Do you feel you are born with a sense of humor or do you have to work at it?

Agreed ! usually the whole family has a similar sense of humour and encourage each other.My family gatherings are a hoot ,non stop comedy.

I think that a person is born with it in most cases. It depends on the family environment. In the background of many famous comics, there is usually a parent who had a highly developed sense of humor. Perhaps both parents.

Years ago an interview with Flip Wilson surprised me. He said that he did not think that he was a natural comic. He just decided early on, that to be a comedian would be the best way for him to make a living. He was right about that. People still quote some of his funniest lines from his tv show. Who can forget his famous Geraldine line -"What you see, is what you get"?

In my family, my father and younger sister were natural born wits. There was never a dull moment around these two. They were not joke tellers. Their humor was part of their personality.

What you are born with is a sense of timing. Without timing, you can say the same words and coming out of one person's mouth, it is hilarious while from another, it is boring.

You also have to have a love for words and their nuances and a skewed view of the world in which irony is important. It doesn't hurt to have an appreciation for paradox either. And you have to be basically content. Angry people don't see the humor in anything and depressed people can't believe that anything is funny.

Perhaps I was born with it but was too shy to reveal it. Apparently in later years I subconsciously decided to make up for lost time. Most people think I have quite a sense of humor. I think people with humble beginnings tend to have a sense of humor because they have little else and laughing beats crying. I spend a lot of time in Portugal and they are struggling right now but most Portuguese have maintained their sense of humor.

I think it's the way you look at things and how you were brought up as a child. I grew up poor but laughter was always a factor in my childhood. so i have a sense of humor about what i went through. but someone else who doesn't see it as funny as i do may become bitter and more distraught about it. In turn having no sense of humor. Or not a good one at least.

I thought I got my sense of humor from my dad, but he still has his even at 88 yrs old. Since we have always been close, I think his sense of humor has just rubbed off on me though out life. I understand also that his dad, my grandfather, who I never had the opportunity to know, had a sense of humor as well. My mom had a sense of humor, though not near as much as dad.

Depends who the judge of sense of humors is.

I developed one over the years, as a kid, I was wound too tight, and everything was black and white, but when I got out and went to college, things changed.

environment i live in affected my sense of humor, but definitely got something within too

That's correct

Like natural talent , athletic ability, smarts or looks you are either born with it or not

You can work at it to develop it but if compared with someone with natural ability

NATURE > NURTURE