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Why The Older Generation Don't Get Jokes
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 7-12-2007 | Ben Quinn

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..


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aging; brain; elderly; funny; humor; jokes; older
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To: RockinRight

“The only exercise I get is being a pall bearer for my friends who exercise.” - George Burns


21 posted on 07/12/2007 12:23:28 PM PDT by OrioleFan (Republicans believe every day is July 4th, but DemocRATs believe every day is April 15th. - Reagan)
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To: M1Tanker
Maybe the reason some older people do not laugh at modern ‘humor’ is that modern humor is not funny.

Yes, when Dane Cook is one of the top, young comedians, you know the quality of humor just isn't there anymore. And I'm not anywhere near my 60's, he just simply isn't that funny.

22 posted on 07/12/2007 12:23:46 PM PDT by Major Matt Mason (Learning the Mexican Hat Dance.)
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To: Allegra

A Mexican, who speaks no English, comes to the USA. As is often the case, he finds that he needs new socks. So, he walks into a clothing store, and manages to convey to the clerk that he needs something, but not what.
So, the clerk starts taking down boxes and showing what’s inside to the Mexican. He shows him a shirt, some pants, a tie, a hat, but each time the Mexican shakes his head and says “No.”

Finally, the clerk brings down a box of socks and shows them to the Mexican. The Mexican starts nodding vigorously and says “¡Eso sí que es!”

The clerk angrily blurts out, “Well why didn’t you just spell it in the first place?!”


23 posted on 07/12/2007 12:24:07 PM PDT by Tijeras_Slim
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To: blam
Hewlett-Packard in Denmark also reported a 40 per cent increase in sales after sending employees on a laughter programme.

The joke's on HP.

24 posted on 07/12/2007 12:28:14 PM PDT by rhombus
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To: freepertoo
No one ever told Groucho. He was still amazingly funny in late old age.

One of the funnest bits I've ever heard is by WC Fields. XM played something by him once. I almost had a wreck I was laughing so hard. Wish they would play it again.

25 posted on 07/12/2007 12:30:12 PM PDT by NELSON111
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To: blam
A lot of older people understand what a joke most scientific studies are. They grew up when common sense was a primary guiding factor.

Most people today think common sense is just a myth, spoken about by old people who can't speak lawyer, and think that without millions of small, petty, intrusive laws the world would cease to be civilized.

26 posted on 07/12/2007 12:32:44 PM PDT by Do Be (The heart is smarter than the head.)
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To: blam

I’m under 40 and have never understood the media’s fascination with jokes that have “He’s a Republican!” as the punchline (but I’ve seen/heard it a number of time, less “meat” than a modern SNL sketch).

Perhaps the jokes they told in this study just weren’t funny.

The thousandth time you’ve heard Henny Youngman’s “Call me a doctor! Call me a doctor! OK, so you’re a doctor!” joke, you just may not laugh.


27 posted on 07/12/2007 12:33:01 PM PDT by weegee (If the Fairness Doctrine is imposed on USA who will CNN news get to read the conservative rebuttal)
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To: blam
It was a study about whether they get what’s supposed to be funny,” Professor Carpenter wrote.

Humor has changed over the decades. What we consider funny changes, too, although there are some universal themes. So what may seem funny to some will not seem funny to others, maybe even offensive.

But the essential element, what gets past a mere grin to the real belly laughs, is an element of surprise--difficult to muster when you have heard thousands of jokes.

28 posted on 07/12/2007 12:33:08 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly.)
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To: Tijeras_Slim

LOL! Now that’s funny!


29 posted on 07/12/2007 12:33:13 PM PDT by SunTzuWu
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To: NELSON111
Go here and search the archives for audio clips (and radio shows). All free and in the public domain.

http://www.archive.org/index.php

30 posted on 07/12/2007 12:34:15 PM PDT by weegee (If the Fairness Doctrine is imposed on USA who will CNN news get to read the conservative rebuttal)
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To: blam
Today's "humor" and its tendency to be crude, rude and vulgar has most older people saying, "I don't need this."

