-”Most dictionary definitions emphasize two distinct meanings of the more specific usage of the term. The basic one is the mental experience of discovering and appreciating ludicrous or absurdly incongruous ideas, events, or situations. When we speak of a person's having a sense of humor, we mean that that person is especially likely not only to perceive such events but also to derive special enjoyment from them.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 6.

-”Humor is not an emotion, although it may alter our emotional state, and we are more likely to experience it in some emotional states then in others.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 6.

-”When we are having fun, we are playful, joking, merry, and generally lacking any serious intent. What's more, being in a playful frame of mind is central to the concept of fun, and we shall see that this frame of mind is an important prerequisite for humor.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 7.

-”Humor appreciation is greatest, then, when we do not immediately see the point, and yet are not required to think laboriously about it.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 39.

-”In my opinion, the addition of sexual or aggressive elements in a joke probably has the effect of increasing the enjoyment of jokes that are otherwise boring because of their simplicity.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 39.

-”It is immediately apparent to anyone who takes the time to ponder over the nature of humor that most occurrences of humor have a strong social component. Although we may appreciate humor when alone, it is much more enjoyable in the presence of others (at least we laugh more with others than when alone).”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 45.

-”In the simplest sense, incongruous relationships are the essence of what is seen as humorous. Whether in the realm of objects, behavior, social norms, or language, some form of nonfitting, unexpected, inappropriate, surprising, or incongruous relationship is always present in humor.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 46.

-”Humor invariably requires a comparison of what is expected and what is encountered instead.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 46.

-”Finally, imagination, make-believe, and fantasy (these are considered to be equivalent) are emphasized as playing a central role in children's humor. In comparing what is expected with what is encountered, the perceived incongruity must be believed to exist only at a fantasy level in order to be perceived as humorous. However, the importance of fantasy is considered to decrease as the child approaches adolescence.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. pp. 47-48.

-”Children must understand the real order of things before incongruities and exaggerations become a source of pleasure. The incongruous events are enjoyed precisely because they are known to be at odds with reality.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 56.

-”An additional element must be present before the fantasy assimilation of incongruous events can be perceived as being funny: the crucial element of play or playfulness. The child who is in a playful frame of mind when attending to incongruous events at the fantasy level is not concerned with exploring the world of fantasy: rather, the prime focus is on acknowledging (to oneself or to others) the impossibility or absurdity of the events imagined.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. pp. 60-61.

-”It is only after the child learns the properties of the object and becomes less curious about it, that play activities are likely to begin.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 62.

-”As soon as underlying maturational processes permit a child to represent the world by images and to freely manipulate those images, the child will perceive hiumor from time to time.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 64.

-”Although impossible or absurd make-believe creations may be enjoyed alone, the enjoyment is increased by sharing it.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 65.

-”Any given object may have numerous features that the child might utiliize to create incongruous action-object-image juxtapositions. With increasing age, the child becomes dissatisfied with one-dimensional incongruities and strives for more complexity in humor by either distorting several properties of an object simultaneously or drawing on more abstract features of the object.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 68.

-”More often than not, the one-and-a-half to two-year-old will direct incongruous actions toward objects that have some similarity to the appropriate object. From the second year on, there is a decreasing reliance on such resemblances in make-believe play, regardless of whether the play is of an exploratory or humorous nature.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 68.

-”Physical activity may occur, but it is not central to Stage 2 humor. The verbal statement alone creates the incongruity and leads to laughter. This marks the first step in the child's humor toward increased abstraction, which continues to increase as new cognitive abilities are acquired during childhood and adolescence.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 69.

-”Stage 1 humor does not simply disappear, however, as the capacity for Stage 2 forms of incongruity is established. Rather, everyday humor experiences are composed of various combinations of Stage 1 and Stage 2 incongruities. Some may be purely one or the other, but most are likely to consist of both discrepant actions toward objects and inaccurate descriptions of those actions or objects.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 69.

