hope.

In the clinical sense, a disorder is a condition requiring treatment as opposed to risk factors for subsequent disorders. There is a lack of consensus about the precise meaning of the term "attachment disorder", but there is general agreement that such disorders arise only after early adverse caregiving experiences. Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) indicates the absence of either or both the main aspects of proximity seeking to an identified attachment figure. This can occur in institutions, with repeated changes of caregiver, or from extremely neglectful primary caregivers who show persistent disregard for a child's basic attachment needs after the age of 6 months. Current official classifications of RAD under DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 are largely based on this understanding of the nature of attachment.

The words attachment style or pattern refer to the various types of attachment arising from early care experiences, called secure, anxious-ambivalent, anxious-avoidant, (all organized), and disorganized. Some of these styles are more problematic than others, and, although they are not disorders in the clinical sense, are sometimes discussed under the term 'attachment disorder'.

Discussion of the disorganized attachment style sometimes includes it under the rubric of attachment disorders because disorganized attachment is seen as the beginning of a developmental trajectory that takes a person ever further from the normal range, culminating in actual disorders of thought, behavior, or mood. Early intervention for disorganized attachment, or other problematic styles, is directed toward changing the trajectory of development to provide a better outcome later in life.

Zeanah and colleagues proposed an alternative set of criteria (see below) of three categories of attachment disorder, namely "no discriminated attachment figure", "secure base distortions" and "disrupted attachment disorder". These classifications consider a disorder a variation that requires treatment rather than an individual difference within the normal range.

Boris and Zeanah's typology

Many leading attachment theorists, such as Zeanah and Leiberman, have recognized the limitations of the DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 criteria and proposed broader diagnostic criteria. There is as yet no official consensus on these criteria. The APSAC Taskforce recognised in its recommendations that "attachment problems extending beyond RAD, are a real and appropriate concern for professionals working with children", and set out recommendations for assessment.

Boris and Zeanah (1999), have offered an approach to attachment disorders that considers cases where children have had no opportunity to form an attachment, those where there is a distorted relationship, and those where an existing attachment has been abruptly disrupted. This would significantly extend the definition beyond the ICD-10 and DSM-IV-TR definitions because those definitions are limited to situations where the child has no attachment or no attachment to a specified attachment figure.

Boris and Zeanah use the term "disorder of attachment" to indicate a situation in which a young child has no preferred adult caregiver. Such children may be indiscriminately sociable and approach all adults, whether familiar or not; alternatively, they may be emotionally withdrawn and fail to seek comfort from anyone. This type of attachment problem is parallel to reactive attachment disorder as defined in DSM and ICD in its inhibited and disinhibited forms as described above.

Boris and Zeanah also describe a condition they term "secure base distortion". In this situation, the child has a preferred familiar caregiver, but the relationship is such that the child cannot use the adult for safety while gradually exploring the environment. Such children may endanger themselves, may cling to the adult, may be excessively compliant, or may show role reversals in which they care for or punish the adult.

The third type of disorder discussed by Boris and Zeanah is termed "disrupted attachment". This type of problem, which is not covered under other approaches to disordered attachment, results from an abrupt separation or loss of a familiar caregiver to whom attachment has developed. The young child's reaction to such a loss is parallel to the grief reaction of an older person, with progressive changes from protest (crying and searching) to despair, sadness, and withdrawal from communication or play, and finally detachment from the original relationship and recovery of social and play activities.

Most recently, Daniel Schechter and Erica Willheim have shown a relationship between maternal violence-related posttraumatic stress disorder and secure base distortion (see above) which is characterized by child recklessness, separation anxiety, hypervigilance, and role-reversal.

Problems of attachment style

Main articles: Attachment theory and Attachment in children

The majority of 1-year-old children can tolerate brief separations from familiar caregivers and are quickly comforted when the caregivers return. These children also use familiar people as a "secure base" and return to them periodically when exploring a new situation. Such children are said to have a secure attachment style, and characteristically continue to develop well both cognitively and emotionally.

Smaller numbers of children show less positive development at age 12 months. Their less desirable attachment styles may be predictors of poor later social development. Although these children's behavior at 12 months is not a serious problem, they appear to be on developmental trajectories that will end in poor social skills and relationships. Because attachment styles may serve as predictors of later development, it may be appropriate to think of certain attachment styles as part of the range of attachment disorders.

