Happy Brain Storming

Why we laugh - Origins of humor - Why is humor considered SEXY

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Both of them will die in the process.

~ E.B.White

It doesn't fit.

It has been troubling me for some time now. I mean, seriously: Why do we laugh ? What is the utility of humor ?? Most human traits have evolved from some basic, biologic need.

But from an evolutionary point of view, the whole humor thing seems completely useless. Think about it for a minute: Why do women find humor SEXY ??. Here there are some classical, male traits that are ALSO considered as sexy: Broad shoulders. OK, we can see an explanation for that. A man with broad shoulders would mean good genes and a capability to hunt better than others. He could thus, become a good provider. Social Power. Also quite obvious. Someone powerful would be able to protect his family through his social status. But .... humor ?! What is the point of it ? I mean, no saber-tooth tiger would spare your life because you were funny, nor could you kill a mammoth by telling him a good joke, could you ? So then, why is it that humor is considered a sexy trait?

Women, Bees and a laughing stock

Imagine that you are sitting at the university's campus, minding your own business and thinking of Newtonian mechanics when ... you notice HER. A sudden rush of blood arrives at your brain and tells Sir Isaac Newton to evacuate immediately the building, as a fire alarm has gone off in your body.

Adrenaline, testosterone and a healthy bunch of hormones have just started a party. OK, this is cool and everyone knows how you respond at the view of a pretty female ... but have you ever stopped and thought: WHY on earth do we respond like that ??

A new form of science, called evolutionary psychology, thinks that has the answer. Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist from the university of New Mexico along with a bigger group of scientists, have introduced a new term in psychology: the fitness indicator theory. They argue that every man and woman is constantly trying to find the most healthy male or female to mate with. Men, we search for healthy females that can become the mothers of our children and for this reason we look for beauty. A nice body, a good face symmetry and some beautiful characteristics are enough to make us respond emotionally to her. There is no escape from that: It is hardwired in our brains.

An animal needs to be fit in order to be selected for mating. Men have been long trying to prove their fitness by performing the most crazy athletic feats. This is the reason why people compete at bizarre sports, like for example: the 110m hurdles. Why on earth, would someone put 10 objects in a row and then try to JUMP over them ?? Is he mad or what ?? The reason is that the more difficult is to fake a feat, the more attractive it looks to the other sex: Sports, Dancing, Voice, the way we walk, ... they are ALL linked together.

However the most important human fitness indicator is its intelligence. It is also, the most difficult to prove - if you have any. Remember that our modern way of life, with our systems of education and our modern ways of proving intelligence, dates only some 5000 years, while humanity has been around many hundred thousand years more. Before that, anyone that would come with a diploma and boast about it, he would probably be stoned to death and his diploma would serve as a toilet paper. ( That can be a great idea, print toilet paper with your diploma imprint on it. :D ) You can have an intelligent person that doesn't have a sense of humor, but you cannot have humor without intelligence. Making someone laugh means that one understands the subtle, complicated psychologic mechanisms that lie under human laughter: It is not very easy to provoke it and it cannot be faked. Nowadays, we call it humor but for evolutionary psychology is nothing more than another fitness indicator.

OK, now I got why humor is sexy. So, let's dig a bit deeper.

Why we laugh.

Laughter is not something we learn during our lives. We are born with it. From the far elegant habitants of Asian forests, to the concrete-jungle natives of North America, laughter seems to be expressed with the same, exact way. Even more, it seems that nobody has ever faked a laughter: it is provoked by our subconscious. Neither can you command someone to laugh: 'Could you laugh, please ?? '. So, laughter has to be something that has to do with our evolutionary past. Anthropologists have been searching all over the globe, to find out, what is it that makes us laugh. Recently, they discovered a shocking truth.

Laughing is RARELY about something funny. The first clue is that various research has shown that people are between ten to forty times as likely to laugh when they're in the presence of others. It seems thus, that laughter serves a social function. Research also shows that higher status people can tend to make more jokes than lower status people.

Two types of laughter.

The classic side of laugh

Psychologists have found out that we have two kinds of laughter. The first kind comes from an older, from an evolutionary point of view, part of our brain. During the dawn of humanity, proto humans were living in groups of about 100 persons and each one of them had to communicate with every other person of his tribe. The problem was, that there wasn't any language developed yet. So they had to use some other form of communication to pass the 'I am friendly' signal to each other and laughter seems to serve exactly that role. We laugh when one of the following happens to us:

a) Tension and Release. Someone provokes us an emotional tension and then he releases us. This sudden release of tension provokes laughter.

Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.

- Woody Allen

b) Surprise. We are surprised by something. The sudden release of shame, because we didn't expect something like that to happen to us, makes us laugh.

c) We laugh at Incongruity. Again surprise for something that normally should not exist, provokes laughter.

"Flying is simple. You just throw yourself at the ground and miss."

- Douglas Adams

d) Ambivalence. When we have double feelings about something we get confused, shame arises and as a result, we laugh. All these are signals sent to the other members that 'Hey, I am friendly and I know my place in society.' They are signals that permit us to show that we have momentarily been 'out-framed' by someone and we can live with it. It is a signal of friendliness to the other person, that 'Hey, you got me at that and I acknowledge it'. It is a momentarily acceptance of his or her dominance. It is all about status. Remember, that you would never laugh with a joke of someone you don't like. But you could laugh at his tragedy...

The darker side of laugh

All protomammals show signs of aggressiveness by opening their mouth and showing their teeth. In modern societies - and modern can be as well as 400K years old, in terms of anthropology - , unlike most animals, people cannot attack just about anybody. So their physiological changes of aggressiveness have evolved to something different, that we now call laughter. And here is why we laugh when we say a joke at the expense of someone else or when we see someone doing something dumb and suffering from that: We laugh out of aggressiveness and superiority towards someone else.

This is the reason why we laugh at another man's tragedy or why we laugh when we are trying to diminish the status of another person. In modern times, the only wars a man will ever fight will be the one's of social status and prestige. It is another form war and this second type of laughter, called the villain's laughter, seem to serve an indispensable role at it.