‘The Far Side’ Was Used in a Groundbreaking Psychological Study

Gary Larson’s The Far Side is primarily remembered for being one of the greatest newspaper comics ever created, and for also being the biggest thing to happen to wall calendars since photographers discovered that firefighters’ shirts are removable. 

But interestingly enough, The Far Side also contributed to our understanding of the human brain. And not just because it perfectly depicted our species’ inability to comprehend when a door needs to be pulled rather than pushed.

Back in 1988, social psychologist Fritz Strack and his colleagues published a study examining the “facial feedback hypothesis,” which suggests that “enhancing or inhibiting an emotional expression would alter the intensity of the emotional experience.” This wasn’t a new idea, it was first proposed by legendary biologist, and office chair innovator, Charles Darwin. 

To test out the theory, Strack asked two groups of volunteers to shove office supplies in their mouths. One group had to keep a pen between their teeth without touching their lips, thus forcing a smile, while one had to keep a pen in their lips without touching their teeth, causing them to make a frowny face. 

The participants weren’t clued in to the true nature of the experiment, and were told that they were “testing out methods disabled people could use to write.” Strack then showed them some cartoons, specifically some of Larson’s Far Side cartoons, and asked them to rank how funny they were. According to Strack’s findings, the group with the pen in their teeth, who were inadvertently smiling, found The Far Side funnier than the others, illustrating that merely contracting the same muscles that we use when we’re genuinely delighted actually affects our perception of the world. 

Which, come to think of it, is the same logic employed by the dictatorial alternate reality Ned Flanders.

The study was a big deal at the time, and soon “made its way into psychology textbooks and countless news headlines.” But some later questioned the findings. The study was replicated in 2015 by psychologist E.J. Wagenmakers of the University of Amsterdam, but he broadened the study’s scope, utilizing “scientists from 17 labs spanning eight countries.”

The issue of what cartoons to use proved to be an issue, though, considering that The Far Side was “iconic for the zeitgeist of the 1980s,” but might not “instantiate similar psychological conditions” in the 21st century. Yet, in a testament to the comic’s enduring popularity, they opted to still use Far Side cartoons, assembling a panel of 120 students to determine which ones to use. The final choices included comics that came out after the original study had been published, like the one in which three goldfish escape a flaming fish bowl only to realize that they’re “equally screwed” in the open air.

The 17 labs reportedly “failed to replicate the study,” which threw a wrench into the accepted understanding of how emotions work. Strack, the original study’s author, took issue with some aspects of the new findings, and suggested that part of the problem may have been relying on The Far Side still, because he was “concerned that newspaper cartoons would not have packed the same humor punch these days that they did in the Midwest of the 1980.”

Of course, all of these experiments could have been pointless had participants been shown Larson’s baffling “cow tools” comic.

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