When does a joke turn into a dad joke? When it’s completely groan-worthy…
Usually rooted in clichéd wordplay or interpreting expressions extremely literally, these cheap jokes provoke both amusement and annoyance equally.
However, scholars have now determined exactly what can cause a dad joke to succeed – or fail.
Psychologists examined at least 32,533 instances collected from the internet – although, perhaps sensibly, they utilizedAIto assist in understanding their mechanisms instead of experiencing each tedious joke firsthand.
Describing a dad joke as “brief, neat, friendly, and harmless,” they discovered that the most effective ones covered subjects like nature, hospitals, and finance—whereas jokes involving celebrities, politics, or religion tended to fall flat.
In a particular study, approximately 600 individuals were asked to evaluate the humor of several jokes. The top three ended up being:
- I accidentally gave my wife a glue stick instead of her ChapStick. She’s still not speaking to me.
- Which country’s capital is expanding the quickest? Ireland. Each day, it’s Dublin.
- I shared a joke during a Zoom call, but no one laughed. It seems I’m not at all amusing.
Dr. Paul Silvia from the University of North Carolina, who headed the research, stated: ‘Similar to police officers looking for the individuals who stole the wheels from their patrol car, we have put in a lot of effort to discover the humorous elements of dad jokes and the types of people who appreciate them.’
Our research indicates that dad jokes are concise and brief, straightforward and friendly, typically consisting of two sentences or fewer. In essence, any time someone delivers a cheesy, endearing joke (often a pun), it qualifies as a dad joke.
Dad jokes need to be welcoming, suitable, and free from offense. They don’t involve religious or political topics, and they seldom include references to death or violence.
Who is more inclined to find them amusing? Men, individuals who own pets, parents, those with higher levels of education, people with greater financial resources, religious individuals, and conservatives, as stated in Dr. Silvia’s research titled The Psychology Of Dad Jokes.
He and his colleague Meriel Burnett, from the University of Massachusetts, categorized the puns into an overwhelming variety of types.
The most irritating kind are known as ‘pedantic literalisms,’ which involve a strict interpretation of words, for example: “Did you know deer can leap higher than the average house? It’s because the average house isn’t capable of jumping.”
Homonym jokes use words that sound and are spelled the same but have different meanings – for instance: ‘I’ve taken up a new job looking after horses. It offers a steady income.’
Homograph puns, which are effective only when written, use words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently: “What causes music to be heavy metal? A lead singer.”
Homophone jokes use words that sound alike but are spelled differently: “So long, boiling water. You will be mist.”
And heterophonic homonymic wordplay depends on words that sound similar but aren’t exactly the same, such as: “When my wife is sad, I let her color in my tattoos. She just needs a shoulder to crayon.”
The research discovered that “the largest urban myth regarding humor is that individuals find puns unpleasant” – a belief they claim was promoted by “stuffy British men.”
The scientists have shared their extensive collection of dad jokes with other researchers “who are interested in examining humor – or teasing their teenagers.”
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