Insecure attachment styles in toddlers involve unusual reunions after separation from a familiar person. The children may snub the returning caregiver, or may go to the person but then resist being picked up. They may reunite with the caregiver, but then persistently cling to the caregiver, and fail to return to their previous play. These children are more likely to have later social problems with peers and teachers, but some of them spontaneously develop better ways of interacting with other people.

A small group of toddlers show a distressing way of reuniting after a separation. Called a disorganized/disoriented style, this reunion pattern can involve looking dazed or frightened, freezing in place, backing toward the caregiver or approaching with head sharply averted, or showing other behaviors that seem to imply fearfulness of the person who is being sought. Disorganized attachment has been considered a major risk factor for child psychopathology, as it appears to interfere with regulation or tolerance of negative emotions and may thus foster aggressive behavior. Disorganized patterns of attachment have the strongest links to concurrent and subsequent psychopathology, and considerable research has demonstrated both within-the-child and environmental correlates of disorganized attachment.

Possible mechanisms

One study has reported a connection between a specific genetic marker and disorganized attachment (not RAD) associated with problems of parenting. Another author has compared atypical social behavior in genetic conditions such as Williams syndrome with behaviors symptomatic of RAD.

Typical attachment development begins with unlearned infant reactions to social signals from caregivers. The ability to send and receive social communications through facial expressions, gestures and voice develops with social experience by seven to nine months. This makes it possible for an infant to interpret messages of calm or alarm from face or voice. At about eight months, infants typically begin to respond with fear to unfamiliar or startling situations, and to look to the faces of familiar caregivers for information that either justifies or soothes their fear. This developmental combination of social skills and the emergence of fear reactions results in attachment behavior such as proximity-seeking, if a familiar, sensitive, responsive, and cooperative adult is available. Further developments in attachment, such as negotiation of separation in the toddler and preschool period, depend on factors such as the caregiver's interaction style and ability to understand the child's emotional communications.

With insensitive or unresponsive caregivers, or frequent changes, an infant may have few experiences that encourage proximity seeking to a familiar person. An infant who experiences fear but who cannot find comforting information in an adult's face and voice may develop atypical ways of coping with fearfulness such as the maintenance of distance from adults, or the seeking of proximity to all adults. These symptoms accord with the DSM criteria for reactive attachment disorder. Either of these behavior patterns may create a developmental trajectory leading ever farther from typical attachment processes such as the development of an internal working model of social relationships that facilitates both the giving and the receiving of care from others.

Atypical development of fearfulness, with a constitutional tendency either to excessive or inadequate fear reactions, might be necessary before an infant is vulnerable to the effects of poor attachment experiences.

Alternatively, the two variations of RAD may develop from the same inability to develop "stranger-wariness" due to inadequate care. Appropriate fear responses may only be able to develop after an infant has first begun to form a selective attachment. An infant who is not in a position to do this cannot afford not to show interest in any person as they may be potential attachment figures. Faced with a swift succession of carers the child may have no opportunity to form a selective attachment until the possible biologically determined sensitive period for developing stranger-wariness has passed. It is thought this process may lead to the disinhibited form.

In the inhibited form infants behave as if their attachment system has been "switched off". However the innate capacity for attachment behavior cannot be lost. This may explain why children diagnosed with the inhibited form of RAD from institutions almost invariably go on to show formation of attachment behavior to good carers. However children with the inhibited form as a consequence of neglect and frequent changes of caregiver continue to show the inhibited form for far longer when placed in families.

Additionally, the development of Theory of Mind may play a role in emotional development. Theory of Mind is the ability to know that the experience of knowledge and intention lies behind human actions such as facial expressions. Although it is reported that very young infants have different responses to humans than to non-human objects, Theory of Mind develops relatively gradually and possibly results from predictable interactions with adults. However, some ability of this kind must be in place before mutual communication through gaze or other gesture can occur, as it does by seven to nine months. Some neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism, have been attributed to the absence of the mental functions that underlie Theory of Mind. It is possible that the congenital absence of this ability, or the lack of experiences with caregivers who communicate in a predictable fashion, could underlie the development of reactive attachment disorder.

