Sense of humour call mental ability of people to look at reality at once from several points of view, ability to find various contradictions in the world and to estimate them from the comic or ridiculous party.
Advantage of laughter
Many researchers of a phenomenon of humour note that a basis of sense of humour is the ability adequately to perceive themselves and to laugh at themselves. The similar behavior is regarded as sign of advanced intelligence and sensible thinking. It is considered that the person laughing at himself perceives himself rather comfortably or "accepts itself", despite shortcomings. The ability to laugh at itself means that the person recognizes the right to make mistakes. The people having sense of humour do not take offense if someone tries to laugh at them as they already made it independently. It should be noted that the ability to laugh at own failures deprives of the person of not constructive pity to itself, has positive impact on a self-assessment and allows to move further.
The sense of humour can be considered the most effective antidote for fear. Ability to see ridiculous in frightening — one of the main abilities of the reasonable person. Ridiculous cannot be really menacing. There is a special type of humour which is called black. In fact, it represents the protective reaction to complexity and inadequacy of the world around brought to perfection. The black humour jokes on topics which in society are considered as tabooed. Diseases, death, war become much less frightening if properly to laugh at them.
Theory of humour
In Ancient Greece and Rome there were whole schools of philosophers who investigated this phenomenon and its influence on people. For example, the Roman philosopher Plotinus to the followers recommended to perceive the world as the comedy, and himself — as her hero. He considered that similar approach helps to take not too seriously all events in life, to find the new points of view on all event in it and to admire ridiculous coincidence and accidents. The evolutionary psychology considers humour result of sexual selection as the sense of humour along with the developed linguistic abilities and generosity is undoubted sign of good genes and high intelligence. Many evolutionary psychologists assume that the humour can be something like a peacock tail which is necessary for demonstration of good genes to females of the look. There is quite large number of forms of humour: parody, irony, joke, pun, joke, satire and so on. The humour can be expressed not only in a text form, but also in a graphic look, for example, by means of a caricature or a cartoon.