FYI: Why Is It Funny When A Guy Gets Hit In The Groin? Tragedy is when I cut my finger the Mel Brooks adage goes.  Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Or when a guy gets hit in the groin. In real life we don't usually find another person's pain so hilarious but in performance or even in amateur YouTube videos it can give us a major fit of the giggles. The unique hilarity of men's genital pain has become somewhat of a fixture in certain corners of pop culture from MTV's Jackass to America's Funniest Home Videos.To understand why let's first dive into some of the broader theories of what makes us laugh. Psychologists philosophers and humor theorists have been trying to work out why we find certain things amusing since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Humor remains a complex phenomenon and no one theory yet has found a way to fully encapsulate and explain everything that amuses us or at least no theory researchers can all agree on. But there are a couple of hypotheses that might apply in the case of pain-related humor: According to Peter McGraw a psychologist and director of the University of Boulder's Humor Research Lab we are amused by things that upset our world in small perhaps even imperceptible ways. His lab researches a theory that all humor results from some kind of benign violation something that makes us subconsciously uncomfortable. There's something potentially negative--something wrong threatening unsettling i.e. a violation--but also in some ways it seems O.K.--safe and acceptable he explains. The concept of benign violation builds on a theory introduced by linguist Thomas Veatch in a 1998 paper in the International Journal of Humor Research that humor consists of incongruity between one socially acceptable element and as well as an element that violates the subjective moral order.When people get injured it's unsettling and something we think shouldn't happen under normal circumstances. So we only laugh under a particular set of conditions like if a situation seems in some way unreal or distant or if social cues tell us it's supposed to be comedic. For example: Try watching America's Funniest Home Videos without the upbeat jaunty music in the background to signal that it's a comedic (socially acceptable) setting. It starts to look flat-out disturbing. Physical assault definitely violates most society's idea of a moral order which perhaps explains why aggression plays some kind of role in most humor. Freud theorized that humor serves as a way to dissipate sexual or aggressive tension in a socially acceptable way. Thomas Hobbes argues in the Leviathan that laughter arises from feeling superior and that it's an extension of a feeling of sudden glory arising from recognizing someone else's comparative defect or weakness.
While humor and laughter aren't always intertwined (one can laugh without being amused and find something funny without physically laughing) laughing at another's person's pain and humiliation can be about cutting people down to size. Or leveling the social playing field. Laughing at the boss [when] students make jokes about professors--it's always about challenging the hierarchy but challenging them in a form of play explains Joseph Polimeni a psychiatrist and associate professor at the University of Manitoba. That's why it's usually funnier if a pompous businessman slips on a banana peel and goes sprawling rather than when an invalid does. This playful challenge aspect of humor might go back to primates Polimeni theorizes--the way young chimps hit an alpha male in play to test boundaries. There's also some evidence that apes enjoy slapstick too. In Inside Jokes Indiana University cognitive scientist Matthew Hurley and his co-authors put forward yet another theory of humor: That mirth results from realizing we've leapt to a wrong conclusion about the world--a mistaken commitment in our working memory. Nature rewards us for sniffing out inconsistencies in our worldview they argue. That would explain why it's not funny when people get hurt in expected ways like in a bar fight but going back to the previous example slipping on a banana peel might be. Our automatic assumption--that the sidewalk is clear of slippery fruits--has been challenged.Psychological distance helps people distinguish between what situations seem funny and what seem terrifying or abhorrent why accidents in movies or YouTube videos might seem comedic even when the real-life situations wouldn't. I think that's part of the reason the Jackass guys getting hurt is so funny McGraw says. You don't necessarily like them so you're not totally on their side.Slapstick is less funny if it seems too real or if the viewer feels empathy for the victim he and his co-authors wrote in a 2010 paper in Psychological Science.That's why we let our kids watch the Looney Toons beat the stuffing out of each other: Cartoon animals aren't human. Because they're not real to us we don't care that they get hurt a notion that's reinforced when they bounce back as fit as ever from deadly situations like falling off cliffs or being flattened by cars. Shows like South Park can get away with a lot more brutality in the name of humor and still be comedic as McGraw and his co-authors wrote in a later study because hypotheticality can make scathing satire and brutal violence humorous.By the same turn too much distance can decrease the humor of a painful situation. The more time passes after a small mishap the less cachet it holds as a punch line the study found. Tripping over a curb might be funny in the moment but a year later no one cares. Other forces come into play too when we see a moment of physical humor. The brain gets its wires crossed when confronted by someone else getting hurt. As a pain-filled situation unfolds a witness doesn't experience the negative emotional valence that the person in pain does but the brain still registers an emotional arousal. It can mistakenly categorize the sudden spike in emotion as positive. [T]he arousal of the event can be misattributed to the positive emotion of mirth intensifying it while the negative emotional valence of pain isn't there to interfere Hurley explained via email.It might have nothing to do with finding the pain itself funny or lacking the empathy to understand another person's tragedy. It may be about the way you recruit the emotional system to answer questions about the scenario according to Nina Strohminger a psychologist doing post-doctoral research at Duke University's Kenan Institute for Ethics. Perhaps the part of the brain that finds something funny just overwhelms the part that recognizes it as wrong. Think of it this way: You have a situation that's a tragedy--someone falls down there is something bad that happens--but there's something about the situation that meets the criteria for funniness quite independent of the fact that someone's getting hurt she explains. They make a weird facial expression or a funny sound. It's always especially funny when an authority figure falls like if the Pope falls.  