Amadeus Posted February 6, 2007 Share Posted February 6, 2007 Alcoholics Aren't So Funny, Research Finds A bit of alcohol often seems to make jokes funnier, but too much apparently stops them from being humorous at all. New research reveals that alcoholics have a poor sense of humor and find it hard to get jokes. A man walks into a bar. "Ouch!" he says. Funny, right? Well, maybe if you're drunk. And according to a new study, that may be among the few jokes that hard-core alcoholics are able to understand. A team of researchers in Bochum, Germany tested 29 alcoholic patients on their ability to understand jokes and compared their results against those of a control group of 29 healthy individuals. They found that those with an alcohol problem possessed a diminished cognitive ability to understand complex humor. The subjects were presented with jokes and asked to select the correct punchline from a number of alternatives, only one of which was actually funny. Fewer than 68 percent of the alcoholics were able to choose the correct punchlines, compared to 92 percent of the control group, the researchers report in the February issue of the scientific journal Addiction. "The findings of the present investigation ... suggest that alcoholics are impaired with respect to both the cognitive and affective components of humour processing," the report says. In other words, alcoholics aren't as funny as they might think they are. The alcoholic subjects also did less well in tests of their memory and their ability to predict and understand other people's behavior in terms of their mental states, a core social skill known as "mentalizing." The results suggest that deficits in these areas can affect an alcoholic's ability to understand jokes and find them funny. In their article, the researchers call for a specially designed rehabilitation program to help alcoholics develop these skills. erm..Lonan3: Roughly how many of your passengers on a Friday or Saturday night get your jokes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim Posted February 6, 2007 Share Posted February 6, 2007 A German teaching people about humor, now thats amusing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Sausages Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 The subjects were presented with jokes and asked to select the correct punchline from a number of alternatives, only one of which was actually funny. Fewer than 68 percent of the alcoholics were able to choose the correct punchlines... "Nein! Dat ist not ze actual funny response. It says so on mine clipboard vich tells me vat the actual funny responses are. Therefore you are scientifically proven to be actually unfunny. Ha ha ha. Everybody laugh at the unfunny man." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian rush Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 Stop laughing at me, cos I can't stop laughing at you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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