Diagnosis

Main article: Attachment measures

Recognised assessment methods of attachment styles, difficulties or disorders include the Strange Situation procedure (Mary Ainsworth), the separation and reunion procedure and the Preschool Assessment of Attachment ("PAA"), the Observational Record of the Caregiving Environment ("ORCE") and the Attachment Q-sort ("AQ-sort"). More recent research also uses the Disturbances of Attachment Interview or "DAI" developed by Smyke and Zeanah, (1999). This is a semi-structured interview designed to be administered by clinicians to caregivers. It covers 12 items, namely having a discriminated, preferred adult, seeking comfort when distressed, responding to comfort when offered, social and emotional reciprocity, emotional regulation, checking back after venturing away from the care giver, reticence with unfamiliar adults, willingness to go off with relative strangers, self endangering behavior, excessive clinging, vigilance/hypercompliance and role reversal.

Classification

Main article: Reactive attachment disorder

ICD-10 describes Reactive Attachment Disorder of Childhood, known as RAD, and Disinhibited Disorder of Childhood, less well known as DAD. DSM-IV-TR also describes Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy or Early Childhood. It divides this into two subtypes, Inhibited Type and Disinhibited Type, both known as RAD. The two classifications are similar and both include:

• markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts,
• the disturbance is not accounted for solely by developmental delay and does not meet the criteria for Pervasive Developmental Disorder,
• onset before 5 years of age,
• requires a history of significant neglect, and
• implicit lack of identifiable, preferred attachment figure.

ICD-10 includes in its diagnosis psychological and physical abuse and injury in addition to neglect. This is somewhat controversial, being a commission rather than omission and because abuse in and of itself does not lead to attachment disorder.

The inhibited form is described as "a failure to initiate or respond ... to most social interactions, as manifest by excessively inhibited responses" and such infants do not seek and accept comfort at times of threat, alarm or distress, thus failing to maintain 'proximity', an essential element of attachment behavior. The disinhibited form shows "indiscriminate sociability ... excessive familiarity with relative strangers" (DSM-IV-TR) and therefore a lack of 'specificity', the second basic element of attachment behavior. The ICD-10 descriptions are comparable. 'Disinhibited' and 'inhibited' are not opposites in terms of attachment disorder and can co-exist in the same child. The inhibited form has a greater tendency to ameliorate with an appropriate caregiver whilst the disinhibited form is more enduring.

While RAD is likely to occur following neglectful and abusive childcare, there should be no automatic diagnosis on this basis alone as children can form stable attachments and social relationships despite marked abuse and neglect. Abuse can occur alongside the required factors but on its own does not explain attachment disorder. Experiences of abuse are associated with the development of disorganised attachment, in which the child prefers a familiar caregiver, but responds to that person in an unpredictable and somewhat bizarre way. Within official classifications, attachment disorganization is a risk factor but not in itself an attachment disorder. Further, although attachment disorders tend to occur in the context of some institutions, repeated changes of primary caregiver, or extremely neglectful identifiable primary caregivers who show persistent disregard for the child's basic attachment needs, not all children raised in these conditions develop an attachment disorder.

Treatment

Main article: Attachment-based therapy (children)

There are a variety of mainstream prevention programs and treatment approaches for attachment disorder, attachment problems and moods or behaviors considered to be potential problems within the context of attachment theory. All such approaches for infants and younger children concentrate on increasing the responsiveness and sensitivity of the caregiver, or if that is not possible, changing the caregiver. Such approaches include 'Watch, wait and wonder,' manipulation of sensitive responsiveness, modified 'Interaction Guidance,'. 'Preschool Parent Psychotherapy,'. Circle of Security',Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), the New Orleans Intervention, and Parent-Child psychotherapy. Other known treatment methods include Developmental, Individual-difference, Relationship-based therapy (DIR) (also referred to as Floor Time) by Stanley Greenspan, although DIR is primarily directed to treatment of pervasive developmental disorders Some of these approaches, such as that suggested by Dozier, consider the attachment status of the adult caregiver to play an important role in the development of the emotional connection between adult and child. This includes foster parents, as children with poor attachment experiences often do not elicit appropriate caregiver responses from their attachment behaviors despite 'normative' care.

