• Question: why do people laugh? Why do we find some things funny?

    Asked by ipavord to Derek, Elaine, Heather, Keith, Bimpe on 24 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by ppattni.
    • Photo: Heather Eyre

      Heather Eyre answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      There is definitely a social role of laughter, and we learn what is funny from the people around us.

      For example if everyone in your house found a TV programme funny – you probably would too. That’s conditioning, modification of a behaviour, and occurs so you can fit in with your group rather than be singled out! So that’s the development of your sense of humour – it won’t be identical to the people around you but it is likely to be pretty similar.

      Laughter is the response to finding something funny, and some of it is involuntary. You’ll know when something really fits your sense of humour as you won’t be able to stop laughing, even when it actually hurts!

      Laughing can release tension, release dopamine and therefor increase bonding within a group. It’s also far more common in social situations than in isolation, so I’d say we laugh to make and strengthen bonds within social groups.

      (P.s. I was on medication with an odd side effect: hysterical laughter with no proper cause – so there must be a chemical trigger too!)

    • Photo: Keith Siew

      Keith Siew answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      I agree with Heather on what she’s said… but as to the reason why we laugh and why we fundamentally find things funny… we need to go back to basics… it comes down to evolution… how did this mechanism originate… before it became the complex social behaviour Heather detailed.

      Well it seems to have something to do with responding to danger and fear! If you were the ancestral relative of the primates (which contain species which also seem to find things funny… especially the great apes)… then think about being in the jungle… you’re with your family or buddies and you’re having a great old time eating away, grooming each other and relaxing… you then decide to wander off to the edge of the group beside the bush… then all of a sudden there is a big movement in the bush… rustling of leaves… you suddenly get scared and worried it might be a big animal coming to eat you up… and its getting closer… then out of the bushes runs a tiny mouse! And you burst into laughter…

      It’s the potential risk of danger that gets diffused when you realise there is no real danger… and the laughter alerts your family/friends that there is no danger around them either… its a way of communicating that!

      It’s also why we still find something falling down quite funny even if they get a little hurt… as long as it’s not serious that is… because we recognise that they’ll be okay!

      Or at least that’s the popular idea of its origin!

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