Who does not Find Metaphors Funny? Humor Preferences in Geriatric Patients

Abstract

Objectives: Humor plays an important role throughout life, including old age. However, appreciating and understanding humor may be hindered due to dementia and late-life depression, two common old age-related diseases. Still little is known about humor preferences among the elderly diagnosed with dementia, depression or both disorders. This study aims to explore humor preferences in elderly participants with those disorders and their influence on the perceived funniness of more and less cognitively challenging verbal jokes.Methods: A total of 36 elderly participants and 39 students (representing a control group) rated 20 humorous and 20 non-humorous examples. To test the differences in the funniness rating between the elderly participants and the control group, both Welch’s <i>t</i>-test and <i>U</i> Mann-Whitney test were used, accompanied with bootstrapped confidence intervals.Results: The study reveals that the elderly participants found both humorous and non-humorous examples funnier than the control group. Elderly participants rated two types higher than the control group: the visual error-based jokes and non-visual metaphor-based jokes. The patients with a single disorder (cognitive disorder or depression) rated the funniness of the examples highest. Out of all participants with a single disorder, those with cognitive disorder rated the examples slightly higher than those with depression.Conclusion: Elderly participants are able to enjoy simple and familiar humor. While the perceived funniness of those with a single disorder may be a result of them using humor as a coping mechanism, such a mechanism no longer works in the case of coexisting dementia and depression.