Admittedly, Hello Kitty isn’t particularly creative on its own and neither are chainsaws. However, there is something about the combination of the two that results in a creative product. Perhaps it is the incongruity and resultant surprise of seeing the two elements together.  Hello Kitty products are girly, whimsical, and unabashedly cute. Chainsaws are manly, mechanical and unabashedly dangerous. The incongruity of seeing such disparate elements paired with each other occasions surprise. Some have said that surprise along with novelty is a reasonable definition of creativity.

I just finished reading Pride, Prejudice and Zombies and I know that surprise resulting from incongruity was one of the elements that made the book such an enjoyable read. As background, Pride and Prejudice is romance that takes place in the gentile society of Regency-era England.  Pride, Prejudice and Zombies (PPZ) is an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that holds very closely to the original in both plot and dialog. The main difference is that England in PPZ is beset by a plague that turns people into zombies and causes the afflicted dead to rise from their graves. The other difference is that the girls of the Bennett family are well trained in the martial arts by their father and such arts are well respected by society.

The funniest moments of the book are when the author resolves the contradictions inherent in having well-born women of that era who are also well-trained in the martial arts. For example, at a dinner party with the Bennett family, the Bennetts’ cousin and guest, Mr Collins, had been praising and commending the Bennett house, its furnishings and the Bennett sisters.

“The dinner too was highly admired; and he begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cookery was owing.

Briefly forgetting her manners, Mary grabbed her fork and leapt from her chair onto the table. Lydia, who was seated nearest her, grabbed her ankle before she could dive at Mr. Collins and, presumably, stab him about the head and neck for such an insult.”

Similarly amusing was a scene in which Elizabeth Bennet was attending a dinner party of Lady Catherine’s and was asked to perform for the other guests after supper for their entertainment. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth played the pianoforte and sang for the guests. In Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, Elizabeth exhibited some of the agility and strength she had developed through her martial arts training by walking around the room on her fingertips (her skirts being tied via a “modestry string” to keep her legs properly covered while she was upside down). The entertainment continued under the watchful eye of Lady Catherine who offered tips and suggestions for technique while

“Elizabeth received them with all the forbearance of civility, and, at the request of the gentlemen, remained on her fingertips till her ladyship’s carriage was ready to take them all home.”

When combining very different concepts such as zombies and Regency-era society, one is faced with contradictions that need to be resolved to make the combination work. Resolving the contradiction requires exploring the concepts being combined to find an internally consistent solution. Regency-era women were taught to be polite and to respond to perceived insults in a congenial manner. At best, they could gasp and flush when an honored guest said something implying they were so low-born as to prepare the meal for a dinner party themselves. However, if Regency-era women were trained to fight zombies, they would have acquired martial skills as well as the courage and resolution needed to wield those skills effectively. Such women would do more than gasp at an insult. They could potentially do something about it by attacking the person insulting them. It is this exploration and resolution of the disparity between concepts that leads to surprising elements in the story which, then, increases the perceived creativity of the product.

It is likely the essence of conceptual combination is the same for both Hello Kitty chainsaws and Pride, Prejudice & Zombies.  It is the differences in the complexity of the concepts and domains being compared that results in differences in perceived creativity.  This makes sense and explains why cognitive psychologists examine the processes involved in interpreting simple conceptual combinations such as “Pet Bird” to better understand how people interpret more complex combinations such as “Restaurants for Intelligent Alien Birds” (Ward, Smith & Fink, 1999).

As I discussed in a previous post, the combination of disparate ideas often results in a creative product/idea. The larger the difference (conceptual distance) between the two components of a combination, the greater the potential for a creative idea. What I didn’t discuss in that post was why the combination of divergent ideas leads to a creative idea. It is believed that one reason conceptual combination results in creative ideas is because interpreting conceptual combinations results in emergent features.

According to James Hampton, an emergent feature is a feature that is not associated with either of the constituents of a combination but emerges as a feature of the combination of those constituents. I know – too much psychology jargon – so let me explain. If I ask people to list the features of the concept of “Pet,” they will list things that are true of pets in general such as friendly, companion, furry, give love, etc. The feature “talks” probably would not show up on this list.  Similarly, if I ask people to list the features of “Birds,” they will list things that are true of birds in general such as has wings, flies, has a beak, poops on cars, eats bird seed, etc. Once again, the feature  “talks” does not usually pop up in this list. However, if I asked people to list the features of the conceptual combination Pet Birds, “talks” is now one of the more common features listed.  In this sense, it is an emergent feature because it emerges when the two concepts are combined but not when they are considered individually.

I believe that the greater complexity of the concepts being compared, the greater the chance of discovering (creating?) emergent features which then increases the creative potential of the combination. Hello Kitty and chainsaws are conceptually distant, but fairly simple concepts. Zombies and the setting of Pride and Prejudice are conceptually distant as well as being complex concepts. The surprise at seeing a cute, pink, cartoon icon being paired with a manly, dangerous, cutting tool is mainly perceptual in nature because there are few emergent features. In contrast, reading a story such as PP&J in which the author has deeply explored the two concepts to resolve disparities and integrate the elements into a coherent whole, leads to the discovery of a multitude of emergent features. For the reader, this results in multiple surprises and multiple opportunities for humor thereby increasing the perceived creativity of the product far beyond that of the Hello Kitty chainsaw.

