What Humor Is

The three major approaches on what humor is and where it comes from:

• The relief theory claims that laughter and humor are a way to discharge psychic energy.
• The superiority theory points out why we laugh at other's bad luck; humor is here a way of affirming one's superiority over others.
• The incongruity theory states that humor appears when two contrasting ideas are blended; here the punchlines are often the result of an accidental, unexpected reversal.