Humour and evolution

[Dauphin]

Why is a 'good sense of humour' a plus in an evolutionary sense? What makes it a beneficial trait such that it is an admired quality in any potential partner? And is it any sense of humour, or does dark humour beat sarcastic wit? Does punnery and wordplay that makes you groan in despair beat slapstick nonsense?

[Whaleboy]

It's an interesting question but I think we need to be careful about attributing every "human" characteristic, including humour, directly to evolution.

I think to answer your question you have to first define humour... I would imagine there's a few but most things that I find funny involve a degree of absurdity or contradiction, and usually involve something or someone with which you can empathise. I know that's a pretty loose description, but it seems to imply that it depends upon our instinct for society. In other words, humour might just be a result of our reaction to living and working with other people... whether it's simply a reaction or something more fundamental to communication I don't know.

I think that if I'm right, it's hard to deny that society is an evolved trait that has emerged in humans in response to certain environmental stimulii, but it's interesting to see what in turn that has lead to, such as humour, music etc.

[Dauphin]

I am thinking humour is different because it tends to get listed as a generally attractive quality. If you lack a sense of humour it often does not bode well, whereas something like a lack of musical ability or artistic talent does not make that much difference.

I did a quick google search and came up with this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3521072.stm

[duke o' york]

Being able to laugh something off and then go back to try again would seem to be a plus if you ever want to achieve anything worthwhile and not just get angry at the first failure.

[Proteus_MST]

Many traits which make an animal atractive for the other gender, aren´t necessary in an evolutionary sense.
For example the melody of many singing birds. Some are even dangerous, for example the long tail feathers of paradise birds. The longer the tail feathers, the more attractive a male is, but, the longer the tial feathers, the longer a male needs to fly up from the ground, meaning he is more vulnerable to predators (as they might catch him during the extra seconds he needs fly up due to its long tail feathers).

As for humor:
Just like the melodies of singing birds it is totally useless unless it is used interaction between members of your own species.
Therefore, as humans are social animals, I think that the evolution of humor is closely connected to the evolution of communication within human groups, making those groups/tribes more successful which were able to more effectively communicate within the group and to develop closer bonds between the members of the group, enhancing the survivability of the group as a whole.
Humor can be seen as a very good trait in this manner, as it can be used to avert intra group aggressions and develop closer bonds between individuals and therefore perhaps a good sense of humour made groups which possessed this much more successfully (by letting them grow larger/survive longer) which fin ally led to the cultural evolution of humour, from its first appearance to finer forms of humour.

[Winston]

But why then, are there still millions of Germans around today?

[Proteus_MST]

Because they compensated their lack of humour with intelligence, beauty and of course german beer

[Winston]

[BeBMan]

Just skimmed through the thread, but I want to mention that the idea of humor being attractive or sexy is probably something that developed relatively late (from a historic view), some hundred years ago other things were probably considered much more important. Therefore I'm not sure how heavy the influence in the evolutionary process was/is.

[Terra Nullius]

Nice question

Just finished a good book with some ideas on this:

Amazon: The Prehistory of the Mind

It's by an archeologist, reviewing the historical record to trace the development of the human mind.

Can't really summarise in one post, but roughly:
He models the mind as consisting of separate, content-rich, dedicated modules, in contrast to the idea of the mind as a 'sponge' or a general purpose 'computer.'

So, the mind has specific modules for processing physics, natural history, language and social problems. As well as a general intelligence and possibly some kind of 'super' module for integrating the functions of all the others.

Chimps & common ancestor had general intelligence, social intelligence, limited natural history intelligence. Developing through Homo Habilis to Early humans.

However, these modules were essentially separate from each other. He credits the development of language as being the catalyst for the integration of the separate intelligences and hence 'cognitive fluidity.'

This occurs (he states) around the Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition at which time there was a massive, global 'cultural explosion' leading to the development of art, religion, etc.

By importing concepts from the phyical and natural history intelligences into the social module, we have animals thought of as people (anthropomorphism), people thought of as animals (totemism), and other fun stuff.

Humour is described a result of this transition.

eg. A Kangaroo walks into a bar and skas for a drink. the bartender says that'll be $2:50. the 'roo pays up and settles in. After a while, the bartender comes over and says "You know, we don't get many kangaroos in here." The kangaroo looks back and says " At these prices I'm not surprised."

Ba-boom.

