Why do humans laugh? How does our brain determine what’s funny and what’s not?
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There is no 100% answer everything is just guesswork. Some are better than others but mainly take what you think is appropriate.
My thoughts are laughter is caused when your mind is locked up because it encounters something unexpected in such a way that it needs a kick from itself to get going again, the brain does this by releasing a good dose of happy juice that makes you laugh, or fight juice in which case you can get angry or aggressive.
Think of a joke, first you have to understand it then you have certain expectations on where the joke is going to go, when the punchline comes around and its out of your expectations your mind locks up for a second I am sure everyone reading this has encountered this feeling. In order to unlock your mind your brain releases happy juice that is what makes you laugh.
It certainly feels like a learned behavior to me. I used to never have a laugh, to the point that people would get uncomfortable, because I just didn’t have a natural laugh response to funny things like most people seem to have. They used to tease me about it because I would do different laughs, trying to find one that sounded natural.
Now I laugh all the time, but it’s more of an instinct I’ve developed so that people don’t get uncomfortable around me; it’s so engrained in me now that I just do it without effort, so it’s almost to the point that I feel like I have a laugh now, but the feeling just isn’t there behind it. I can remember two times in my life that I’ve actually laughed, and when I think about those times it makes me laugh again, for real, and it’s such a nice feeling that I wish I could feel it all the time like other people.
The strongest theory I’ve heard is that it’s for communication. It’s the built in “all clear” or “false alarm” signal. Back in hunter gatherer days when humans slept outside and whatever, maybe your group hears a rustle in the bush right outside camp. What caused that rustle? Was it a lion? Are you about to have a fight for your life? The group gets tense as you grab your spear and inch towards the bush. You’re hands are shaking as you prepare to fight the lion. The kids cling tightly to their mothers, you look back and their eyes are like saucers.
You steal your courage and look behind the bush… And it’s a pair of squirrels fucking. There’s not lion. There’s no threat. Everyone was so worried for no reason. How do you communicate that to your group? You laugh. Your laugh let’s everyone know they were worried for nothing.
This is why I wish we could listen in on the Sentinelese. I’m curious about laughter and humor from a culture almost completely alien from out own. Do they laugh at similar things? Does some guy tripping over hit own feet make them laugh or is their culture less dickish than our own?
I often contemplate why people laugh, I still have no answers.
Whatever it is, it kind of changes in a permanent way after (a couple?) pot smoking sessions.
I’m not even joking, you can sort of tell just by having a casual humorous sober conversation with someone, whether they have or haven’t smoked pot in their life.
Laughing is a release of energy just like farting or peeing, but it happens with the lungs, throat and face.
ELI5: Why is every post from this sub that ever makes into my feed a question that would never be asked by a 5yo and also/therefore impossible to explain to a 5yo?
According to the puppeteer Nessus in Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, “humor is an interrupted defense mechanism.”
Laughter or crying is what a human being does when there’s nothing else he can do.
-Kurt Vonnegut
There are a lot of different theories about humor, so we don’t know for sure, but my favorite is the [Benign Violation theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor#Benign_violation_theory). Your brain is constantly trying to guess what is going to happen next, and what is going to happen if this thing I just guessed happens. Probably this evolved because it was useful to guess in advance when something is going to be dangerous. This guessing creates expectations of many kinds: physical, social, etc. Sometimes this kind of expectation is violated (it didn’t happen as your brain guessed), which makes the brain always a bit on the edge: maybe it’s going to be dangerous? When the brain then understands that it isn’t dangerous (i.e., it’s benign), the stress from preparing to the potential danger is released – and at the same time, your brain gives a small positive emotion for learning a new thing. These combined means that you are amused. When it is further combined with expectations that are social in nature, this amusement is expressed as laughter, because (as others have explained), it is socially beneficial to signal that you are not angry (and potentially dangerous to others) but enjoying yourself (which makes them like you).
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