Why do people laugh if they see someone fall and hurt themselves?

Answer 1

i think they laugh for two reasons. they picture themselves falling like the person that fell and feel the embarrassment and the nervous energy that goes along with it.

Answer 2

Some don't, but there is the pratfall, which is a staple of low comedy and has been for centuries. Also, there may be an element that if an observer laughs, the victim will realize he is not badly hurt, and will shake it off. This is a real phenomenon with small children. Child falls, mother panics, child scremas bloody murder. On teh other hand, child falls, mother laughs it off "Oops-se-daisy!" child quickly recovers.. Just human psychology.

Answer 3

It depends on the emotional climate, which pattern is present within the spectator's attitude, one may laugh while another may have concern, amusement or compassion, there are tribes
in the world who would throw a dog into the camp fire and have a good laugh, while others would find horror in such an act, so it all comes down to attitudes of mood, age, culture, the intellectually challenging ways of emotional moods, comics make fun of people who, stutter, look funny, foreigners, a condescension of comic relief within the human condition of being who we are.

Answer 4

Aristotle, in the one surviving quote from his Comedies, claimed that comedy is "the species of the ugly." There are a lot of interpretations of this, but it makes sense to see it as people seeing the idiosyncracies of other and themselves and finding such things cause for relief, or simply lightening their perspective on life as a result. An example of this is the job of the comedian. Take, as a sub-example of a comedian, the Indian comedian Russell Peters. He tells a white kid not to cuss at his mom, that she'll beat him, and the white kid responds "No, she won't. She's not ALLOWED to." Naturally this sends Peters into a fit of confusion. The idiosyncracy that the kid's mom is apparently not allowed to beat her kid is a cause for a lightened perspective towards beatings on the part of the audience. The audience sees this, and laughs, although they perhaps don't realize the works of it.

To recap: People laugh when people fall and hurt themselves because falling and hurting oneself is an idiosyncracy of normal movement (falling), health (being hurt), and feeling (feeling hurt). It's also sort of an indication of the victim's not paying attention, an idiosyncracy of attentiveness. We see these, and our perspective of that person's situation is lightened. Humor makes us take things less seriously.

Answer 5

Because they lack empathy. I heard of a study in which they found that men are more likely to laugh at a person falling down than women. Maybe that's why more men like "The Three Stooges" that women do ...

Answer 6

Because it is easier to point a finger and laugh than to lend a helping hand.

Answer 7

1.because the person who fell is their friend and they fell too [[laughing with them]]
or 2. Because they are cruel and just find enjoyment of people falling [[pointless]]

Answer 8

They are laughing because it happened to somebody else, and not to themselves.

Answer 9

it appear funny to the one who see it because he don't feel any hurt but they one who have it feel hurt and off course will never laugh

Answer 10

Our personal pain is tragedy -- other people's pain is comedy.

Look at anything that is regarded as comic and there is a certain degree of pain to about 75% of it.