Fun fact: make your jokes funnier – with science!

Did you know there’s a surefire way to make your corny jokes seem funnier than they really are?

Researchers at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London asked a comedian tell ‘dad jokes’ to an audience. While he was telling a jokes, the researchers changed what noise was playing in the background. Sometimes they played a prerecorded laugh track of people pretending to laugh (like they have on sitcom TV shows), sometimes they played a prerecorded laugh track of people genuinely laughing, and sometimes they didn’t play any laugh track at all.

The audience found the jokes funniest when they were accompanied by the genuine laugh track, and the least funny when there was no laugh track at all. So the takehome message? Record some people laughing (with their permission!), save it on your phone, and whip it out when you next make a corny joke. Who knows – people might find you even funnier!