Amid listening to a slew of weekly political presentations, the City Club of Eugene was humored by biology professor Nathan Tublitz.
“George Bush ordered a quickie from the interns for breakfast … then Dick Cheney corrected him, saying it was pronounced quiche,” Tublitz told an audience of more than 100 business and professional people.
Tublitz had City Club members in hysterics during “The Biology of Humor: Jews, Blondes, Lawyers & Bush” Friday at the Downtown Athletic Club. Tish Hathaway, the event organizer, said she and Linda Sage recommended Tublitz’s light-hearted but educational presentation to give members a break from political campaign forums.
A series of photos depicting men using extension ladders, forklifts and moving equipment illustrated Tublitz’s first joke: “definitive evidence for why women live longer than men.” He proceeded to break up his presentation as a three-act play in which he told several stories per act and used PowerPoint to accentuate his ideas. Between jokes, Tublitz spoke about humor as a universal human experience and during his “intermission,” he played a recording of great ape laughter.
“His visual presentation was slick,” said Sage.
Hathaway agreed, adding: “It was a nice break. I hadn’t considered the psychology of humor before.”
Humor is anything funny that involves mental processes and activates at least 12 parts of the brain, said Tublitz. It develops in babies as young as four months; “even babies born deaf and blind who have an innate sense that something is funny and make distinguishable sounds in response.”
“I was left wondering how humor changes from childhood to adulthood,” said Rose Barber, who attended the City Club forum on a whim and loved it. “He gave so much information but I also went away with many questions.”
The physiological response to humor includes loud oral noises, diaphragm movement, mouth grimaces and flushing skin, said Tublitz. Voluntary laughs are spontaneous and genuine, while forced laughs are unemotional.
Tublitz acknowledged that while humor has been studied by researchers, humor is a complex brain process that will take years to understand.
When audience members asked Tublitz questions, he prefaced many of his answers: “We just don’t know all the details yet. There’s no good answer. It’s extremely complex and there’s no real good data. We’re building a 100-story building, trying to understand the brain. We have 95 stories to go.”
During the question and answer section of the presentation, audience members inquired about tickling; profanity in humor; how sense of humor develops; the relation of intelligence to humor; dying laughing; cultural understandings of humor; and inappropriate laughter.
“We’re inhibited about laughing hysterically. When we let it out, it comes out fully. It’s like a tape. You have to play it to completion,” said Tublitz, who also talked about the lack of humor in politics. “Laughter and politics are generally not seen as positive and not used together very often,” he said.
Audience members wondered why children are more susceptible to tickling than adults or elderly people. Responses to tickling may change because of puberty and adaptation to tactile stimulus, said Tublitz.
Chrisanne Becker, a City Club administrator, said the turn-out was high and the presentation topic grabbed members’ attention. “This is unusual for us,” she said. “It was a lighter touch and that’s good.”
At the end of his presentation, Tublitz left his audience with a more serious message.
“We have too little laughter. If we all added a little levity, our lives would be better,” he said.