I was watching a comedy with my kids once with so much profanity in it, I turned it off and announced if I wanted to hear that kind of language, all I had to do was drop a brick on my foot.

My son said, "Yeah, and we would laugh at that too."

31 posted on 07/12/2007 12:35:00 PM PDT by N. Theknow (Kennedys: Can't drive, can't fly, can't ski, can't skipper a boat; but they know what's best for us)
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To: freepertoo

The main alternate to these persons creating and giving the tests are that they are not funny, and their beKockta jokes are not jokes.
There are very few really funny folks around any more.
No Fred Allens, Jack Benny’s, Groucho, Zero Mostels, etc.
No Henny Youngman or well, it seems the entire funny generation has given was to a generation of loud mouth/foul mouth anti female, anti government assholes who simply are not funny.
Call me a Doctor, indeed. Howzabout I call you a Schmuck. It fits closer.


32 posted on 07/12/2007 12:35:25 PM PDT by Gideon T. Reader (The PALESTINIANS? A proud history of mindless violence since 1964.)
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To: stylin19a

From another old guy - That would have been my reply. A tip of the hat to Groucho.


33 posted on 07/12/2007 12:35:38 PM PDT by noname07718 (The Senate is based on consensus. “Consensus is the absence of leadership” - Lady M.Thatcher)
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To: M1Tanker
". . .10 minutes into a comedy movie, I can pretty much tell you what the rest of the movie is and how it will end."

One of the most painful aspects of our declining culture is the loss of drawing room comedy. The kind of movie where there is no violence, no vulgar language, no car chases, just witty repartee, gentle satire and clever plot surprises. Those writers (and the audience that appreciated them) are mostly dead and gone.

34 posted on 07/12/2007 12:36:24 PM PDT by Liberty Wins (Not only does Fred Thompson cut taxes, he cuts tax collectors.)
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To: freepertoo

An old people’s joke: Why is a room full of married couples called empty?........Because there is no single person!

Another one: What is a frog who crosses the road, jumps into a mud puddle, then crosses back over the road called?.......A dirty double crosser!

If you are over 60, those are funny. If you are closer to 30, either you don’t get them or they are “corny”.


35 posted on 07/12/2007 12:36:37 PM PDT by Paperdoll ( Vote for Duncan Hunter in the Primaries for America's sake!)
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To: blam

I love jokes. I love funny people. In the year 2000 and on. If they aren’t sexual, they just are not funny.

Shame young people don’t get a good joke.

I loved Rodney Dangerfield.

He was funny.


36 posted on 07/12/2007 12:36:59 PM PDT by dforest (Roger Hernand still steenks...oops, did I forget the EZ?)
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To: blam

“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’.””

This is not even a joke, it is syntactically crippled.

We could fault this writer, for if he had told us at this point that the testee was to select from multiple choices, one of these two or more responses, the we might conclude that the person answering had no sense of humor.

Had the businessman said, “This ain’t no phone booth, pal” that would have been funny.

(Come to think of it, testee is kind of funny, itself)


37 posted on 07/12/2007 12:37:22 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: HEY4QDEMS

The older generation no longer gets jokes because they haven’t learned to open their email. Ha!


38 posted on 07/12/2007 12:39:15 PM PDT by weegee (If the Fairness Doctrine is imposed on USA who will CNN news get to read the conservative rebuttal)
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To: N. Theknow

I must be getting on, because most of “The Funniest Videos” leave me cold.


39 posted on 07/12/2007 12:40:00 PM PDT by Paperdoll ( Vote for Duncan Hunter in the Primaries for America's sake!)
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To: blam

The old guys have already heard it all. So, so many of the jokes you hear and see on TV are repackaged from decades ago.


40 posted on 07/12/2007 12:40:21 PM PDT by subterfuge (Today, Tolerance =greatest virtue;Hypocrisy=worst character defect; Discrimination =worst atrocity)
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