The Impact of Festive Cracker Puns Do to Our Brains?

"What was the price did Santa's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This quip is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the joke by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she explains.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that unites the child in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of such social exchanges can significantly harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of endorphin uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the mind when we listen to a joke?

An awful lot happens in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a really fascinating pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and people listening to a pun have a complex series of brain reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a humorous phrase is combined with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

It means people are not just responding to funny jokes, they are responding to the laughter that follows them.

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard at a Christmas table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and laughter increases further when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the perfect joke?

Probably not, but that has not stopped researchers from trying to.

Years ago, a psychologist set up a scientific project for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun needs to be short, he says.

"But they also be poor jokes, jokes that make us moan," he continues.

The more "awful" the gag, he states the better.

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us find them funny.

"That's a common moment around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."