A theory of humour: part 4
Benign violation (BV) theory
There isn't actually that much to say here that doesn't properly fit into either IR theory or status/superiority theory, but here goes.
The central premise of benign violation theory is that humour exists in the violation of social norms as long as there's no real harm in it. The main point in favour of it is that it describes accurately why things like slapstick and verbal sparring can be funny but attempted murder and arguments aren't, even though they mostly involve the same actions. It also captures why so much humour revolves around sex, excrement, and death, all of which are things you don't talk about in polite company.
Minsky (1981) proposed a sort of Freudian account of humour. Namely that your brain has a bunch of cognitive censors designed to taboo certain kinds of words/thoughts such as sex or excrement related, a la Freud, but also censors for faulty reasoning. And then cheating these censors is 'naughty' and this is what you find funny, successfully carrying out taboo acts or thoughts. This sort of provides an explanation for wordplay humour, since the joke usually lies in an ambiguity between a normal serious reading and the incorrect nonsensical one.
Another point in favour of BV theory is the evolutionary psychology explanation of laughter. Some types of primates have a 'false alarm' signal to go along with the 'snake', 'jaguar' and other assorted predator signals. And on top of that, apparently when chimps play they make a special 'play face' and engage in a kind of panting, which both help to signal that they're playing and the situation isn't serious. Hurley, Dennett, and Adams' explanation of laughter is as a sort of combination of these things: a way to signal that there's no real danger and I'm just playing with you. And so since humour is accompanied by the 'not serious' signal, the logic is that humour can pretty much be characterised as potentially-harmful things done in a non-harmful manner and that's why we all laugh at it.
A final point in favour of BV theory is that it accurately captures the intuition that it's difficult to be in a negative emotional state and find something funny at the same time. But if that negative state isn't due to the potential humour, BV theory says nothing about why I should find something less funny then than when I start off in a neutral or positive emotional state.
What BV theory can't capture
1. Humour isn't always harmless. See: pejorative and bullying humour, mean humour, satire, humour based on inferiority of others (eg. Irish jokes)
2. All the subtleties of humourcraft: if humour is just being non-serious or cheating an internal censor, it should be much easier to craft hilarious jokes than it is. All I would need to do is go out to a public space and say 'poo' a lot, or do something obviously nonsensical to trip the 'faulty reasoning' censor. Or for that matter just lie in bed and think of nonsensical or scatological scenarios. Jokes shouldn't really get more or less funny depending on whether you've been exposed to them before, since a norm violation isn't going to be less of one over time.
Overall, benign-violation theory makes a decent attempt to provide an explanation of humour but misses the mark on many many levels.