It was too loud at the café for a Tuesday morning, but everyone was acting like they were adults and had their heads buried in their laptops. A guy at the next table was quietly snorting and scrolling through his phone. Then he laughed so hard that half of the room looked up. He turned his screen to his friend and said, “Sorry, this joke is so dumb, but my brain loves it.”
You know what I mean. Your face stays blank for nine jokes in a row, but when one strange punchline hits, your mind lights up like a pinball machine.
The weird thing is that some psychologists are using some of those jokes as a sort of unofficial IQ test.
Why some jokes are really tests of how quickly your brain connects dots
When was the last time you laughed at a joke that no one else got?
You felt a little strange for a second, then a little proud. You got the reference, understood the double meaning, or saw the hidden logical twist before anyone else. Researchers say that intelligence and humour start to overlap in the speed of decoding.
The kind of joke that seems boring at first is a good example.
“I told my computer I needed a break, and now it won’t stop sending me KitKats.” It’s not just a joke. In less than a second, your brain has to switch between “taking a break from work” and “chocolate bar called KitKat.” That little mental leap, done hundreds of times a day, is what tells you how well you deal with complicated things in general.
Researchers who study humour have found that people who score higher on verbal or abstract reasoning tests tend to enjoy this kind of mental gymnastics.
They probably like irony, wordplay, dark humour, or jokes that sound like they’re serious but then turn out to be funny. It’s not true that “smart people laugh more.” It’s that they stick with the joke long enough to find the hidden layer instead of giving up when they don’t get it right away. And on paper, that patience and curiosity look a lot like raw brainpower.
Give these “IQ-coded” jokes a try on yourself and your friends.
Want to test your brain without doing any maths?
Here’s the game: read the joke, stop for a second, and pay attention to what your mind does. Not if you burst out laughing, but if you feel that little “oh, I see what you did there” inside.
1. “I’m reading a book about how to fight gravity.” You can’t stop reading it.
2. “I told my therapist that I was obsessed with getting back at people. We’ll see about that.”
3. “The future, the present, and the past all went to a pub. Things got a little tense.
If your brain quickly figures out the double meaning, you’re using the same mental shortcuts that IQ tests love.
Now see what happens when you tell these jokes to people you know.
One friend will laugh out loud at the “tensed” pub joke because they automatically think about grammar. Another person will look at you blankly until you explain it, and then they’ll say, “Ohhh, okay, that’s smart.” A third person might laugh late, almost against their will, as if their brain finally caught up.
The funny thing is that the timing often says more than the laughter. Being able to quickly understand layered or self-referential jokes is more likely to be linked to mental flexibility than to personality or level of education.
In terms of how our brains work, each of these jokes is like a short workout. Your mind needs to:
find the confusion, keep two meanings in mind, and then find a way to ease the tension that everyone can agree on.
The three steps of that dance—confusion, reinterpretation, and clarity—are also used in logic puzzles, coding problems, and creative brainstorming. Let’s be real: no one does this on purpose every single day. But people who naturally like these “thinking jokes” are basically giving their brains free training every day without even knowing it.
How to adjust your sense of humour like a mental radar
To improve this type of intelligence, start by changing the way you listen to jokes.
Don’t just wait for the punchline; look for the point in the sentence where it could go in two different directions. Your brain can either coast or perk up and think, “Okay, where’s the twist going to break reality?” when someone says, “So a physicist, a biologist, and a mathematician walk into a pub…” That quiet, eager curiosity is like putting your brain in sport mode instead of cruise control.
It’s easy to judge yourself too quickly.
You hear a funny joke, but you don’t get it right away. Your inner critic says, “I guess I’m not that smart.” That voice isn’t telling the truth. A lot of smart people get nervous about telling jokes because they feel like they have to perform. The best way to get your “high-IQ humour” going is to let yourself replay the line, look at a word, or even say, “Wait, explain that?” without feeling bad. Every time, curiosity wins over instant genius.
A common saying in psychology is, “Humour is the brain’s way of rewarding itself for solving a tiny puzzle.” “You miss half of your own intelligence if you never let yourself sit with the puzzle.”
Be aware of when a joke has two meanings. Stop on the key word.
Take a few seconds before saying, “I don’t get it.” Give the idea some space.
If you don’t get the jokes, ask a friend to explain them to you and then go back over them in your head.
Collect jokes that make you think as well as laugh, and read them again from time to time.
Use these jokes to break the ice and see who lights up. It shows hidden minds.
What your laughter really says about your mind and the people around you
In the end, no joke is a real IQ test, and no punchline can tell you how smart you are.
But the jokes that make you laugh or at least smile say a lot about how your mind works with reality. If you like word games, hidden meanings, and jokes that stick in your head for hours, your brain probably likes complexity more than you think. And if you’re the one explaining the joke to everyone else and secretly enjoying the wait, you’ve probably felt that way for a long time.
The real magic happens when you meet people who laugh like you do.
The coworker who gets the grammar joke. The friend who sees the contradiction before you finish your sentence. The partner who sends you a meme that only makes sense if you remember something small from last week. Those little laughs you share make up a kind of secret language. They don’t just hint at IQ; they show how compatible, complicit, and similar two people are in how they think about the world.
So the next time you see a joke in your feed that says, “If you get this, your IQ is above average,” don’t take it as a judgement; instead, think of it as a mirror.
Use it to see how your brain works, how quickly it changes meanings, and how easily it accepts the strange. You might find out that what you thought was “weird humour” is really a sign of mental sharpness. Or you’ll find out that the people who laugh at the same sick jokes as you are your people. Those little bursts of laughter you share with others are telling you something, not just about how smart you are, but also about how your mind chooses to connect.
| Key point | Detail | Value for the reader |
|---|---|---|
| Jokes as micro IQ tests | Complex or layered jokes require fast mental connections and abstract thinking | Helps you see your laughter as a clue to how your brain processes information |
| Timing over volume | The speed of understanding often reveals more than how hard you laugh | Lets you self-observe your cognitive agility without formal testing |
| Humor as social radar | People who laugh at the same subtle jokes often think in similar ways | Gives you a simple tool to spot intellectual and emotional compatibility |
