Feedback matters for getting the joke

From Washington, D.C., at the 108th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association

Jokes can’t be measured with a yardstick. That opens judgments of humor to social influence, say David J. Wimer of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and Bernard C. Beins of Ithaca College in New York.

The two presented jokes to students, telling some that others found the jokes horribly unfunny, not funny, very funny, or hysterically funny.