@article{Polimeni_2021, title={Jokes optimise social norms, laughter synchronises social attitudes: an evolutionary hypothesis on the origins of humour}, volume={4}, url={https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/83}, DOI={10.7592/EJHR2016.4.2.polimeni}, abstractNote={<p>A prominent humour theory suggests that most jokes will violate a subjective moral principle. This paper explores the ramifications of Thomas Veatch’s social violations theory of humour, and hypothesizes that jokes tend to produce four distinct humour emotions, in a sequential manner. The final emotional response to a humorous stimulus involves an aesthetic judgement about the inference of the joke. Humour could therefore be a cognitive-emotional mechanism used to appraise social norms while laughter serves to signal appreciation for the social inferences associated with the joke. It is further proposed that the cognitive-emotional structure of humour implies an evolutionarily adaptive function<em>.</em></p>}, number={2}, journal={The European Journal of Humour Research}, author={Polimeni, Joseph}, year={2021}, month={Apr.}, pages={70–81} }