Posted on 07/12/2007 12:02:48 PM PDT by blam
Why the older generation don't get jokes
By Ben Quinn
Last Updated: 2:47pm BST 12/07/2007
It's no laughing matter, but the reason why grumpy old men behave in just such a way may finally have been pinpointed.
Older adults have a harder time getting jokes as they age because of memory and reasoning problems, according to a new study.
The researchers tested 40 healthy adults aged over 65 against 40 undergraduate students with exercises in which they had to correctly complete jokes and funny stories.
When asked to choose the correct punchline for verbal jokes, younger participants performed six per cent better than the pensioners.
One joke used during the study was: “A businessman is riding the subway after a hard day at the office. A young man sits down next to him and says, 'Call me a doctor, call me a doctor’. The businessman asks, 'What’s the matter, are you sick?’.”
The participants were expected to correctly identify the punchline as: “The young man says, 'I just graduated from medical school’.”
The alternative options were less amusing, one of which saw the young man replying: “Yes, I feel a little weak. Please help me.”
In addition, the participants were shown cartoons from a comic strip, and asked them to choose between four panels to locate the funny ending.
Three of the choices for each cartoon were the wrong ones and created by an artist for the purposes of the study.
In the test of visual humour, the students did 14 per cent better than the pensioners.
The researchers concluded that comprehension of humour could be affected by problems with cognitive flexibility, abstract reasoning and short-term memory associated with old age.
The results of the research, conducted at Washington University graduate student Wingyun Mak and psychology professor Brian Carpenter, were published this month in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.
“This wasn’t a study about what people find funny. It was a study about whether they get what’s supposed to be funny,” Professor Carpenter wrote.
“There are basic cognitive mechanisms to understanding what’s going on in a joke. Older adults, because they may have deficits in some of those cognitive areas, may have a harder time understanding what a joke is about.”
The health benefits of laughter have long been trumpeted by other studies, primarily because it engages every major system in the body.
The area was first investigated in the 1960s after American Norman Cousins wrote a book about how he’d cured himself of a crippling medical condition through laughter and vitamin C.
After spending hours in hospital watching The Marx Brothers and the US television show Candid Camera, he noticed that following a heavy bout of laughter he could have two pain-free hours of sleep.
In time, he recovered from the potentially fatal disease.
Hewlett-Packard in Denmark also reported a 40 per cent increase in sales after sending employees on a laughter programme..
No one ever told Groucho. He was still amazingly funny in late old age.
“Why the Older Generation DOESN’T Get Jokes”
Grammy police here. :)
Jokes from gay TV shows I don’t get, Lucy and Ricky jokes still make me laugh.
Yeah, whatever. Now GET OFF MY LAWN!
My late great-grandmother told some doozies into her 90s...that would make a sailor blush!
I am only 34 and 10 minutes into a comedy movie, I can pretty much tell you what the rest of the movie is and how it will end. The only surprise is how much toilet humor or idiotic PC messages the writers will use or if there will be actually wit and something actually funny employed.
Older people have obviously seen more and do not find the humor in it. They understand it, but do not find any humor in it. My grandfather was funny as heck, but he used REAL humor. And yes, even today, Groucho is hilarious! So were many of the comics of his day.
We get them.
Another entry into the world of junk science. This whole study is the real joke - I wonder if the younger generation gets it. For a real hoot, lawyers should sue the crap out of whatever publicly financed institution sponsored this garbage passes it off as “science”. Make sure to call it a “senior hate crime”... just so the younger generation “gets it”. :-)
You are correct for American usage. This seems to be a British article, though, and in Britain the practice is to use a plural verb for “collective singular” nouns. I think another example might be, “The House of Commons are meeting today ... “
Rodney Dangerfield:
-I'm so ugly that my father carries around a picture of the kid who came with his wallet.
-When I was born, the doctor came into the waiting room and said to my father, "I'm sorry. We did everything we could, but he pulled through."
-I'm so ugly that my mother had morning sickness.....AFTER I was born.
-I remember the time that I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.
- Once when I was lost, I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, "Do you think we'll ever find them?" He said, "I Don't know, kid. There's so many places they can hide."
-My wife made me join a bridge club. I jump off next Tuesday.
-I'm so ugly that I worked in a pet shop and people kept asking how big I'd get.
I agree with you. I understand what people think is supposed to be funny, but I don’t thiny it’s funny.
Now I’ll get a big laugh from some skateboarder coming down a shopping center walkway who trys to jump a handrail but lands on his face. That is funny.
:-)
My first thought as to a response!
We get them.
Perhaps we don’t laugh anymore because we’ve gotten them SO MANY TIMES......
I get that!!
What a riot!
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