We encounter insight everyday in our lives. Not just when we are trying to find a solution to a specific problem, but maybe when we are trying to solve a puzzle, a math problem, or even trying to figure out a joke. That split second when we say: “OH!” or “I get it now” or “Aha!”, is precisely when we have that brief moment of understanding. Researchers are using tools like fMRI imaging systems and EEG’s to determine what spikes these sudden moments of intellectual comprehension that we have, within split seconds of encountering a problem. Jokes are perfect examples of how we are able to understand insight. Some even say that, “comedians are master psychologists,” due to the fact that they are able to appeal to the general population by giving just partial information waiting for the people to actually tie these pieces together and comprehend the joke. In a Psychology Today Article, Malcolm Gladwell interviewed Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, and they discussed which people offered the most amount of insight. Grant explained that comedians are in fact one of the few people who can actually appeal to people when it comes to brief moments of mutually understanding the joke as well as how they manage to not make people feel uncomfortable. Jokes resonate with what people see in the world. Therefore, in comparison to psychology, he gives the incredible similarity between psychologists and comedians. Psychologists are always trying to prove a hypothesis through societies observations and how they interpret the world. They eventually form conclusions in order to confirm their preexisting theories. He argued that comedians also go through this when they try to come up with a joke, when people laugh and understand it, they’ve hit the place where humans show that specific, “aha! moment”. So how does that moment of insight occur in that specific moment? In the article by John Kounios and Mark Beeman, they revealed that insight-related coarse semantic coding occurs in the right hemisphere internally focused before solving and during problem solving. The problem solving in this case, is understanding the joke. The right hemisphere is more centered in insight-problem solving, rather than analytical problem solving shown in the left hemisphere. Insight related problems are correlated with fMRI and EEG systems, because the fMRI has excellent spatial resolution while the EEG lacks this but contributes in excellent temporal resolution. When people solve problems through insight, EEG showed a high frequency in activity over the right temporal lobe. The fMRI showed a change in blood flow in the right anterior superior temporal gyrus. Dr. Carola Salvi, from Northwestern University, and her research based at the Shirley Ryan Abilitylab, said that the average insight occurs at about 300 milliseconds on average. Salvi also conducted various experiments using different visual puzzles, such as Rebus Puzzles, Anagrams, and CRA tests. During these tests, it was demonstrated that insight occurs during the first few seconds if presented with a time limit. However, during CRA tests, faster recognition of the answer when the tests was presented to the left hemisphere. It gets processed in the right hemisphere first and it is more involved due to the creativity variable. One of her experiments also shows that before we have the moment of insight our pupils dilate, and during those “creativity,” tests participants press the button that they have solved the problems one second before. It was concluded that after a specific amount of time passes, if the person has not experienced insight to solve those problems, then it is highly difficult for them to receive it in the period of time given. Errors increase in percentage in the last 5 seconds of the time frame, those last five seconds are commonly known as the guessing area. If we compare this to an actual environment, where jokes are simply stated and time is not controlled, it relates to how timing in CRA tests actually manifest themselves in the actual world. We only have specific amount of time to “get-the-joke,” and then switching to another topic, and if do not understand the meaning of the joke in that specific interval, then we may not get it, ever - because we might end up forgetting about it. Insight is interconnected to the everything we are surrounded by, including jokes. Through psychology, we can comprehend how we comprehend jokes.
References:
Kommers, Cody. “Why Comedians Are Actually Master Psychologists.” Psychology Today,
Sussex Publishers, 2018, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/friendly-interest/201806/why-comedians-are-actually-master-psychologists.
Kounios, John, and Mark Beeman. "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight." Annual Reviews,
2014. Annual Review of Psychology, doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115154
Accessed 23 Feb. 2019.
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