The power of the punchline: how jokes can shape change

Jokes are far more significant than witty amusements, aligning us in challenging norms, allowing change to happen

There does not seem to be all that much in the news to make to joke about right now. In fact, it often seems tasteless to do so. But nevertheless, we do of course joke, whether about the news, people in power, about taboo topics or simply at each other’s expense, jokes seem to be an ever-present characteristic of human relationships.

And jokes are in fact often in the news – take White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood pushing back at her teeth being the subject of a joke suggesting “there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way” to make jokes. Or how Alice Fraser, an award-winning Australian comedian, has cancelled a planned trip to the US after receiving legal advice that she could be stopped at the border due to her previous jokes about the Trump administration. Jokes, it seems, are powerful, and will provoke reactions.

But what exactly it is about jokes that gives them a power beyond their words? We can comment on someone’s appearance, or we could criticise their political position, but these are not remarked or acted on in quite the same way as if these are delivered in the form of a joke. Somehow a joke has more power to create a response than a comment alone, whether positively or negatively.

A joke therefore seems to be more than simply making a sharp point. Looking at the literature on jokes, often from philosophy (perhaps not the wittiest of disciplines) but also from the social sciences, a theme emerges that the power of jokes is due to something that can be quite hard to achieve by others means: a sense of alignment with others. In a world where we often occupy our own individual thoughts, a well delivered joke has the power to allow us to collectively recognise we see and feel the same thing.

Philosopher Ted Cohen makes this point when he argues the pleasure of a joke is the feeling we get that tells us we are not alone in our thoughts, but instead we have a shared understanding of the world with others. The fact tat we are all laughing at the same thing, allows us to know what is in their mind, when at other times we are having to guess. This, combined with the way that jokes allow us to challenge existing norms and set new boundaries, suggests that they may in fact be a human characteristic that is instrumental to changing behaviour.

Which brings this directly into the sphere of behavioural science: we start with this point, the theory of mind and its importance for landing a joke.

The joke as theory of mind

To laugh at a joke, we need to understand more than just the words: we need to understand the speaker’s intention. This is where the psychological explanation of Theory of Mind (ToM) helps us, as we need to understand what is going on in another person’s mind. For example, perhaps you notice a colleague near your desk, glancing at you but not saying anything. You infer they might want to talk but don’t want to interrupt you. You pause your task and say, “Everything okay?” This simple act relies on ToM: you attribute to them a desire to speak, a belief that interrupting might be rude, and an intention to get your attention subtly. Without ToM, you'd see only the outward behaviour, not the social signal that flags an internal intention.

The same mechanism is present when we laugh at a joke, it is not only because it may be somehow intrinsically amusing but because we recognise the speaker has observed something that is also in our minds. This creates a moment of mutual recognition when the joke ‘lands,’ giving us the realisation that the other person sees the world in the same way, even if only for a brief moment'.

As Cohen argues, to ‘get’ a joke is to prove oneself a kindred mind. It is this which means the emotional satisfaction derived from a joke goes beyond surface amusement, and starts to answer why jokes can be powerful social tools. They offer us a mirror to see how much we truly align with others. When a joke resonates with a group, it signals not just our understanding but our belonging and social cohesion. As Cohen says:

“When we laugh at the same thing, that is a very special occasion… It is the satisfaction of a deep human longing, the realization of a desperate hope. It is the hope that we are enough like one another to sense one another, to be able to live together.”

It seems ToM is then a potent mechanism sitting behind the power of jokes. But this is not the only consideration. Sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that moments of collective effervescence (intense collective emotional experiences) are crucial for maintaining societal cohesion. On this basis jokes are tools of communal engagement, turning private thoughts and experiences into something collective.

Jokes as shared identity

This leads us onto a wider consideration of the way that jokes are inherently social. We typically do not tell jokes to ourselves but also, as social psychologist Rod Martin reports, we laugh more frequently when we are with others than when we are alone (perhaps reading or watching TV.) This is a key difference between jokes and other socially-engaged activities, where communication might be focused on collaboration or information exchange. With jokes, the connection is more immediate and emotional, momentarily placing us on the same mental wavelength as those around us. This creates an alignment based not on facts or goals, but in terms of shared recognition and mutual understanding.

