What Do Festive Cracker Jokes Influence Our Minds?

"How much did Father Christmas's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that makes supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner grins, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she explains.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that unites the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian social sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she says, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly awful festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is actually taking place inside the mind when we hear a joke?

A tremendous amount occurs in response to humour, it transpires.

Using brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which shows which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

Testing involves imaging the minds of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the parts of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain areas involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated series of neural responses that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a humorous word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the same word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It means we are not just reacting to humorous words, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found at a Christmas gathering?

"People laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or love them."

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

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

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

Likely not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags later, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker pun must be brief, he says.

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that make us groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

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

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