Buzz
A team of researchers from the University of Alberta has unveiled what could be the pioneering mathematical model for humor, inspired by the amusing nonsensical term: snunkoople.
Psychology professor Chris Westbury was investigating individuals with aphasia, a condition impairing language understanding, when he observed an unusual pattern. Participants were tasked with reading letter sequences and determining if they were actual words. Over time, Westbury noticed that some participants laughed at specific nonsensical words—particularly snunkoople.
Fascinated by this discovery, Westbury immediately began developing a humor theory: He proposed that nonsensical words with unexpected letter arrangements would generally be perceived as more humorous than those with predictable patterns. Translating this idea into mathematical language, Westbury suggested that words with lower entropy (uncommon letter combinations) were deemed funnier than those with higher entropy (common letter combinations). For example, the low entropy non-word finglam is considered funnier than the high entropy non-word clester.
“We demonstrated, for instance, that Dr. Seuss—known for creating amusing non-words—consistently crafted non-words with lower entropy. He instinctively formed low-entropy words when inventing his nonsensical terms,” Westbury stated in a statement. “It fundamentally hinges on the likelihood of individual letters. For example, if you analyze a Seuss word like yuzz-a-ma-tuzz and compute its entropy, you’ll find it’s a low-entropy word due to improbable letters such as Z.”
Westbury tested his theory by first asking participants to choose the funnier of two non-words and then to rate non-words on a scale from 1 to 100. He discovered that predicting the funniest words was straightforward. Generally, participants favored lower entropy words as the most humorous, with one individual selecting the funniest words accurately 92 percent of the time.
"The more a non-word deviates from being an actual word, the funnier it becomes," Westbury explains in the video below. "This indicates that people perform an unconscious calculation, and they rely on emotion to carry out this unconscious probability assessment. When someone says, 'This word is funny,' they’re relying on their intuition, thinking, 'It feels funny to me.' Our findings suggest that this feeling is essentially a form of probability calculation."
While Westbury’s formula for humorous words is undeniably intriguing, he acknowledges its limitations. The theory clarifies one element of what makes nonsensical words amusing and uncovers what appears to be a fundamental principle behind a specific type of humor. However, it overlooks other forms of phonological humor (such as alliteration or internal rhymes) and, naturally, doesn’t address more complex semantic humor like puns or wordplay. Westbury remarks, “Humor isn’t a singular concept. When you begin to view it through the lens of probability, you start to grasp why we find such a wide array of things funny—and the countless ways humor can manifest.”
