Why do we laugh when a person falls by slipping a banana peel or broken chair ?
because it is funny most of the times, except when the person that falls is an elderly or handicapped, or anyone who is at a disadvantage, like an obese person, or a very young child, or a blind person, or a pregnant woman… Those are the people most of us would rush to help. But with “ordinary” people this changes. We sort of identify with them, we know it could be us falling, and we know the embarrassment we’d feel. And because embarrassment is not painful or dangerous, we just laugh. As long as the person is not hurt and is not in need of help, we laugh. And most people don’t just laugh when others fall, they laugh when they fall precisely because they know they look funny to others…It is not a mean laughter, it is just a reaction coming out of looking at something embarrassing…