Treatment for reactive attachment disorder for children usually involves a mix of therapy, counseling, and parenting education. These must be designed to make sure the child has a safe environment to live in and to develop positive interactions with caregivers and improves their relationships with their peers.

Medication can be used to treat similar conditions, like depression, anxiety, or hyperactivity, but there is no quick fix for reactive attachment disorder. A pediatrician may recommend a treatment plan, such as a mix of family therapy, individual psychological counseling, play therapy, special education services and parenting skills classes.

Pseudoscientific diagnoses and treatment

Main article: Attachment therapy

In the absence of officially recognized diagnostic criteria, and beyond the ambit of the discourse on a broader set of criteria discussed above, the term "attachment disorder" has been increasingly used by clinicians to refer to a broader set of children whose behavior may be affected by lack of a primary attachment figure, a seriously unhealthy attachment relationship with a primary caregiver, or a disrupted attachment relationship. Although there are no studies examining diagnostic accuracy, concern is expressed as to the potential for over-diagnosis based on broad checklists and 'snapshots'. This form of therapy, including diagnosis and accompanying parenting techniques, is scientifically unvalidated and is not considered part of mainstream psychology or, despite its name, to be based on attachment theory, with which it is considered incompatible. It has been described as potentially abusive and a pseudoscientific intervention that has resulted in tragic outcomes for children.

A common feature of this form of diagnosis within attachment therapy is the use of extensive lists of "symptoms" that include many behaviours that are likely to be a consequence of neglect or abuse, but are not related to attachment, or to any clinical disorder at all. Such lists have been described as "wildly inclusive". The APSAC Taskforce (2006) gives examples of such lists ranging across multiple domains from some elements within the DSM-IV criteria to entirely non-specific behavior such as developmental lags, destructive behavior, refusal to make eye contact, cruelty to animals and siblings, lack of cause and effect thinking, preoccupation with fire, blood and gore, poor peer relationships, stealing, lying, lack of a conscience, persistent nonsense questions or incessant chatter, poor impulse control, abnormal speech patterns, fighting for control over everything, and hoarding or gorging on food. Some checklists suggest that among infants, "prefers dad to mom" or "wants to hold the bottle as soon as possible" are indicative of attachment problems. The APSAC Taskforce expresses concern that "high rates of false positive diagnoses are virtually certain" and that "posting these types of lists on web sites that also serve as marketing tools may lead many parents or others to conclude inaccurately that their children have attachment disorders".

There is also a considerable variety of treatments for alleged attachment disorders diagnosed on the controversial alternative basis outlined above, popularly known as attachment therapy. These therapies have little or no evidence base and vary from talking or play therapies to more extreme forms of physical and coercive techniques, of which the best known are holding therapy, rebirthing, rage-reduction and the Evergreen model. In general these therapies are aimed at adopted or fostered children with a view to creating attachment in them to their new caregivers. Critics maintain these therapies are not based on an accepted version of attachment theory. The theoretical base is broadly a combination of regression and catharsis, accompanied by parenting methods that emphasise obedience and parental control. These therapies concentrate on changing the child rather than the caregiver. An estimated six children have died as a consequence of the more coercive forms of such treatments and the application of the accompanying parenting techniques.

Two of the best-known cases are those of Candace Newmaker in 2001 and the Gravelles in 2003 to 2005. After the associated publicity, some advocates of attachment therapy began to alter views and practices to be less potentially dangerous to children. This change may have been hastened by the publication of a Task Force Report on the subject in 2006, commissioned by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), which was largely critical of attachment therapy, although these practices continue. In 2007, ATTACh, an organisation originally set up by attachment therapists, formally adopted a White Paper stating its unequivocal opposition to coercive practices in therapy and parenting.

Pair bond

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_bond

Northern gannet pair

In biology, a pair bond is the strong affinity that develops in some species between a mating pair, often leading to the production and rearing of young and potentially a lifelong bond. Pair-bonding is a term coined in the 1940s that is frequently used in sociobiology and evolutionary biology circles. The term often implies either a lifelong socially monogamous relationship or a stage of mating interaction in socially monogamous species. It is sometimes used in reference to human relationships.

Varieties

Black-backed jackals are one of very few monogamous mammals. This pair uses teamwork to hunt down prey and scavenge. They will stay together until one of the two dies.

