How Do Festive Cracker Puns Influence Our Minds?

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

This one-liner is met by groans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing session with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner grins, almost apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a good joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with elders, children and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of such social exchanges can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we hear a gag?

An awful lot occurs in reaction to humour, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood flow.

Testing entails imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the brain in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and starting movement and those involved in vision and recall.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals listening to a joke have a complex set of brain reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a humorous phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the same phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Laughter, says the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found around a holiday table?

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more probable to be caused 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 chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

Likely not, but that has not prevented experts from trying to.

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific project for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags later, with scores provided by 350,000 people around the world, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be short, he explains.

"They must also need to be bad jokes, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he states the more effective.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person considers them funny.

"It creates a common moment around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."