It could be that it is our brain that makes us listen to these stories and react out loud, to calibrate our sensitivities with those of our group.

It isn’t the story that really matters, but the vocal reactions of approval and disapproval of the people around us. They tell us how we should think to [...]

Alastair Clarke’s Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why any individual finds something funny.
It explains that humour occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it. It also identifies implications of pattern recognition in childhood cognitive development, other species and artificial intelligence, and posits humour as [...]