This feels adjacent to the research that psychologist Stephen Reicher conducts on crowds. While the traditional view of crowds is that they are irrational, a place we are can lose our sense of self to the mass, Reicher by contrast argues crowds can amplify what were previously individual thoughts and intentions. This creates a shared sense of purpose and collective identity. In the same way, we laugh together not just because something is witty, but because we recognise that we are experiencing the same reality. Psychologists Philip Sloman and Steven Fernbach also argue that we don’t just share experiences with others – we also know we are sharing them. This awareness of our shared experience alters how we navigate social interactions, creating alignment and mutual recognition. This is exactly what makes laughter so powerful: it’s a collective acknowledgment that we are aligned, not just with the joke, but with each other.

And this starts early, suggesting it is an essential characteristic of humans: research by Elena Hoicka finds that by the age of one, children begin laughing at surprise (like peek-a-boo). By age three, they’re already playing with taboo, deploying 'naughty' words for effect. This supports the idea that humour is a core part of how we learn to navigate norms: how to follow them, how to test them, and how to connect through as we subvert them.

We are starting to see the way that jokes are more than mechanisms for social alignment but a mechanism for navigating the way we live together.

Jokes as confession

This is a topic explored in a paper titled ‘Nymph piss and gravy orgies’ by Cynthia Siew, Tomas Engelthaler, and Thomas Hills exploring the concept of ‘expectation violation’. They asked participants in their study which combination of word pairs was most funny. Incongruent pairings such as ‘gangster pasta’, was rated as funnier than more conventional options like ‘insult nickname’ indicating that challenges to our intuitive cognitive patterns can create the surprise and pleasure that makes us laugh.

This ties into a broader notion that jokes do not simply offer a clever perspective on a topic; instead, they actively invite us to align with new, often subversive ways of interpreting the world. By defying cultural norms and expectations, jokes can, for a moment, shake up our habitual ways of thinking, creating a realisation that both parties are engaging in a small act of cognitive rebellion together.

The success of this subversion is seen in shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry David often plays with social conventions. In one notable scene, David’s character disrupts the seemingly innocuous act of saying ‘thank you’ by questioning its use in social interactions. The humour comes from the recognition that while ‘thank you’ is a socially ingrained practice, its necessity or meaning is often taken for granted. By disrupting this small ritual, David’s character creates a collective, albeit uncomfortable, moment of realisation about how absurd and arbitrary some of our interactions can be.

In the same spirit of exposing the inner lives that guide us, philosopher Simon Critchley argues that humour is a form of ‘communal confession’. Much like religious confession, where individuals admit their sins, jokes function as a collective truth-telling, exposing uncomfortable truths, revealing what we’ve collectively hidden or ignored. And just as religious confession is designed to cleanse and absolve, jokes offer a momentary release from the tension of societal expectations. They strip away the weight of social conformity whilst allowing us to confront uncomfortable truths together. Through this collective ‘confession,’ we gain the freedom to laugh at what we once could not face.

Extending this, anthropologist Mary Douglas argues that societies create boundaries between the sacred and the profane, and that jokes can be a way of ‘boundary-breaking,’ enabling people to challenge the limits of what is culturally acceptable. This means that what is deemed taboo can often be explored or violated through jokes, allowing us to reveal and explore uncomfortable truths about society in a way that is often less confrontational than direct critique.

As writer and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips puts it, jokes are ‘contraband’, delivering pleasure around what is socially unacceptable. “Wherever in the system you can be amused,” Phillips writes, “you’ve touched something that cannot be discussed.” We see this reflected in the carnival season in Germany which has a long tradition of mocking figures of power and authority, sparking heated debate about what is and is not acceptable humour.

Pushing the boundaries of what we consider to be socially acceptable is a key part of joking: what we can talk about, when we can talk about them (too soon) and how we talk about them. Of course, jokes are not the preserve of the progressive, they can also be used by dominant members of society to exert their authority.

Jokes as weapons

Theodor Adorno famously said, “He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof,” meaning that jokes can shut down dialogue whilst simultaneously allowing for a critique to occur under the guise of harmless amusement.

Take, for instance, the infamous example of Donald Trump mocking a reporter with diaabilities during the 2016 presidential campaign. His joke was used to reinforce harmful power dynamics, mocking those at the margins to solidify one's own position without fear of immediate consequence. This is not unlike the Roman Emperor Augustus who used public humour, including satire and mockery, to consolidate his power and discredit rivals. Humour was used to pacify the population, ensuring that dissatisfaction with the empire was suppressed.