-”In the most common occurrence of Stage 2 humor, children simply give names to objects or events that they know to be incorrect. Thus, a child may find it endlessly amusing to call a dog a cat, a hand a foot, an eye a nose, and so forth.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 69.

-”Having a sense of mastery over a word seems to be the critical factor in determining when a child begins to find it funny to change names of objects: that is, once the child learns the correct name for an object or part of the body, a playful frame of mind may lead to calling it every word but the rignt word.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 69.

-”Typically, children maintain some enjoyment of name-change humor until the late preschool years.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 69.

-”Stages 2 and 3 differ with respect to such humor, however, in that joking in the formwer is likely to take the form of substituting an incorrect real word for the correct real word, whereas joking in the latter may also include the substitution of nonsense words for the correct word.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 69.

-”The fact that the Stage 2 child uses verbal labels readily understood by other children or adults provides for the beginnings of social influence on both the production and the enjoyment of humor. From the very beginning, however, children differ widely in the extent to which they seek social outlets for their humor. Most children prefer to share humorous fantasy play with others once they discover the mutual enjoyment to be derived from such sharing. Others may prefer to restrict their humorous creations to their own imaginations.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 70.

-”Stage 3 humor is more complex than that of Stage 2, in that many different characteristics may be involved (even though the child has difficulty keeping all these characteristics in mind at once). The number of characteristic that may enter into the humorous depiction of an object is limited only by the number of different ones that define the concept formed with respect to that object.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 72.

-”Only by Stage 4 can a child step beyond the appearances of things and begin to think in a logical manner about what could and could not happen, and why. When asked to explain why such an event is funny, the preschooler cannot advance geyond a purely descriptive account and indicate why the situation described makes it funny.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. pp. 74-75.

-”A new form of language play develops during Stage 3 in addition to simple name substitutions. Both repetitious rhyming of words and the creation of nonsense words are common sources of humor during the three- to six-year period.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 75.

-”Much adult humor has as its basis the fact that two or more meanings are applicable to a particular key word in a joke or story. Puns are a classic example of this form of humor. In order to appreciate the humor in puns, a child must be simultaneously aware of the two meanings and realize that the obvious one provides for a normal set of circumstances, whereas the less probable one creates some sort of incongruous situation.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 76.

-”The reduced perceptual centeredness characteristic of the transition to concrete operational thinking has a tremendous influence on a child's thinking, in that it allows the child to consider relationships between events rather than simply focusing on the end states or outcomes of events.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 78.

-”The young child's egocentrism makes it impossible to take another person's point of view, and this has a major effect on reactions to humor. In short, younger children seem to be more cruel in their humor because they laugh directly at another person's limp, unusually shaped nose, distorted speech, and so forth. It simply does not occur to them that they might be hurting the feelings of people in such conditions.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 78.

-”But humor is not restricted to the world of fantasy. Children begin to experience humor in connection with unusual or incongruous events in the real world as early as age two or three. For example, they may laugh at a person with a very large or unusually shaped nose, at "making a face," at unusual vocal sounds, or at inappropriate or otherwise incongruous actions. Fantasy may contribute to the funniness of these events, but it is not necessary for the events to be perceived as humorous, as is the case for occurrences known to be impossible.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. pp. 82-83.

-”Because of the strong perceptual orientation in a child's thinking, this early humor based on real incongruities always depends on the appearance or sound of objects and events. When children say that something looks funny or silly, they are acknowledging that it is very different from what one usually sees.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 83.

-”As in earlier forms of humor in real incongruities, the humor of irony results from the fact that something that really should not occur (although its occurrence is possible) has happened. The humor of irony is usually further fueled by related embarrassments or awkward situations accompanying the unexpected reversal of events.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 83.

-”In everyday human affairs, humor often serves as a social"lubricant." It is used to ease social tensions, to indicate friendly intent, and to strengthen social bonds. For an animal with highly developed social relationships, these are most important accomplishments.”
McGhee, Paul E. (1979) Humor. W. H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, California. p. 103.