This suggests that those wishing to get the most bang for their buck using conceptual combination should combine complex, conceptually distant concepts and fully explore the combination. If care is taken to resolve incongruities between the concepts in an internally consistent fashion, then the emergent features that are discovered (created?) in the process should increase the perceived creativity of the final product.

” … a perfect example of what British science writer Alastair Clarke has dubbed: “The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humor,” a new theory in a field in need of one.”

I understand the difference between primary and secondary sources of scientific information. I also am interested in both pattern recognition and humor. I am familiar with the incongruity theory of humor and wondered how Clarke’s pattern recognition theory differed from incongruity theory. Consequently, I looked in PsycInfo (the psychology journal article database) to find the research on which Alistair Clarke’s theory was based.  There was none.

I thought maybe Alistair Clarke wasn’t publishing in psychology journals, so I used Google Scholar to try to locate the primary research on which his theory was based. This search was also unsuccessful at identifying such research.

Further searching brought me to Mr. Clarke’s website in which I found that he was not affiliated with any university and had left graduate school without receiving an advanced degree. Let me say at this point that I have no problems with Mr. Clarke developing his own theory of humor and writing a book about it. As far as I can tell, he has not made any unjustified claims about his qualifications in regards to developing theories of humor.  What I DO have problems with are the various science-based blogs treating his work as “science,” when in fact, the theory is just rationalism (at best) or opinion (at worst).

I say this because what I DID find when searching for primary source information on the pattern recognition theory of humor was a series of science-based blogs and websites that treated Mr. Clarke’s work as science. For example, the Science Daily news website (“Your Source for the Latest Research News”) reports Mr. Clarke’s theory as follows:

“First universal theory of humour answers how and why we find things funny. Published June 12, The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour by Alastair Clarke answers the centuries old question of what is humour.”

The rest of the Science Daily article just quotes Mr. Clarke.  They also provide instructions following the article about how to “cite this story in your essay, paper or report.”

The website, ScienceBlogging, reported Clarke’s theory similarly, introducing it as

“Published today, The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour, by Alastair Clarke, answers the eternal question about the nature of humor. Clarke explains how and why we find things funny and identifies the reason humor is common to all human societies, its fundamental role in the evolution of humans and its continuing importance in the cognitive development of infants.”

I believe this gives the impression that the information being reported is science with all the credibility that goes along with something being scientific. However, the theory they are reporting is anything but scientific.

I’m sorry to say that the original article in Psychology Today that got me started on this rant is no better. In it, the author says the following:

“Author Arnold Glasow argued that laughter is “a tranquilizer with no side effects,” while the political commentator Norman Cousins felt is ‘a powerful way to tap positive emotions.’ While neither of these men are psychologists their answers represent some of the earlier ideas about where humor comes from and why we use it.

Robert Provine, on the other hand, spent over a decade studying the topic and later wrote in the pages of this magazine: “laughter is primarily a social vocalization that binds people together….a hidden language we all speak. It is not a learned group reaction but an instinctive behavior programmed by our genes.”
Clarke disagrees with all of them. In his just published theory, he had gone hunting for a ‘global theory of laughter.’ Because researchers have been interested more in what we laugh at (content) rather than mechanism, this kind of universal theory is one many thought impossible. But what Clarke realized is that laughter is just another example of our brain’s pattern recognition system at work.”

The blog author then explains Mr. Clarke’s ideas about why Robert Provine is wrong and his Pattern Recognition of Humor is correct.

I looked up Robert Provine’s work in the PsycInfo database and found 38 articles in which he was one of the authors. He was first author on many of the articles which dealt with issues of language, laughter, emotion and, yes, even evolution.

Dr. Provine’s work IS science. His understanding of laughter and his opinions about the nature of laughter are based in science and deserved to be reported as science. It annoys me that his opinions are so lightly brushed aside by Steven Kotler in his Psychology Today blog.

In fact, Dr. Provine is one of many top-notch scientists who blog for Psychology Today. Two psychologists I know and for which I have the highest respect have Psychology Today blogs. Though they sometimes post on topics outside their area of research, they make very clear the distinction between science-based information and opinion-based information when discussing those topics. I only wish the other science blogs would do the same.

By failing to critically evaluate the science they are reporting, science blogs are potentially guilty of promulgating misinformation, pseudoscience or out-and-out falsehoods to the general public. It is my opinion that if you are making yourself out to be a science-based purveyor of information, you are obligated to critically evaluate the scientific integrity of that information.

Why do I believe that critically evaluating the information is up to those reporting that information rather than those consuming the information? Because it takes training to effectively engage in the kind of critical analysis that is sometimes necessary to distinguish science from pseudoscience. One has to understand the scientific process and know how to determine whether the information being communicated was obtained through a scientific process. Though the general public should be thinking critically about the information they consume, they may never have had the training necessary in order to verify the scientific integrity of the information. Consequently, they rely on the expertise of those publishing the science blogs to report scientific information accurately.

As science bloggers, how are we to inspire public acceptance, understanding and enthusiasm for science if we don’t report good science? Education should not be sacrificed in favor of entertainment.