On the other hand, humour can also be wielded to good effect by progressive groups to challenge dominant ideologies. For instance, the TV show Fleabag challenges gender norms by satirising the expectations placed on women. The protagonist, Fleabag, constantly questions whether she is a ‘good feminist’ and regularly challenges conventional ideas about femininity. In one episode, Fleabag and her sister attend a feminist lecture titled ‘Women Speak: Opening Women’s Mouths since 1988,’ only to later participate in a retreat where women are expected to remain silent. Here, the humour doesn’t just ridicule; it creates an opportunity for reflection and transformation of what it means to conform to, or reject, societal norms.

However, for jokes to land there is a tricky balance between challenge and safety, as Catherine Jansson-Boyd notes. Humour that pushes the boundaries too far may alienate the audience, while humour that doesn’t go far enough may fail to generate the necessary reflection. The power of a well-timed joke lies in its ability to provide just enough challenge to force a new way of thinking, while also creating a shared understanding among those who ‘get it.’

If done thoughtfully however, it seems that jokes are not just a tool for amusement but can disrupt, offering new ways of being and seeing that might otherwise be silenced by conventional discourse. Which means that surely, they can be tools for reimagining the world

Jokes as acts of subversive imagination

Psychologists Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie explore the topic of imagination and suggest it is it is deeply social. Our ability to imagine alternative futures is shaped by the cultural tools around us: stories, rituals, and, of course, jokes. In this way, jokes offer us a chance to practice thinking about how the world might be outside of the dominant frames that shape our worldviews. And Critchley underscores this when he argues that humour’s true power lies in de-familiarising the world, breaking the illusion that things must always be the way they are.

We can see this play out through the work of Mark and Paul Engler who document how humour played pivotal roles in transformative movements. For example, they describe how the Serbian resistance group Otpor used hundreds of small, humorous actions to undermine the Milosevic regime. One memorable act involved activists in a small town staging a birthday party for Milosevic, presenting him with handcuffs and a one-way ticket to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague. This made people laugh, but more importantly, it made change feel imaginable.

And there is a long history of humorous messaging in environmental protests: Extinction Rebellion, the direct-action movement used stunts involving nudity, fake blood and people literally sticking their heads in the sand to draw public attention to the climate crisis.

In oppressive regimes, jokes often become a currency of coded resistance. In East Germany under the Stasi, political jokes were passed secretly, not just to mock those in power, but to test trust. If someone laughed, it meant they were safe. These jokes weren’t mere entertainment—they were tools of social calibration. Laughing together in this context was an act of courage. It signalled dissent, but also alignment.

Jokes then, can offer a counter-narrative to mainstream ideologies or state-sponsored narratives. On this basis they may serve as resistance even before the political system realises it is under attack.

Jokes and behaviour change

For those involved in encouraging behaviour change whether in the public of private sector jokes, and humour in general, seem to be an important device. And this is something that people seem to be open to – indeed, research by Ipsos found that 80% of the US population indicate they would see a brand in a more positive light if they partnered with their favourite comedic content producer. In commercial advertising, humour has been shown to attract attention, promote the memory of and positive attitudes towards an advertisement or brand, and encourage positive affect and purchase intent. Humour has also been used by social marketers to tackle public safety issues such as road and rail safety.

So what is it about humour that is helpful for behaviour change? Subversive power seems to be central, particularly in health promotion, where humour is often used to introduce new ways of thinking about health behaviours. It can normalise discussions about previously taboo topics such as sexual health or substance use. For instance, using humour in a mental health intervention led to an increase in help-seeking behaviour, suggesting that humour can provide a safe space to imagine new possibilities for action and change.

Conclusions

Perhaps we should take jokes more seriously, not just for the truths they reveal, but for the way they disrupt, reframe, and expose we had already collectively suspected. They aren’t mere outlets or observations; they are acts of “epistemic mischief” as Cohen called them. They not only help with sense-making but bring us along collectively to challenge existing norms and encouraging new behaviours.

Philosopher Peter Rickman notes that jokes function as "meta-activities"—second-level reflections on how we live, speak, and think. They operate through estrangement: short-circuiting ‘common sense’, bringing a critical eye to the ordinary, and destabilising our usual ways of meaning-making. This is why laughter can be so destabilising, because it is a recognition of something real that has been hiding in plain sight.

And as we have seen, our laughter at a joke lets us know we were part of something larger all along, suggesting that jokes, far from simply being witty releases, can in fact be harbingers of change.