Superiority

Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

Can take the form of laughing at others weaknesses; common in slap stick humor. Often an inability to adapt to a situation is the focus of comedy; we need to be flexible and adaptable to survive.

For Aristotle we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at being superior to them. Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterized by a display of self-ignorance.

Poetics, 1449a, p. 34-35.
Plato, Philebus 49
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Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.

Thomas Hobbes