The Funniest Way to Offer the Bowl of Skittles

The Skittles study goes like this. Participants go into a room to fill out a survey and there's an actor posing as a research assistant. In the first condition the actor will say I'm sorry to interrupt you but in a few seconds they need to throw this bowl of Skittles at you. There was more laughter certainly in both of the throwing conditions but there was a lot more laughter when the person was told the Skittles were going to be thrown at them first. Under incongruity theory people should be more likely to laugh if there’s surprise but that wasn't the case here.