Katagelasticism

Katagelasticism is a psychological condition in which a person excessively enjoys laughing at others (coined by Christian F. Hempelmann and Sean Harrigan[1] from καταγελαστής (katagelastēs), Ancient Greek for "mocker"). Katagelasticists actively seek and establish situations in which they can laugh at others (at the expense of these people). There is a broad variety of things that katagelasticists would do—starting from harmless pranks or word plays to truly embarrassing and even harmful, mean-spirited jokes.[2][3] They would be of the opinion that laughing at others is part of the daily life and if others do not like being laughed at, they should just fight back.[2][3] For the katagelasticists it is fun laughing at others and there is almost nothing that might hinder them from doing so. For them, some people even might provoke getting laughed at (and surely deserve being laughed at).[2][3] This condition often makes it difficult for sufferers to gain and maintain acquaintances and romantic partners.[2][3]

Research

The first academic paper to investigate this phenomenon was published in 2009.[2][3] Along with gelotophobia and gelotophilia it can be measured through a questionnaire that consists of 45 questions (the PhoPhiKat-45; the PhoPhiKat-30 is a short form that consists of 30 items). This is a reliable and valid instrument that has been used in a variety of studies.[2][3][4] The questionnaire is also online for a free self-assessment in German here.

Gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism describe three different stances towards laughter and laughing at. Empirical studies with the PhoPhiKat-45 show that, of course, people can not at the same time fear and like being laughed at (i.e., be gelotophobes and gelotophiles at the same time). However, there is at least a subgroup of gelotophobes that enjoys laughing at others, despite knowing how harmful this can be.[2][3] Finally, gelotophilia and katagelasticism are positively related; i.e., those who enjoy being laughed at might also enjoy laughing at others.[2][3]

gollark: For purposes only, you understand.
gollark: There are lots of *imaginable* and *claimed* gods, so I'm saying "gods".
gollark: So basically, the "god must exist because the universe is complex" thing ignores the fact that it... isn't really... and that gods would be pretty complex too, and does not answer any questions usefully because it just pushes off the question of why things exist to why *god* exists.
gollark: To randomly interject very late, I don't agree with your reasoning here. As far as physicists can tell, while pretty complex and hard for humans to understand, relative to some other things the universe runs on simple rules - you can probably describe the way it works in maybe a book's worth of material assuming quite a lot of mathematical background. Which is less than you might need for, say, a particularly complex modern computer system. You know what else is quite complex? Gods. They are generally portrayed as acting fairly similarly to humans (humans like modelling other things as basically-humans and writing human-centric stories), and even apart from that are clearly meant to be intelligent agents of some kind. Both of those are complicated - the human genome is something like 6GB, a good deal of which probably codes for brain things. As for other intelligent things, despite having tons of data once trained, modern machine learning things are admittedly not very complex to *describe*, but nobody knows what an architecture for general intelligence would look like.
gollark: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/348702212110680064/896356765267025940/FB_IMG_1633757163544.jpg

See also

References
  1. Ruch, W.; R.T. Proyer (2009). "Extending the study of gelotophobia: On gelotophiles and katagelasticists" (PDF). Humor: International Journal of Humor Research. 22 (1–2): 183–212. doi:10.1515/HUMR.2009.009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-05-01.
  2. Ruch, W.; U. Beermann; R.T. Proyer (2009). "Investigating the humor of gelotophobes: Does feeling ridiculous equal being humorless?" (PDF). Humor: International Journal of Humor Research. 22 (1–2): 111–143. doi:10.1515/HUMR.2009.009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-05-01.
  3. Ruch, W; R.T. Proyer (2009). "Extending the study of gelotophobia: On gelotophiles and katagelasticists" (PDF). Humor: International Journal of Humor Research. 22 (1–2): 183–212. doi:10.1515/HUMR.2009.009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-05-01.
  4. Proyer, R.T.; C.F. Hempelmann; W. Ruch (2009). "Were they really laughed at? That much? Gelotophobes and their history of perceived derisibility" (PDF). Humor: International Journal of Humor Research. 22 (1–2): 213–231. doi:10.1515/HUMR.2009.010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-09-24.

Further reading
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