The chapter reveals the essential features of humor and reconstructs the main stages of humor development in anthropogenesis. Researchers of human origins underestimate the problem of humor emergence and evolution. However, the universality of humor in all human cultures indicates its antiquity and fundamental character. The chapter presents definitions of such concepts as: humor episode, humor stimulus, humor stimulus composer (as well as sender and receiver), humor recognition, humor sense. There is a strict distinction between full-fledged humor and protohumor, which in turn includes two forms: nonverbal and verbal. The author outlines classical theories of humor (superiority, liberation, and incongruity) as well as modern concepts (benign violation, appropriate incongruity, attitude shift). Successful humorous episodes, when people involuntarily laugh at an amusing combination of meanings, are a special form of interaction ritual (E. Durkheim, E. Goffman, R. Collins) with shared intentionality, synchronization of emotional states, bursts of emotional energy, positive reinforcement, special dynamics of group membership. The concept of interaction ritual allows to reconstruct the hidden meanings and bases of participants’ reactions. The combination of meanings in the humorous stimulus explicitly or implicitly includes some confusion: embarrassment, light cognitive tension, and joyful insight with violation of expectations and perceived deviation from “normality”. There should be serious reasons for the long survival of humor in human prehistory and history, despite various social repressions. Humor serves important individual, group, and long-term societal needs and concerns. The author pays special attention to the affirmation of social norms, orders, and cultural patterns that act as hidden symbols of worship in humor episodes as interaction rituals. Successful episodes of humor, through the preparation of initial confusion and its subsequent overcoming through insight and laughter, allow, on the one hand, the relief of tensions associated with the observance of social norms and, on the other hand, the actualization of these norms and their consolidation in the culture. “Context reduction,” as an important feature of humor, serves to subjectively elevate the participants of the episode above the normative order, which is always associated with tensions. The chapter offers a schematic reconstruction of the development of humor at different stages of anthropogenesis, from Heidelbergians to late sapiens. Humor evolved in stages in response to new challenges and problems that arose during the evolution of social orders, language, and cognitive abilities. Group selection has contributed to the entrenchment of humor as a mechanism to support community solidarity and normativity, as well as processes of cultural renewal. Laughter and humor play an important role in the loosening and changing of orders that has attracted the attention of researchers in recent years.

Multifaceted Humor: Origins and Evolutionary Role

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发表日期：

2026年

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Nikolai S. Rozov

摘要

The chapter reveals the essential features of humor and reconstructs the main stages of humor development in anthropogenesis. Researchers of human origins underestimate the problem of humor emergence and evolution. However, the universality of humor in all human cultures indicates its antiquity and fundamental character. The chapter presents definitions of such concepts as: humor episode, humor stimulus, humor stimulus composer (as well as sender and receiver), humor recognition, humor sense. There is a strict distinction between full-fledged humor and protohumor, which in turn includes two forms: nonverbal and verbal. The author outlines classical theories of humor (superiority, liberation, and incongruity) as well as modern concepts (benign violation, appropriate incongruity, attitude shift). Successful humorous episodes, when people involuntarily laugh at an amusing combination of meanings, are a special form of interaction ritual (E. Durkheim, E. Goffman, R. Collins) with shared intentionality, synchronization of emotional states, bursts of emotional energy, positive reinforcement, special dynamics of group membership. The concept of interaction ritual allows to reconstruct the hidden meanings and bases of participants’ reactions. The combination of meanings in the humorous stimulus explicitly or implicitly includes some confusion: embarrassment, light cognitive tension, and joyful insight with violation of expectations and perceived deviation from “normality”. There should be serious reasons for the long survival of humor in human prehistory and history, despite various social repressions. Humor serves important individual, group, and long-term societal needs and concerns. The author pays special attention to the affirmation of social norms, orders, and cultural patterns that act as hidden symbols of worship in humor episodes as interaction rituals. Successful episodes of humor, through the preparation of initial confusion and its subsequent overcoming through insight and laughter, allow, on the one hand, the relief of tensions associated with the observance of social norms and, on the other hand, the actualization of these norms and their consolidation in the culture. “Context reduction,” as an important feature of humor, serves to subjectively elevate the participants of the episode above the normative order, which is always associated with tensions. The chapter offers a schematic reconstruction of the development of humor at different stages of anthropogenesis, from Heidelbergians to late sapiens. Humor evolved in stages in response to new challenges and problems that arose during the evolution of social orders, language, and cognitive abilities. Group selection has contributed to the entrenchment of humor as a mechanism to support community solidarity and normativity, as well as processes of cultural renewal. Laughter and humor play an important role in the loosening and changing of orders that has attracted the attention of researchers in recent years.