My moment with the Benign Violation Theory

    Finding humor when social norm violations are present can be challenging since people tend to perceive norm violations differently. On one hand social norm violators might not find humor because they might not even be aware that they are committing a norm violation. The witnesses of norm violations on the other hand might believe that norm violations are far too serious to find humor in them. Thus, one theory that looks at how humor is found in social norm violations is the Benign Violation Theory. This theory requires the simultaneous occurrence of two aspects for there to be humor. One aspect is a social norm violation. Whereas the other aspect is a judgement of that social norm violation that ultimately identifies the norm violation as acceptable through humor.

    A time I remember coming across this theory is the time that I went outside and got my pair of Crocs dirty. When I went inside my house it was late at night, so I did not want to clean them. Instead, I remembered that I had another pair of Crocs in my room, so I quickly went to get them. These Crocs, however, were not the ones that people would typically wear since they had really high and thick platform heels. Regardless of this I still decided to put them on and when I first left my room everything was going perfectly well. This of course did not last too long since my peaceful walk was soon disrupted when I got to my living room. What had happened was that my ankle twisted to the side, and I almost fell but I was luckily able to lean onto my couch. As this happened my mother was in the kitchen where she had a direct view of my incident. Right when she saw me, she asked what had happened and if I was okay. Then once I said yes and showed her my shoes the two of us started laughing. When showing her my shoes the two of us were able to notice that I had committed a social norm violation since people do not normally wear high heeled crocs around their house. In that same moment though we were also able to make a judgement about my social norm violation being acceptable since the two of us realized that violating the norm had not caused me any harm. By effectively making note of the social norm violation and simultaneously making a judgement about it the two of us were lastly able to find humor with the Benign Violation Theory.

    To conclude, my example above shows how a social norm violation can positively lead to humor with the Benign Violation Theory. A key thing to remember about this theory though is that it involves both a social norm violation and a judgement of that norm violation. However, it is also important to remember that these two aspects must simultaneously occur for this theory to apply to a humorous situation.