How Absurdity Helps Us Understand Reality

“What the hell is going on in this movie?” That was roughly how critics reacted to David Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive. The works of Franz Kafka, Lynch’s masterpieces, Monty Python’s humor, and René Magritte’s paintings all share elements of absurdity, illogic, and surrealism—things that leave us stunned and change our perspective. But why does this happen?

According to psychologists, the anxiety, unease, and uncertainty we feel when engaging with absurdist art ultimately sharpen our thinking, perception of the world, and self-understanding—and sometimes even make us more conformist. Let’s explore the “meaning maintenance model” and flexible compensation, how absurdity connects to humor and painkillers, and why it triggers the same reactions as thoughts of death, helping us explore our existential fears and anxieties.

The Power of Absurdity in Art

In 1999, the American TV network ABC launched a pilot episode for a new series set in Los Angeles. It begins with a brunette who survives a car accident. She has $125,000 in her purse but has no memory of who she is or what happened.

Anyone expecting a standard plot would be disappointed: many scenes remain unresolved and seem disconnected, with bizarre and fantastic elements—dwarfs with tiny heads and large prosthetic arms, a mysterious cowboy who doesn’t fit into the Hollywood setting. The network dropped the series before it aired, but the director turned the pilot into a feature film that was released worldwide. The inconsistencies remained unresolved. One critic said, “Nothing makes sense… There’s no purpose or logical sequence of events.” Many reviewers tried to answer the question: “What the hell is going on in this movie?”

Today, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) is considered one of the best films of the 21st century, topping the BBC Culture poll, and many elements that once puzzled critics are now seen as genius features of the film.

Many works of art intentionally transform our worldview: Lynch’s films, Kafka’s writings, and Monty Python’s humor are just a few. Each contains elements of illogic and absurdity, with the supernatural set against the familiar.

The Meaning Maintenance Model

The key to understanding the appeal of this kind of art can be found in recent psychological research into the strange effect it has on the brain. According to the “meaning maintenance model” of human thought, surreal and absurd art can trigger anxiety, to which the brain responds as if it were physical pain. Ultimately, this leads to reaffirming who we are and enhances our ability to perceive the world, as we are always searching for new ways to make sense of things. These findings offer new ways to improve learning and explain our reactions to absurd political events in recent years.

The “meaning maintenance model” was first proposed in 2006 by psychologists Steven Heine, Travis Proulx, and Kathleen Vohs. They were inspired by French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, who argued that the human mind constantly tries to perceive reality as a unified, coherent whole—a concept he describes in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” as a “nostalgia for unity.”

Heine and his colleagues suggested that our mental representation of the world is a web of beliefs that define our relationships with ourselves, others, places, and objects. When we encounter something inexplicable that “breaks” this structure, we feel deep uncertainty—the sense of absurdity.

Building on these ideas, psychologists described three ways the mind smooths over this feeling. The most radical is mentally reconstructing our worldview to include the inexplicable event. Alternatively, we might reinterpret the event to fit our current mental model. Lastly, we might reinforce our beliefs and values, even those unrelated to the event—a phenomenon psychologists call “flexible compensation.” This is like “retreating to a safe place where the world makes sense again,” says Heine.

Absurdity, Compensation, and the Brain

Early psychological studies had already shown the effectiveness of flexible compensation. In one, students who did poorly on a test became more committed to their favorite sports team as a way to cope with the threat to their self-esteem. In another, people who felt socially isolated became more defensive of their identity. Heine and his colleagues concluded that if the meaning maintenance theory is correct, then surreal and absurd works of art, designed to disrupt our view of the world as logical and orderly, should have the same effect.

In one study, psychologists asked volunteers to read Kafka’s parable “An Imperial Message” (1919), which ends with a paradox: no matter how far the protagonist travels through the palace, he can never reach the exit. Later, participants rated how much they valued their country, nationality, and native language. As predicted, those who read Kafka’s story compensated for their uncertainty by expressing stronger cultural identity than those who read simple Aesop’s fables.