According to evolutionary psychologists David P. Barash and Judith Lipton, from their 2001 book The Myth of Monogamy, there are several varieties of pair bonds:

• Short-term pair-bond: a transient mating or associations
• Long-term pair-bond: bonded for a significant portion of the life cycle of that pair
• Lifelong pair-bond: mated for life
• Social pair-bond: attachments for territorial or social reasons
• Clandestine pair-bond: quick extra-pair copulations
• Dynamic pair-bond: e.g. gibbon mating systems being analogous to "divorce"

Examples

Birds

Close to ninety percent of known avian species are monogamous, compared to five percent of known mammalian species. The majority of monogamous avians form long-term pair bonds which typically result in seasonal mating: these species breed with a single partner, raise their young, and then pair up with a new mate to repeat the cycle during the next season. Some avians such as swans, bald eagles, California condors, and the Atlantic Puffin are not only monogamous, but also form lifelong pair bonds.

When discussing the social life of the bank swallow, Lipton and Barash state:

For about four days immediately prior to egg-laying, when copulations lead to fertilization, the male bank swallow is very busy, attentively guarding his female. Before this time, as well as after—that is, when her eggs are not ripe, and again after his genes are safely tucked away inside the shells—he goes seeking extra-pair copulations with the mates of other males…who, of course, are busy with defensive mate-guarding of their own.

Male (left) and female (right) mallard ducks form seasonal monogamous pairs.

In various species, males provide parental care and females mate with multiple males. For example, recent studies show that extra-pair copulation frequently occurs in monogamous birds in which a "social" father provides intensive care for its "social" offspring. Furthermore, it was observed that newly formed pair bonds in biparental plovers were comparatively weaker than those in uniparental plovers.

Fish

A University of Florida scientist reports that male sand gobies work harder at building nests and taking care of eggs when females are present – the first time such "courtship parental care" has been documented in any species.

In the cichlid species Tropheus moorii, a male and female will form a temporary monogamous pair bond and spawn; after which, the female leaves to mouthbrood the eggs on her own. T. moorii broods exhibit genetic monogamy (all eggs in a brood are fertilized by a single male). Another mouth brooding cichlid – the Lake Tanganyika cichlid (Xenotilapia rotundiventralis) has been shown that mating pairs maintain pair bonds at least until the shift of young from female to male. More recently the Australian Murray cod has been seen maintaining pair bonds over 3 years.

Pair bonding may also have non-reproductive benefits, such as assisted resource defense. Recent study comparing two species of butterflyfishes, C. baronessa and C. lunulatus, indicate increase in food and energy reserves compared to individual fish.

Mammals

Monogamous voles (such as prairie voles) have significantly greater density and distribution of vasopressin receptors in their brain when compared to polygamous voles. These differences are located in the ventral forebrain and the dopamine-mediated reward pathway.

Peptide arginine vasopressin (AVP), dopamine, and oxytocin act in this region to coordinate rewarding activities such as mating, and regulate selective affiliation. These species-specific differences have shown to correlate with social behaviors, and in monogamous prairie voles are important for facilitation of pair bonding. When compared to montane voles, which are polygamous, monogamous prairie voles appear to have more of these AVP and oxytocin neurotransmitter receptors. It is important that these receptors are in the reward centers of the brain because that could lead to a conditioned partner preference in the prairie vole compared to the montane vole which would explain why the prairie vole forms pair bonds and the montane vole does not.

As noted above, different species of voles vary in their sexual behavior, and these differences correlate with expression levels of vasopressin receptors in reward areas of the brain. Scientists were able to change adult male montane voles' behavior to resemble that of monogamous prairie voles in experiments in which vasopressin receptors were introduced into the brain of male montane voles.

Humans

Humans can experience all of the above-mentioned varieties of pair bonds. These bonds can be temporary or last a lifetime. They also engage in social pair bonding, where two form a close relationship that does not involve sex. Like in other vertebrates, pair bonds are created by a combination of social interaction and biological factors including neurotransmitters like oxytocin, vasopressin, and dopamine.

Pair bonds are a biological phenomenon and are not equivalent to the human social institution of marriage. Married couples are not necessarily pair bonded. Marriage may be a consequence of pair bonding and vice versa. One of the functions of romantic love is pair bonding.