If you’re a dad (or know a dad), you probably love to crack a good joke. Dad jokes are those funny puns and corny one-liners that fathers all over the world can’t help but tell their kids to make them laugh — and everybody else groan. They’re silly, cheesy and thoughtful – all at the same time.
They’re also a great way to get kids laughing, so they’re perfect for family road trips, game night or any other occasion. But, what makes a dad joke really funny? We spoke to a humour researcher and got his top tips.
Marc Hye-Knudsen is a behavioural economist and the lab manager at Aarhus University’s Cognition and Behavior Lab. He studies humor and argues that dad jokes are not the same as cringe comedy because they’re aimed at causing embarrassment in order to make the joke-teller feel amused, while cringe comedy aims to cause an audience to cringe for its own sake.
Interestingly, the concept of dad jokes is widespread across languages and cultures, with Danes calling them morfar vittigheder and the Japanese having a similar term called oyaji gyagu. This suggests that dad jokes are a cultural phenomenon rooted in the male psyche, and that they play a valuable pedagogical role by teaching children that embarrassment isn’t fatal. funny dad jokes