Basically, he is saying that it would not have been possible for a chimp, or even a neanderthal to consider such an idea as they lacked cognitive fluidity. There would have been no concept of a talking kangaroo drinking in a bar.
Despite the fact that neanderthals, for example possesed equivalent or larger brain size and probably possesed the same specialised mental modules. They could not import information from one branch of intelligence and apply it in a different sphere.

Did that make any sense at all???

Google: "prehistory of the mind"
Broken Link PDF: l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~agorman/pdf/mithen-review.pdf

Mithen suggests that early humans appear to possess equivalent cognitive abilities for making tool to those possessed by modern humans.
While on the surface this seems to be true, he continues to point out several puzzling patterns of behavior that seem to sharply contrast those of modern human. He explains that, in contrast to modern human, early humans did not make tools out of bone or antler. They did not design special purpose tools different tools for killing different kinds of animals. Furthermore, they did not create any multi-component tools.
The answers to these questions, suggests Mithen, lies in the architecture of the mind. While early humans had advanced technical and natural history intelligence,
there was no connection between the two. Therefore, it was not possible for early humans to think of using animal parts to make tools. Likewise, making specific tools for specific types of animals would require an integration of these two cognitive domains.
The same is true for multi-component tools. In studying the use of multi-component tools in modern hunter-gathers, Mithen explains that each component has a specialized role in locating, killing, and retrieving and animal. If the early humans could not integrate these two domains, Mithen suggests, it is unlikely that they would have been able to fashion, nor conceive of, multi-component tools.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by duke o' york
Being able to laugh something off and then go back to try again would seem to be a plus if you ever want to achieve anything worthwhile and not just get angry at the first failure.

My original thought on the subject was related to stress relief, it was the first logical reason I could think of.

Originally posted by Proteus_MSTMany traits which make an animal atractive for the other gender, aren´t necessary in an evolutionary sense.
For example the melody of many singing birds. Some are even dangerous, for example the long tail feathers of paradise birds. The longer the tail feathers, the more attractive a male is, but, the longer the tial feathers, the longer a male needs to fly up from the ground, meaning he is more vulnerable to predators (as they might catch him during the extra seconds he needs fly up due to its long tail feathers).

As for humor:
Just like the melodies of singing birds it is totally useless unless it is used interaction between members of your own species.
Therefore, as humans are social animals, I think that the evolution of humor is closely connected to the evolution of communication within human groups, making those groups/tribes more successful which were able to more effectively communicate within the group and to develop closer bonds between the members of the group, enhancing the survivability of the group as a whole.
Humor can be seen as a very good trait in this manner, as it can be used to avert intra group aggressions and develop closer bonds between individuals and therefore perhaps a good sense of humour made groups which possessed this much more successfully (by letting them grow larger/survive longer) which fin ally led to the cultural evolution of humour, from its first appearance to finer forms of humour.

I was of the understanding that 'show-off' traits tended to belie the true thing that they are showing off and so appear pretty useless in an evolutionary sense even though they aren't in a sexual attractiveness sense. The example I remember from school was the lion's mane - the mane appears to be rather useless and disadvantageous in that it causes a lion to overheat, but its main (pardon the pun) use is to demonstrate its strong health and general fitness - as only a strong and healthy lion can sport a big mane.

That said the community based evolution seems a logical complement. I say complement as people can find things funny without the need for others - and if it's linked to something like stress relief then it is certainly an advantage to any individual.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Winston
But why then, are there still millions of Germans around today?

[BeBMan]

Germans are people too!

[Elok]

Humor can work to defuse otherwise tense social situations, or provide an outlet for stress. On the individual level, a good sense of humor probably promotes mental and emotional stability.

As for why it's attractive, it probably has more to do with humor making women laugh and thus associate the guy with concepts of pleasure or some such. I don't know, maybe we should just PM Odin or something.

[Whaleboy]

I am thinking humour is different because it tends to get listed as a generally attractive quality. If you lack a sense of humour it often does not bode well, whereas something like a lack of musical ability or artistic talent does not make that much difference.

I'm not sure about that, it varies so much. For some girls, a guy who's artistic and expressive is a big +ve. I think you have a point about it being a "generally attractive quality" and perhaps a measure of an individuals ability to cope with difficult situations but is that something that is a result of society, or a result of genetics?

Remember that which is considered "attractive" is changed by society. In neolithic times, a beard (a sign of maturity) and a strong scent of male pheremones (read B.O.) would be a lure for women.

Of course, it's been over 6000 years since linux geeks were considered to be sex gods