Theories of humor based on aggression (e.g. Gruner 1978) have their insights predicted by the present theory because one can always interpret humor perception as involving aggression. The judgment that a violation has occurred in a situation and that it is at the same time an acceptable state of affairs, constitutes prima facie an aggressive judgment, in some sense. So the present theory can be seen as related to aggression theories in this way. However, aggression theories are inadequate both because humor is often non-aggressive in form and function, and because aggression theories do not account for many facts about humor which are predicted by or consistent with the present theory.
Aggression involves interaction between an aggressor and an aggressee, or victim. Often humor is indeed aggressive, as when the canonical movie vampire laughs, ``Mwahahahaa,'' at his helpless victim. But humor may involve no interaction between the laugher and the butt of the laughter. Humor can be perceived without being intentionally communicated by the butt, as when eavesdropping on a fool, or turning around just at the moment someone else slips on a banana peel. Further, the laughter itself may in turn fail to be communicated by the laugher to the butt of the joke, as when the chuckling eavesdropper remains hidden, or the smirking accident viewer turns away, successfully pretending not to have seen anything. In such instances, laughter involves no intentional or other communication between an aggressor and a victim, so it does not have the form of aggression. Aggression theorists may backpedal on this issue by saying that the aggression present in such instances is latent rather than realized. Also, humor often has an ameliorative effect on social and psychological situations, while aggression has a typically destructive and negative effect. So in function as well as in form, aggression is an inappropriate basis for a theory of humor.
On the other hand, the insights of aggression theories that humor can be interpreted as aggressive (pointed out above), and that therefore in many cases it can have an aggressive function, are supported by the present theory. When humor is shared, this very fact implies a shared view that something that the laughers care about has been violated. This itself can be seen as aggression, both latently, in the pleasure the laughers take in the error of another, and concretely, in the potential for actually communicating to someone that they did something wrong in some way. If one doesn't care about a subjectively-felt moral violation that another commits, then by implication one doesn't view the perpetrator of the violation with sympathy. This is an important basis for interpreting humor as aggressive.
Finally, all the consequences of the present theory are not also consequences of the view that humor is simply a form of aggression, including the simultaneity of competing interpretations, the normalizing function of humor, etc. Therefore, theories of humor as aggression, for all their insights, are inferior to the present theory.