Humor and Laughter: Current Directions in Science, Application, and Technology Innovations

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to submit contributions to the Special Issue on Humor and Laughter: Current Directions in Science, Application, and Technology Innovations.

Background: Publications on humor and laughter have steadily increased over the past decade. Importantly, many unresolved challenges are starting to be addressed (again) in the scientific discourse. For example, Special Issues on humor and laughter were put forward in Europe’s Journal of Psychology (2014, 2016), Translational Issues in Psychological Science (2016), and Frontiers in Psychology (2016/2017), Transactions in Affective Computing (2017), Educational Philosophy and Theory (2014), with some ongoing (e.g., International Journal of Advertising, expected 2019). The current Special Issue contributes to the ongoing scientific dialogue on unresolved issues in humor and laughter research and the setting of standards for basic and applied studies in both fields.

For humor, the question on models underlying the sense of humor and humor measurement have led to important advances in the field, yet also raising new questions: What is the nature of the sense of humor? How can we build a common vocabulary on humor across disciplines? Which theories explain humor production, humor appreciation, emotional responses, social consequences, motivations, and the sense of humor best? What are the mechanisms underlying the effect of humor on health, well-being and possibly recovery from illness and resilience? Where can humor fruitfully applied in health care settings, education, and the workplace? Is humor virtuous?

For laughter, methodologically sound studies on this complex nonverbal signal have been published, showing that laughter is not at all a homogeneous category, but serves many functions and has many elicitors. Yet, there is no consensus on how to best categorize laughter and which distinctions or “types” would need to be distinguished for the study and applications. Also, we still know little about the mechanisms on how laughter can be “a medicine”.

Consequently, the current Special Issue builds on the increased efforts to further the science, application, and technology of humor and laughter. Contributions from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, affective science, linguistics, biology, medicine, are (amongst others) welcome, as well as interdisciplinary works. The Special Issue welcomes empirical contributions, short reports, (theoretical) position papers, reviews and meta-analyses.

For this issue the editors will consider manuscripts across a broad area of humor and laughter research, concerning such topics as (but not exclusively):

• Studies or Positions on the Conceptualization, Classification, and Dimensionality of Humor and the Sense of Humor
• Humor Measurement
• Applied Studies on Humor (i.e., Education, Health Care Settings, Work Place)
• Humor Production
• Humor Appreciation
• The Dark Sides of Humor (e.g., Gelotophobia, Katagelasticism, malicious/disparaging humor)
• Encoding and Decoding of Laughter
• Laughter Measurement
• Individuals Differences in Humor or Laughter
• Laughter Classification
• Social Functions of Laughter
• Laughter Synthesis and Detection (focus on multimodality)
• Computational Models of Laughter and Humor
• Humor and Laughter in HCI/HRI Applications
• Evaluations of Humor and Laughter Interventions and Trainings
• Development of Humor and Laughter Across the Life Span
• Critical Discussion of Current Findings

We look forward to your contributions.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.