How Jokes Hijack Your Brain
The Science of Making People Laugh Against Their Will (Comedy Mindhacks #25)
You ever tell a joke and nobody laughs? It happened to me yesterday. I was in the car with the family, made a joke about some random topic under discussion, and…nobody laughed. They didn’t even give me a sympathy or courtesy laugh. Oh well! I thought it was funny and that’s what matters most (to me, anyway). I think about comedy constantly. That also means I spend a lot of time thinking about how jokes work, as well as why some do and some don’t.
If you’ve been around my website/blog here at all, you know I love the psychological aspects of humor/comedy/etc. And one thing any good comedian will tell you is, if you want laughs, you also have to have surprise. In fact, the size of the laugh often corresponds to the size of the surprise. Put differently: if you want to be funny to others, you’ve got to sneak up on the brain.
Really, there’s a whole theory behind this (or: theories). One place to look is to the cognitive sciences. Researcher Francisco Yus, for instance, argues that humor is basically a con job. His contention is that humor manipulates the processes our brains use to make sense of the world. I agree with him.
Another way to say it: jokes work by hijacking our natural instinct to make meaning. They do it by pulling the rug out from under us. (Which, by the way, is kind of how I felt when, after a recent show, some lady said, “I love your comedy!” Then quickly followed it with, “I mean, not everyone would get it, but I do.”) She set me up with the compliment then totally surprised me.
This all comes from something I’ve written about before: Relevance Theory (RT). The idea with RT is that we humans are wired to use the least effort to make sense of things. We’re lazy. So, if something seems relevant, our brains jump to the most obvious explanation first. (Queue the old “Office Space” line about the jump-to-conclusions mat.) This is why a good comedian is like a good con artist. You set people up to look one direction while you do something in another direction. You set people up to pay attention to one frame of understanding, then smash it to pieces with a punchline that has a different frame of understanding.
Yus explains this with something he calls the Intersecting Circles Model (ICM). The idea is there are three overlapping zones or “frames” that jokes operate within: 1) the Make-Sense Frame; 2) the Cultural Frame; and, 3) the Utterance Interpretation Frame. Here’s what that’s all about.
Circle One: The Make-Sense Frame is how the brain tries to “get” whatever scenario is in view. You hear someone say “a guy walks into a bar,” and boom!, your brain unrolls the bar mat, sets out a stool, imagines a sad dude in a hoodie or cowboy hat. Then the joke twists it. Maybe it wasn’t a pub-type bar, but a metal pole. Either way, your brain screams, “This isn’t what I ordered!” And when the brain realizes it’s been tricked, well that’s where the laugh comes from.
Circle Two: The Cultural Frame is a bit messier. It has all the baggage you bring from your culture: stereotypes, beliefs, stuff you might not say out loud. Jokes that play with these, especially the edgy ones, are tickling the nerve of what you believe people like you believe. It’s your shared assumptions. It’s why a joke about physical abuse hits different when you’ve had an abusive parent (or not).
Circle Three: Utterance Interpretation is the part where the comedian messes with words. They bait your brain into thinking one thing, then flip it. A classic example is ambiguous wording, like when someone says, “I used to be addicted to soap, but… I’m clean now.” The punchline here lives in the interpretation pivot. Your lazy little brain does all the work processing the things that come with addiction and soap; then, the comic gets the laugh by saying, “I’m clean now.”
Now, here’s why this matters if you’re trying to write jokes: you’re not just telling a funny thing; no, you’re designing a little trap for every human brain that’ll hear and process what you say. You’re building expectations with Circle One, layering in social cues with Circle Two, and then pulling the rug out in Circle Three. Brilliant, right?!
Indeed! When it all works, the laughs will be quick and involuntary. People have to laugh. They can’t hold back; their brain forces them to laugh. And that’s comedy. So, next time someone says, “I don’t get it!” after one of your jokes (which literally happened to me in a meeting yesterday, too! I didn’t realize I had two jokes bomb yesterday until just now!), don’t panic. It might not be you!
Instead, it might just be that the person’s brain missed a step in the circle dance. This is why I’m adamant about saying, “I WANT people to laugh at my jokes, but I don’t CARE if they do.” If it’s funny to me, that’s what’s most important. That’s what means my brain worked effectively with the 3 circles. If they missed a circle/step, that’s on them.
Either way, remember: you’re not just telling jokes, you’re playing verbal chess with someone else’s neurons. And hey, if you’ve read this far and this all still sounds confusing, just remember this: jokes are brain scams. But the good kind. The kind that leave people happy, confused, and slightly concerned about your mental health. Kinda like this post.