Abstract Mirth may alleviate negative feelings that could be aroused by a humor stimulus. Pity and embarrassment have been advanced as anxieties that could be caused by cruel and obscene humor in the absence of mirth. Incongruity, however, remains an explanatory challenge for arousal/anxiety-based interpretations of humor. In order to find ways that incongruity could be provocative, this paper analyzes similarities between the external stimuli of mirthful responses and the external stimuli of paranoid responses, which both demonstrate ambiguity and uncanniness. It is posited that mirth deactivates a fearful reaction to incongruity, suppressing suspicion and delusions that could be triggered when a surreal event is interpreted in a non-playful way. While extreme incongruity may arouse discomfort in any perceiver, it is argued that paranoid individuals have a higher sensitivity, due in some cases to early, traumatic exposure to an incongruous stimulus that resisted mirthful deactivation. These observations are presented without theoretical commitment, but with emphasis on the explicatory potential of the play and false alarm theories.

中文翻译：

---

所有的笑都是紧张的：基于焦虑的对不协调幽默的理解

摘要欢乐可以减轻幽默刺激可能引起的负面情绪。在缺乏欢乐的情况下，残酷和淫秽的幽默可能会引起怜悯和尴尬。然而，不协调仍然是对基于唤醒/焦虑的幽默解释的解释性挑战。为了找到不协调可能具有挑衅性的方式，本文分析了快乐反应的外部刺激与偏执反应的外部刺激之间的相似性，两者都表现出模糊性和诡异性。据推测，欢乐可以消除对不协调的恐惧反应，抑制当以非游戏的方式解释超现实事件时可能引发的怀疑和错觉。虽然极度不协调可能会引起任何感知者的不适，有人认为，偏执的人具有更高的敏感性，因为在某些情况下，由于早期的、创伤性的暴露于不协调的刺激，而这些刺激抵抗了愉快的失活。这些观察结果在没有理论承诺的情况下提出，但强调了戏剧和误报理论的解释潜力。