Why the older generation don't get jokes

Why the older generation don't get jokes
By Ben Quinn
12/07/2007
Telegraph UK

It's no laughing matter, but the reason why grumpy old men behave in just such a way may finally have been pinpointed.

Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler demonstrate the generation gap in humour

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.