Despite their opposite emotional effects humor and horror are highly similar phenomena. They
both can be traced back to (the detection resolution and emotional elaboration of)
incongruities understood as semantic violations through unexpected combinations of
oppositional information. However theoretical and experimental comparisons between humor and
resolvable incongruities that elicit other emotions than exhilaration have been lacking so far.
To gain more insights into the linguistic differences between humor and horror and the
cognitive real-time processing of both a main concern of this book is to discuss the
transferability of linguistic humor theories to a systematic horror investigation and directly
compare self-paced reading times (SPR) facial actions (FACS) and event-related brain
potentials (ERP) of normed minimal quadruplets with frightening and humorous incongruities as
well as (in)coherent stimuli. The results suggest that humor and horror share cognitive
resources to detect and resolve incongruities. To better distinguish humor from neighboring
phenomena this book refines current humor theories by incorporating humor and horror in a
cognitive incongruity processing model.