Is a sense of humor instinctive?

No, you have to learn what is humor and what kind of humor is socially acceptable.

How do you know?

BTW anger is not instinctive. It is a habit, and you have to learn what to be angry about and how to act in each case. Controlling anger is merely learning new ways to act.

How do you know this?

You with have or you don’t. You can’t learn what is funny and what isn’t funny. You just know.

I think it is learned. At the very least, wit and sarcasm are learned.

Laughing is a biological reaction to the unexpected, but to be able to cause that reaction in others and to have that reaction caused in yourself requires training.

It’s been so fun watching my little one develop the ability to not only understand, but to make up jokes over the last year or so.

He went from
“Knock knock – who’s there – Banana! – Who banana? – Banana is a stupid head! HAHAHAHA…. why aren’t you laughing?”
to
Why did the dog cross the road? To get to the BARKing lot! AH-HAHAHAHA!!”

Turns of phrase and such simply aren’t instinctual. They’re learned.

Oh Gawd! My son was like that. The first time he actually made a joke that was funny was when he was 5. The book The Hungry Little Caterpillar had been sitting on the living room coffee table for 3 days.
He walked by and I said, “Chris, take The Hungry Little Caterpillar to your room.”
He said, “Why? There’s nothing to eat in there, either!”
But it was years and years before he finally really got funny. Mostly he’d do really annoying things that only he found funny. When he was about 10 we made up a secret code….“The AT thing.” AT stood for “Annoying Thing.” That way I could back him down in front of others without embarrassing him.
The last time I said it, “Chris, you’re doing the AT thing again.” He said, “The AT thing? You mean I’m doing the Annoying Thing Thing?”
Shut up Chris!
He is truly funny now, though.

I believe it is. Nothing studied on the matter.

But my observation tells me that laughter, crying, fear, excitement, anger… are all normal states for a baby to express. Any one of them missing would lead me to consider something wrong with the child.

What I don’t think is instinctive is sorrow. I don’t associate baby crying with sorrow. It’s more the result of fear or anger. Sorrow seems… to me, more of a learned behavior. Yes I’ve seen sad toddlers. But never a sad baby.

Oh! Another thing I like to point out is that humor – that is, the things people find funny – is cultural.

My husband works in construction in Florida, which means he works with lots of immigrants from all over Latin America. Apparently sarcasm isn’t a thing they have. He finds himself explaining jokes over and over to blank stares.

In Medieval England they used to have a tradition called “hockstide”. As a fundraiser for the parish churches, they’d set traps all over the village like a goddamn Wile E Coyote cartoon. Once they caught a villager and had him hanging from a tree by his ankles (likely cracking his head on the ground in the process), people would stand around and laugh at him and throw poop at him until he agreed to pay a ransom to the parish church. This was considered hilarious fun at the time.

Now we’d call that “bullying”, and “illegal”. Pfft.

What do you make of those videos of babies who are only a few months old, laughing hysterically at something?

I can only speak for myself. I trace my sense of humor (and my brother’s) directly back to my Dad, a New York Jew transplanted to Texas who used his humor to cope with a sometimes hostile environment.

He was a great lover of TV comics and stand-up comedians of the ‘50 and ‘60s—Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Stiller & Meara, Ernie Kovaks, Bob Newhart, Nichols and May, the list is endless and the comedy styles widely different.

Depending on the situation—and sometimes not depending on anything except his mood of the moment—Dad could be alternately scatological, sarcastic, great (and often awful) at punning, roll-in-the-aisles funny, and always entertaining. For bertter or worse, I inherited much of his style, although these days I rarely have the performance platform I did when I worked at ad agencies.

Somewhat, I would expect. A great deal is acquired from those one was raised around, and experiences of youth.

I have always thought of humor as a sort of survival mechanism as the people I have met who were always cracking jokes were disadvantaged or handicapped either physically or emotionally in some way and used humor to overcome their self perceived “differences” from the others in their “audience”.

Humor was a premium in my family growing up, and in the family I raised.

My son’s oldest son, his stepson, has virtually no sense of humor, but he’s gaining. Chris didn’t come into his life until he was 4. He’s 8 now. His mom only recently began understanding our humor. Conversely, his 2 and 4 year year old sister picks up on bologna right away and laugh.
I was babysitting the other day. The kids asked where Mom and Dad were. I said, “They’re at Walmart getting new kids.” The 4 year old burst out laughing, and to my delight I got a chuckle from Jayden, the 8 year old. For too long he would have hit me with serious comments like, “You can’t buy children from a store.” The joke would have gone right over his head. It was nice to hear him laugh.

One time Chris, my oldest granddaughter, who was 11, and I were on the back deck. My son and I tag teamed her. Chris said, “You know, Brande, they get olive oil from squishing olives.”
I knew where he was going so I said, “Yeah, and they get peanut oil from squishing peanuts.”
Chris said, “So, where do you suppose they get baby oil from?”
She yells, “WELL THEY DON’T GET IT FROM SQUISHING BABIES!!!!!”

Then Chris said, “You know, if you plant tomato seeds you get tomatoes.”
I said, “Yeah, and if you plant flower seeds, you get flowers.”
Chris said, “So what do you suppose you get if you plant bird seed?”
“WELL YA DON’T GET BIRDS!!!” She yelled!
Poor child!

I believe we all have different perpsective in sense of humour. I don’t think it’s part of human instinct as it has nothing to do with our survival.

I have never heard of a culture that did not have a sense of humor. There is evidence that other primates have a sense of humor It must be something that we are born with that kicks in once our brains develop sufficiently.