“And now a sample joke from the study:
It was Mother’s Day. Anna and her brother had told their mother to stay in bed that morning. She read her book and looked forward to breakfast. After a long wait she finally went downstairs. Anna and her brother were both eating at the table.
The test subjects were then asked to pick the punchline from one of the following:
a) Anna said: “Hi mom, we didn’t expect you to be awake so early.”
b) Anna picked up an egg and smashed it on her brothers head.
c) Her brother said: “We have a new teacher at our school.”
d) Anna said: “It’s a surprise for Mother’s Day. We cooked our own breakfast.”
“The researchers found a marked difference between the two groups with less than 68 percent of the alcoholics able to pick the right punchline, d, versus 92 percent in the healthy control group.”
That means that there were people who, without the benefit of booze, found ANY of these answers funny.
For reasons of what I must assume be political correctness, the press did not include another answer, which is a sure fire laugh generator at all the Komedy Klubs in Kologne: “Seize the Sudetenland!”
Collateral Damage 