Jokes are those silly snippets of reality that we pay attention to, they reward us with the chance to ‘break’, smile at the humor of their plot, or at least the sweet feeling of understanding a hard-to-guess conclusion.. Some like them some don’t, but most of us would like to Tell a good joke to make others smile and make them laugh for a few moments.
Marta Vergara Martínez, professor of developmental and educational psychology at the University of Valencia, published a study conducted with a group of her students, in which she was “courageous” jokes and exposes the reasons why we find them funnymake us laugh or leave us indifferent in less unfortunate cases, and he explains his conclusions to EFE.
“The secret of the joke is that it has a modal structure in which there are some premises that are not very related in principle, but which activate the previous knowledge of the listeners with whom they try to relate the information. In fact, we are trying to find the meaning and relevance of what they tell us in relation to some cues that we have, And if we do not find that relationship, then we use the alternative information and either discover it ourselves, or the joke ends with the end of the information that is revealed to us.”
The joy of the decision.
The psychologist points out that every joke has three stages, which is the discovery of the inconsistency between the buildings raised, another stage of resolving the contradictions and the final stage of delight for the time being, we realize the alternative solution to those contradictions. When we realize the workaround is when we find it funny.
“In a joke there are vague lingers about how they can present us with an absurd situation and then see an alternative solution that makes us laugh. But there are many possible alternative solutions, for example, in metaphors, where we have to understand it from another point of view, as happens with definite phrases , for example, with the phrase “chicken mountain”, in which you have to understand that it refers to a fight, that is, it has nothing to do with the literal interpretation of the words, but we are not amused, “says Vergara.
Jokes that have been told thousands of times.
“But it makes us laugh,” the psychiatrist continues, ” When we are in a situation where they ask you to solve a certain dilemmafor example: “What is the similarity between a witch and a weekend? This is a joke, but when you say it a thousand times it is no longer funny, however, the first time you hear it, it does not mean that you will laugh, but it is funny.”
For Vergara Martínez, “In fact, they benefit from the novelty of telling you things we didn’t expect, something completely unexpected, As well as that mysterious game between the information they give us and the alternatives we have for interpreting it.”
It also depends on the context, because sometimes a joke is told with a recognizable structure: “How’s that like that?” , then we activate the situation model telling us this is going to be a joke because we already have some text, and maybe we find it weird, but we don’t end up laughing. Vergara explains that there are a number of factors that cause us to judge these confusions, sometimes, “simply as being funny.”
The ANYGDALA of a brain that recognizes what makes you laugh.
According to Dr. Psychology, whoever manages all this information is the amygdala, which is like a servant who provides us with signs of what is related to each person. For example, in a comic movie where a dog appears and they make jokes about it, but your pet has died and you don’t find those jokes funny, because this stimulus has an indication of pain, until some time passes and that indication disappears. . Lose and you can re-experience the sense of humor of some jokes with this item.
The amygdala is responsible for assigning value to items around you and experiences based on how well you do with them. for this reason, We don’t get certain jokes or we don’t find them funnyBecause there are certain stimuli in our lives that we are not used to having and when jokes are made with them they don’t reach the amygdala either.
For Marta Vergara, “Jokes are different, for example, when a humorist wants to reach everyone, he makes jokes with very basic and very racist things, like those told about someone who has a flaw.”
“But there is a sense of humor that depends on the subtleties and that not everyone ‘gets’, although it is all about the value we give to stimuli, the experiences we have had in our lives and that the amygdala becomes in charge of storing and managing to give a certain importance to each stimulus, And that’s why we laugh about some things or others.”
In many cases, it has also been shown that people with depression or some inner disorder that cause structural changes in the amygdala, they can’t identify itFor example, feelings when it comes to whether a stimulus is positive or negative, and in these cases it is difficult to understand the joke and even more complex to find it funny.
“There are many ways to respond to a joke, and many of them depend on the narrative skills of the person when telling them, in a way that makes some empathize better with the listeners and others less so. It can happen when you tell jokes that you remember often Make it very funny, but if you try to count others, you won’t have so much fun anymore, ”the psychologist argues.
There are also cultural factors, Vergara adds, “because there are jokes told to a certain group that cause fun, however, if they are, say, very dark or downright humorous, they are probably not amused.”
Short or long jokes?
Regarding how long a joke should continue to be told, Vergara Martínez suggests that “if it’s short jokes, it has to be quick, because if you stop too long on a short joke, you risk people expecting and When you tell the end they have already “smelled” and it loses its lusterto. The good thing about long-form jokes is that the more information you give and the person takes a route that goes farther and farther from the end of the joke, the more fun the joke will be, but as long as you give clues about what comes next to “load” it.”
Marta Vergara concludes that the slow joke that separates the contradictions so much should be embellished to entertain the person and keep him away from the final decision. For this reason, “There are many people who take you through the areas of cinema and when they say the end you ‘burst’ with laughter. Short jokes, on the other hand, cannot be long, they must be simple and quick.” After all, the important thing is that you end up laughing.
