find funny, but through testing this joke has been more likely to be
found funny than any other joke, worldwide. Essentially this joke
won a scientifically created ultimate joke tournament.
In 2002, Richard Wiseman and his team embarked on
a quest to find the world’s funniest joke.^3 They created a website
for people to submit jokes and a system for people to rate the jokes
they read. The researchers were curious about what kinds of jokes
people of different demographics, backgrounds, and countries
would find funny. Over the 12 months of the project they received
over 40,000 jokes and millions of ratings for them. This joke was
the funniest:
A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one
of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing,
his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out
his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the
operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in
a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First,
let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is
heard. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK,
now what?”
Why is the joke funny? Like most jokes, it contains two essential
components: an introduction of incongruity and the resolution of
the incongruity. Let me explain.
Some psychologists believe that the earliest signs of humor
can be seen in childhood.^4 Something threatening is suddenly
reinterpreted as play. Think about how we get a baby to laugh.
We attack them with wiggly fingers, we zoom our faces close to
them, we even sometimes pretend we are going to munch on their
bellies. Combine that with the fact that adults are some 40 times
larger than infants and it’s the equivalent of having an elephant
appear out of nowhere, stampede toward you flailing its trunk, and
then tweaking you on the nose. And what IF an elephant appeared
out of nowhere, stampeded toward you flailing its trunk, and then
just tweaked you on the nose. It might be funny (eventually). Why?
Sigmund Freud might have speculated it has something to do with
tension and then reduction of tension.^5 Freud suggested that our Id,
the instinctual part of our personality, gets a kick out of anything
that reduces tension. It really doesn’t matter what it is; when ten-
sion is reduced, our Ids can’t get enough. It could be the change in
tone from a musical bridge to the chorus, the change in speed from50 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:13, subject to the Cambridge