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

Abstract

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