The fact that we laugh is maybe not because the person is getting hurt but in spite of it.So let's get back to the task at hand: hitting dudes in the balls. It's a kind of baffling genre of comedy--when asked plenty of men (and women) will tell you it's not funny at all when someone gets smacked in the groin. And yet the crotch shot endures in comedy. There's a Simpsons episode where Homer falls in love with a short film Man Gets Hit By Football. If you can imagine it entails a man taking a football pass straight to the groin. Homer cackles The ball--his groin! It works on so many levels! Somehow it does. In addition to some of the overarching humor theories there are a couple added reasons we might find this to be a particularly humorous type of pain. Snide references to sexuality are the very essence of humor and have been for a long time says Christie Davies a sociologist and author of the book Jokes and Targets. It would be particularly humiliating and partly it would very rapidly incapacitate someone. Besides the Freudian implications of the aggressive and sexual tension in the situation there's also the suddenness with which a blow to the 'nads can take down even an otherwise big strapping man. Someone who's powerful and dignified who's now keeling over in response to what seems like this minor infraction--so easily brought down from their normally human perch--is a violation of expectation Strohminger explains. Add that to the theories already at play with physical humor benign violations mistaken commitments aggression emotional arousal and you have a pretty hilarious situation on your hands. So perhaps that's why as one researcher commented it's funny just hearing someone say 'a guy getting hit in the crotch.'it's funny because of the person's reaction knees buckle hands thrust down and cup the .. uh ... sack .. and then there's the emotions in the face. also we men are awful criers. thats also aside from the highpitched voice and whimpering. (some times squealing).I believe it goes back to age old case of; Him vs Me.
Where it was deemed in a landslide ruling by the judge that:It is better for Him to get nailed in the nuts; than for Me to have my berries squeezed.Humor in general seems to relate to somebody's suffering -- pain humiliation embarrassment. Somebody always suffers.Funniest Videos also features folks getting beaned in general. One of their staples is some kid having an oops moment -- they're not all about the shot to the nads. In real life guys at least don't always laugh. At one of our homecoming games one of our players got nailed by a guy who came through low and clipped him on the way through his legs. The girls were wondering what happened ( he was rolling around on the ground)-- the guys all knew and we weren't laughing.my classmate's sister makes $70/hour on the internet. She has been out of a job for 9 months but last month her check was $16110 just working on the internet for a few hours. Here's the site to read more... www.cnn13.comYet another example of the technique of “experts” to “answer” situations simply by tossing several related facets together and selling it to that group of the gullible who will buy it.
     To begin with a man getting hit in the groin isn't necessarily “funny”.  Just because people laugh doesn't mean something “funny”.  People can laugh from stress relief from a good joke from being tickled from hysteria but they aren't all the same!  And the reaction of seeing a man hit in the groin isn't necessarily “enjoyment' or “appreciation”.  For many it's an outgrowth of the reaction to the outlandishness or extreme implication of the situation a semi sympathetic response turned into an explosive release.
     Note the chicanery of the “official explanations” though.  Distance from the incident turning it into something to laugh about.  Why should something that occurs far away suddenly make it something to find humor in?  And the different “analyses” of the response to implied pain.  There are few if any who respond to seeing say Curly get slapped by an appraisal based on the realization that pain was inflicted.  When an anvil falls of Daffy Duck few if any base their response on first assessing how much discomfort it caused him!  It's more a response to the suddenness the outlandishness the excessiveness of the incident than appreciating how much the other has suffered.There's definitely something about group cues being told what's acceptable to laugh at and trends but there's something else underneath all that which is unbdeniable.I think most(if not all) of us put on a fake act in public to make ourselves look more tough more sophisticated more cool than we really are. When an accident happens this is instantly shattered in the most unflattering of ways and the person's suddenly caught in the spotlight with their pants down. We comprehend the humiliation of the victim but simultaneously feel overwhelming relief that it's happening to someone else and not us. Someone might even try to use it as a means of elevating their social status above that of the victim. I don't understand the mechanisms in play there but perhaps it's related to our inate will to protect/promote our own genes at the expense of strangers we don't need.The most acute example of this I recall was where me and 2 friends were sitting silently eating a meal one day gazing out of the restaurant window. A man and his 2 sons had parked the other side of the small fence to the restaurant. He decided to try and vault the fence but it went horribly wrong - his foot just caught the fence and he plunged very quickly down landing badly in the bushes on the other side.
Now we all immediately laughed hysterically. While I remember feeling a little guilty about it at the time I've since thought of it and felt terrible for that man. First of all anything like that requires a lot of co-ordination and can very easily go wrong so none of us are in a position to mock it when it does. Second of all he was probably just trying to show the kids the old man had still got a few surprises up his sleeve but ended up humiliated in public in front of them. OK it's just an accident - don't over-analyse etc - yet there's something so tragic and disturbing for me in that. I hate myself for having laughed at it but I'm confident I would again. Maybe the guilt somehow reinforces the laughter? i.e. laughing at something you know you should not breaking the rules about what's socially acceptable rebelling against what's deemed as right and wrong. No that doesn't really cut it either.
There's something else as well - knowing what people's reaction is to sch a thing amplifies the horror and the embarrassment when it happens to you. It's like a negative feedback loop.Or somebody hit me real hard in the ovaries?