Researchers then turned to visual art. Volunteers viewed either John Constable’s “Landscape with Double Rainbow” (1812), Willem de Kooning’s abstract expressionist “Untitled XVI” (1976), or René Magritte’s surreal “The Son of Man” (1964), which shows a man in a coat with a floating apple in front of his face—a juxtaposition of ordinary elements in an unusual way. Afterwards, all volunteers completed a survey measuring their “personal need for structure,” which assesses how much people value order and predictability over spontaneity and unpredictability.

Again, psychologists found evidence of flexible compensation: Magritte’s painting triggered a much greater “need for structure” than the other artworks. Surprisingly, the need for structure among those who viewed Magritte’s painting was as high as in another group who wrote about their own death. The unexpected pairing of man and apple seemed to threaten people’s mental model of the world as much as thoughts of their own mortality.

On a neural level, the anxiety caused by absurdity is perceived like physical pain. In another experiment, Heine and colleagues gave volunteers either the painkiller acetaminophen or a placebo before showing them a clip from Lynch’s surreal film Rabbits (2002) or having them write an essay about death. In both cases, those who took the painkiller showed less flexible compensation than those who took the placebo.

Absurdity, Humor, and Learning

Paradoxically, humor can also reduce the psychological impact of absurdity. In another study, Heine had participants read a story based on a classic Monty Python sketch. As expected, they showed flexible compensation (in the form of stronger moral beliefs), but only if they didn’t realize it was a joke. Heine notes: “When you get the joke, you accept the violation of expectations, knowing it was meant to be funny. Those who didn’t realize it was a joke couldn’t resolve the problem, so they resorted to flexible compensation.”

As evidence for the meaning maintenance theory grows, psychologists hope it can have positive practical applications. Negative feelings like anger or stress, and the anxiety caused by absurdity, can sharpen our thinking, including improving our pattern recognition skills. For example, after reading Kafka’s story, volunteers were quicker to spot and learn rules that determined (seemingly random) letter sequences.

“They become more alert to the world,” Heine explains, “trying to make sense of what currently doesn’t make sense.” This is the result of a slight expansion of working memory, giving the brain extra resources to find order in chaos.

This suggests that teachers can deliberately create a sense of uncertainty to encourage students to search more deeply for meaning in the material—for example, by highlighting the unsettling implications of not knowing when teaching the Big Bang theory in physics. In other subjects, teachers can openly challenge common misconceptions and myths. “Anything that contradicts common sense can work,” says social psychologist Jason Martens of Capilano University in Canada. Rolf Reber, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Oslo, suggests that teachers could “start with a surprising fact that at first seems to make no sense” to prompt students to seek new connections.

Absurdity, Politics, and Entertainment

Heine believes the meaning maintenance model may even help explain our reaction to recent political turmoil. After so many unexpected events, many people feel the world no longer makes sense, and this uncertainty may push us to become more rigid in our political views: “I often wonder if this contributes to the increased social polarization we’re seeing. You want to retreat to a safe place by reinforcing your existing beliefs about how the world should be.”

But can the meaning maintenance model help us understand why people are drawn to surreal and absurd art for entertainment? Heine says: “I think people turn to the work of people like David Lynch for the same reasons they watch horror movies. A horror film is a safe place to experiment with your fears: you can explore your emotional reactions, knowing that in the end, everything will be okay. I think some people also enjoy exploring their existential anxieties in a similar safe space.”

The TV executives who first commissioned the Mulholland Drive pilot apparently didn’t appreciate this. As the show’s producer told The New Yorker at the time: “ABC thinks viewers are too dumb to want to figure things out for a few surrealistic thrills.”

In fact, the very inconsistencies that turned off TV executives have a powerful psychological impact, explaining the lasting appeal of Mulholland Drive.