Disaffiliative humor in improvised musical interactions: an experimental study

Abstract Many studies have highlighted the connection between humor and impolite behaviors. In the present paper, we investigate whether such disaffiliative humor extends to the musical case, relying on a previously collected corpus of free improvisations in which duos of musicians took turn in endorsing both affiliative and disaffiliative social attitudes towards one another. Over the course of three studies, we show that improvisations were found to be more amusing when the performers were engaged in disaffiliative behaviors towards one another than when they endorsed affiliative behaviors. We also show that knowing that the performance is improvised can help disclose part of its humorous content, particularly when such humorous content inherently relies on relational aspects of the performance, such as one performer deliberately attempting to prevent their co-performer from coordinating with them. More generally, we argue for the relevance of disaffiliative humor in thinking about musical humor, beyond well-established forms of musical humor such as parodic quotations or stylistic incongruities.