Can a noisy venue be bad for comedy?

People hear jokes live and pre-recorded in a variety of settings, from comedy clubs, bars, outdoor venues, cafes, to their own home or car. While a lot of research has analyzed the significance of the content of jokes, we know less about the significance of the setting one hears them in. Some settings can have interfering background noise or poor acoustics, reducing an audience's ease of processing heard jokes. Would this affect how funny the jokes seem? Two experiments with audio clips of stand-up comedy performances show that participants found jokes less funny when background noise interfered with their listening.

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Publication Details

Journal
PLoS ONE
Published
2025-09-19
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0332911
Primary Topic
Aesthetic Perception and Analysis
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Can a noisy venue be bad for comedy?

Drew Gorenz, Norbert Schwarz
PLoS ONE
Aesthetic Perception and Analysis
article

Can a noisy venue be bad for comedy?

Drew Gorenz, Norbert Schwarz
article en

Abstract

People hear jokes live and pre-recorded in a variety of settings, from comedy clubs, bars, outdoor venues, cafes, to their own home or car. While a lot of research has analyzed the significance of the content of jokes, we know less about the significance of the setting one hears them in. Some settings can have interfering background noise or poor acoustics, reducing an audience's ease of processing heard jokes. Would this affect how funny the jokes seem? Two experiments with audio clips of stand-up comedy performances show that participants found jokes less funny when background noise interfered with their listening.

PLoS ONEVol. 20(9)
University of Southern California (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 75%
Aesthetic Perception and Analysis
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