Sense of humor is an interesting thing: some people like fart jokes, others enjoy being scared, and some want their humor to be raunchy and filled with dirty jokes. But how do we develop a sense of humor? Is it in our nature or in our nurture? And can we learn to love the kinds of humor that we previously despised?
Experts say that we first start developing a sense of humor when we're about six weeks old. Some research suggests that babies as young as one month can appreciate humor, with 50% of the study's subjects appreciating humor at two months. By 11 months, half of the babies also started producing humor.
Of course, at such a young age, toddlers laugh about almost anything. The researchers found that one-year-olds enjoyed humor that got a reaction from others. That includes toilet humor, scaring others, showing hidden body parts, and teasing. They also liked pretending to be something else, an animal, for example.
Two-year-olds, in turn, had a bit more sophisticated sense of humor. Because they already have some language capabilities, their humor involves language, like mislabelling things and playing with concepts (for example, saying, "Dogs say 'moo'"). They also had a bit of a mean streak, enjoying making fun of and being aggressive with others.
At three years old, children start to get the hang of puns and tricks. They also start to grasp social rules, as they understand naughty words and find it very funny to use them without grasping their full meaning. Clearly, our appreciation for these types of humor carries well into our adulthood. There are plenty of grownups who enjoy a good fart bit, puns (dad jokes, hello?), or some hearty swearing in stand-up comedy.
Whether or not something will make us laugh can depend on who we are with. In fact, scientists say that laughter is a social phenomenon: we are 30 times more likely to laugh if we're with other people. We will laugh even more if we know and like the people that we're with, says Sophie Scott, a professor of cognitive science at UCL.
This is where the laugh track for sitcoms comes from. In 1950, the CBS sound engineer Charley Douglass came up with a way to fight the inappropriate laughter of live audiences. He started recording all kinds of laughter: big laughs, chuckles, snorts, etc. He recorded, men, women, and children. The point was to make the viewing experience for audiences at home more immersive like they're in the studio or a crowded theater.
Douglass called his invention the "laff box." With one push of a button on his typewriter-like machine, he could produce any type of sequence of laughter. The laff box had precisely 320 laughs on 32 tape loops. Each loop contained 10 individual laughs. Since the laughs would go in a loop, in the same sequence every time, you could hear the same laughs in many TV shows.
