====== Humour evolution ======

>There are several reasons to suppose humor and laughter could be evolutionarily adaptive. [...] the complexity of humor implicates an established genetic substrate that in turn could suggest evolutionary adaptiveness. Given that even a simple joke can utilize language skills, theory-of-mind, symbolism, abstract thinking, and social perception, humor may arguably be humankind's most complex cognitive attribute. Despite its ostensible complexity, humor is also paradoxically reflexive — people typically laugh without consciously appreciating all the causal factors."\\ \\ Source : [[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470490600400129|The First Joke: Exploring the Evolutionary Origins of Humor ]]{{:oa_padlock_grn.png?16&nolink|Open Access}}//Evolutionary Psychology, //Vol. 4 issue 1.

The question of why humour has evolved - with the implication that it gives evolutionary advantages to the species - has not been answered. There are various theories, for example that it evolved, after language, as a way of maintaining 'group bonding', but without the need for physical contact.

The paper cited above lists the progress-so-far in the attempts to explain humour.

//Note:// Humour has its own peer-reviewed academic journal.  [[https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/humr/humr-overview.xml|The International Journal of Humor Research]]

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Also see : [[content:life_sciences:human_body:laughter]]