Michael Price: the Jokes in You - Essay Example

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY The Joke’s in You of The Joke’s in You Background to Claim: The Michael Price has provided a thorough and effective address to humor and psychological aspect among children. He has stated that apparent smile and laugh has deep meanings that must be understood in order to comprehend the person and situation as well. Sense of humor starts developing at early age and can be used as a weapon to combat interpersonal and social problems in later life. Price has asserted that even though, humor has been under the investigation of social scientists for last two decades but today, it is considered as essential part of child’s emotional and cognitive development (Price, 2007). Absence of humor in very early age is a warning sign of developing childhood disorders such as asperger, autism which lacks the age-appropriate sense of recognizing and understanding symbolism. The author of the paper cited the example of 4-years old daughter of a psychologist, Gattis, and other psychologists to discuss the necessity of humor for appropriate development of human beings. Price has also made an account of Beins as he explained humor as multifaceted and complex psychological response. The author Price has included Beins’s hypothesis greatly emphasized on learning humor for children. Usually, new born babies give different smiles in response to different facial expression during first five week. They start laughing after three months which serves as building blocks for developing sense of humor later on. It is evident by the empirical studies that children at the age of 14 months, seem to be distinguishing intentional actions from unintentional actions. The author has also cited a very important study conducted in 1995 to back up his claims stating that children between 14 to 18 months old were observed to be copying intentional actions and rectifying unintentional mistakes (Price, 2007). Based on the findings of Gattis and Hoicka, he has tried to examine the child’s understanding of intentional joking and unintentional mistakes. For this purpose, they performed different incorrect actions along with laughter, smiling and whoops in front of toddlers in order to observe that whether toddler would rectify their incorrect actions or just copy them (Price, 2007). Results revealed that 25 to 36 months old toddler imitated the actions associated with laughter, whereas rectified the actions associated with whoops regardless of their ambiguity. Toddles between 19 to 24 months old appeared to getting tripped up on ambiguous actions and toddler at early 19-months of their age distinguished between intentional and unintentional actions. The author has also included the result of the study in his article to provide a better insight to his view. He mentioned that on the basis of these findings, Gattis concluded that humor gives the understanding of the possibility of mistakes and wrong actions done on the part of people and it is no doubt very difficult for children to have the concept of giving different meaning to single action. Having understanding of other’s action as intentional or unintentional is considered as a leading path to the development of human mind by psychologists (Price, 2007). Author’s Research Approach: The author cited research findings to explain that abnormal development of mind impedes the sense of humor. Performance of schizophrenic patients was low on the joke test as compare to healthy participants (Price, 2007).Schizophrenics have not enough cognitive abilities to grasp the jokes which sound to them merely incongruent. Understanding jokes demand to reach up to their underlying meaning which is very difficult for schizophrenics. Impaired sense of humor was also observed among people suffering from autistic and asperger disorder like schizophrenia. But there are evidences that people suffering from autism and asperger disorder were having enough mathematical reasoning skills and using logical and formulaic patterns. The author cited real examples and research evidences to explain the concept of humor, specifically described the severity of schizophrenic disorder which deteriorate the cognitive and emotional abilities of a person who could not differentiate the reality from fantasy (Price, 2007). But these evidences are not enough to explain the development of human mind that makes the road to humor. Here it should be clear that schizophrenia is not merely the direct result of abnormal development of mind. Certain environmental, psychological and biological factors may develop schizophrenic disorder. Even highly intellectual people may suffer from schizophrenia in their life. Schizophrenia is a chronic disorder that impaired multiple skills of individuals. Researcher did not describe the types of schizophrenia because different schizophrenics may perform differently on humor test. Moreover, researcher did not determine the level of humor because humor containing actions require multiple efforts to be recognized such as auditory, visual (Price, 2007). Schizophrenics are not able to put all efforts at a time owing to the deterioration of their ability to differentiate the fantasy from reality. A normal and intelligent person facing a stressful situation will not be able to respond effectively to humor actions. Therefore, chronic psychological problems seem not to be adequate to explain the developmental phase of humor. Second important point is that the author also cited the example of autistic and asperger disorder in relation to humor. Asperger disorder shows the qualitative impairment in social interaction among people not in communication, cognition and self-help skills, whereas autism shows significant impairment in communication, social interaction and stereotype behaviors. Performing on mathematic task does not depict good sense of humor. For examples, scientists engaged in doing extensive research work staying in laboratory and believe on the formula that two and two makes four usually have less interest in humor and philosophical concepts. Humor constitutes both emotional and intellectual response; therefore, people suffering from asperger disorder do not necessary deal emotional aspects of humor due to impairment in the ability to socially interact with the environment. The drawback of these researches is that method used by researchers to test humor lacked in objectivity that allowed various extraneous variables to confound the results. Different people have different perception of a single action and hidden meanings to that action will be given according to that. Article and Unit Impact: The author also cited the work of Gattis and Hoicka who examined the ability of copying and rectifying the different humor actions among toddlers. In fact, presentation of actions again and again determined the response behaviors among toddlers. It is supported by the theory of classical learning suggested that response is conditioned with the stimulus (p. 58). Researchers presented the action with smile, laugh and whoops which determined the expected responses on the part of toddlers. Smile and laugh might be perceived as positive reinforcement by toddlers. The clue whoops made the children learnt to remember the mistakes. In short, it can be argued that our behaviors are shaped by observation and learning (pp. 59-60). Interaction with people and environment has significant impact on the development of mind and humor. For these reasons, evidences of this particular research seemed not to be sufficient enough to support the explanation of humor development among children of early age. Application of Article on Contemporary Events: The author has also mentioned the research by Paul Rozin for he has accounted the significance of humor in daily lives while stating that “Humor is such a fundamental part of communication. That means to communicate effectively with people; one has to possess the good sense of humor. Despite being a global village, the world is still facing numerous problems due to conflicts occurring at community, national and global level. We are unable to effectively resolve these problems because of lack of effective communication. Problems which can be resolved by bilateral dialogues are being handled by power that further is putting the threat to the security of people living on earth planet. Humor though represents the normal development of mind, cognition and emotions, therefore, it can facilitates the communication of negative emotions and feelings in positive way that may fill the gap existing among different communities and nations as well (Price, 2007). Personal Reflection: I have understood with the help of the article of Michael Price and the unit that humor is basically a spontaneous response that constitutes both intellectual and emotional ability of an individual and no doubt depicts the attribute of healthy personality. Humor is a way of release your tension by laughing and expressing words in response to any situation, event or person without hurting anyone. But inappropriate use of humor may impair psychological state of people that sometimes results in unforgettable event. I also think that there are many examples around us depicting the inappropriate use of humor such as bullying in educational institutes which led the murdered of many. Students who fired on other fellows reported emotional pain they felt at the time when their fellows used to laugh and make fun of him. I have also learnt that Sometimes, media presents inadequate humor containing scene such as, vulgar words, hooting and insulting another just to make people laugh. But it should keep in minds that our children copy these words, actions as Gattis investigated. These children later in life use similar vulgar words and action to make fun in school, colleges that trigger criminal incidents. Therefore, humor should be taught adequately to children and must be used adequately by adults to get real benefits associated with that. Overall my experience of understanding the article was knowledgeable. References List Price, M. (2007). The jokes in you. American Psychological Association , 38 (10), 18. Read More