Jokes, one of the greatest entertainment tools of humanity, cannot create the same reaction in every person. While a joke is found funny by some people, others may find it bad and do not react at all. So, does the joke being funny just depend on the joke itself? Not according to a new study.
In their new research, scientists have revealed what it takes for a joke to be entertaining, by addressing the joke itself, the sender and receiver sides. The results showed that the characteristics of the listeners who heard the joke played a role as well as the joke itself.
The ‘funny’ of the joke depends not only on the joke, but also on the listener:
The scientists looked at results from four different studies in the first study. The participants in these four studies consisted of people who rated the funnyness of the jokes in their own way. The results obtained by processing the data revealed that jokes with high funny scores entertained more people. In other words, people predicted that this joke was funny by scoring the joke.
The next study addressed the missing points in the previous four studies. To fill this gap, the scientists took the sample of participants obtained by Prolific.co. This maximized the diversity of incentive forms and content offered by online audiences.
As a result of their analysis with comprehensive data, the scientists revealed that the differences between the recipients of the joke, that is, the listeners, play a larger role in determining the entertainment rate. Moreover, it was explained that the interaction between humor features and audience characteristics plays a big role.
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