Researchers come up with theory for why ‘jump scares’ are often followed by laughter – with advice on how to find ‘sweet spot’ of fear
Whether it’s a friend jumping out from behind a bush or accidentally walking into a web of fake cobwebs, most of us will have fallen victim to a scare prank at some point.
Now scientists have come up with a theory for why “jump scares” are so often followed by laughter – with insights for pranksters hoping to concoct Halloween tricks that tickle rather than terrify.
A popular explanation for why certain jokes or situations provoke laughter is that humour is all about surprise: successful jokes tend to set up an expectation that is overturned by the punchline.
“The problem with that theory is that we find all sorts of things funny that aren’t surprising, and there are lots of surprises that we don’t find funny,” said Marc Hye-Knudsen, a PhD fellow and humour researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, who led the research.
Another recent theory is that humour requires both a violation in our sense of how the world “ought” to be, and the almost simultaneous assessment that this breach is harmless or benign. Such violations can take many different forms, from the violations of linguistic norms in puns and wordplay, to the social norm violations of embarrassment humour.