A sense of humor is the intellectual ability of people to look at reality from several points of view at once, the ability to detect various contradictions in the world and evaluate them from a comic or funny side.
The benefits of laughter
Many researchers of the phenomenon of humor note that the basis of a sense of humor is the ability to adequately perceive oneself and laugh at oneself. Such behavior is regarded as a sign of highly developed intelligence and sound thinking. It is believed that a person who laughs at himself perceives himself as comfortable enough or "accepts himself", despite his shortcomings. The ability to laugh at oneself means that a person recognizes the right to make mistakes. People with a sense of humor do not take offense if someone tries to laugh at them, since they have already done it on their own. It should be noted that the ability to laugh at their own failures deprives a person of non-constructive self-pity, has a positive effect on self-esteem and allows you to move on.
A sense of humor can be considered the most effective antidote to fear. The ability to see the funny in the frightening is one of the main abilities of a reasonable person. Funny cannot be truly threatening. There is a special kind of humor called black. In fact, it is a refined defensive response to the complexity and inadequacy of the world around us. Black humor jokes on topics that are considered taboo in society. Disease, death, war become much less frightening if you laugh at them well.
Humor theory
Even in Ancient Greece and Rome, there were entire schools of philosophers who studied this phenomenon and its impact on people. For example, the Roman philosopher Plotinus recommended to his followers to perceive the world as a comedy, and himself as its hero. He believed that such an approach helps not to take everything that happens in life too seriously, to find new points of view on everything that happened in it and to admire ridiculous coincidences and accidents.
Evolutionary psychology considers humor to be the result of sexual selection, since a sense of humor, along with developed linguistic abilities and generosity, is an undeniable sign of good genes and high intelligence. Many evolutionary psychologists speculate that humor can be a kind of peacock tail, which is needed to show good genes to females of their own kind.
There are quite a number of forms of humor: parody, irony, anecdote, pun, joke, satire, and so on. Humor can be expressed not only in text form, but also in graphic form, for example, using cartoons or cartoons.
