First look at the data, then look at the words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Via interlibrary loan, I recently got a 2024 book by Hasan Merali titled Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas and subtitled Secrets from the Science of Toddlers for a Happier, More Successful way of Life. On page 58 he intriguingly says:

 

“One of the sad parts of getting older is that we all go over what has been termed the ‘humor cliff.’ A 2013 Gallup study of 1.4 million people in 163 different countries showed that the amount we smile and laugh starts to fall dramatically at age twenty-three. It does start to rise again but not until age eighty, and it never reaches the peak we started at.” Ref. 4, 5

 

Reference 5 is an August 2021 TED talk by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas: Why Great Leaders Take Humor Seriously | TED. They discuss the global humor cliff:

 

“Here’s the problem though. We’ve all fallen off a humor cliff. In a global study, over a million people were asked a simple question – did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? When we’re kids the answer is yes. Then, right when we enter the work force, the answer becomes no. The good news is things look up again around 80. The bad news is the average life expectancy is 78.”

 

And they have a graph at the one-minute mark, which I have shown above with annotations. But their words and their graph disagree. A transition between yes and no logically would occur at 50% (my dashed red line at the bottom), but their blue line always is above 60%. If the transition was at 75%, then their statement would make sense. Instead, when we enter the work force the slope decreases. This problem should have been caught in the first rehearsal where the graphic was used.

 

That TED talk was preceded by a 2021 book by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas titled Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon at Work and in Life. Their discussion of The Humor Cliff on page 22 has a two-and-a-half-inch tall line drawing just like the TED talk and above it says:

 

“The collective loss of our sense of humor is a serious problem afflicting people and organizations globally. We’re all going over the humor cliff together, tumbling down into the abyss of solemnity below.

 

At the bottom of that abyss, we’re joined by the majority of 1.4 million survey respondents in 166 countries who revealed in this Gallup poll that the frequency with which we laugh or smile each day starts to plummet around age 23.”

 

That discrepancy also should have been caught during proofreading of the book.

 

There is an article by Reed Tucker at the New York Post on March 13, 2021 titled We start losing our sense of humor at age 23 – and it could wreck your career. It has a graphic with a detailed caption saying:

 

“THE HUMOR CLIFF

Studies show that people laugh freely and openly when young, but less so as they age, starting around 23. The laughter tends to return, however in the twilight year – perhaps as we work less and spend more time with loved ones.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My annotated version of the graphic is shown above. The article title accepts the age 23 claim from the book without looking at what the data in the graph reveals. We really start losing our sense of humor at age 13. It drops from 83.4 percent at age 13 to 73.6% at age 25 - at a rate of 0.82% per year. Then from age 25 to 50 it drops more slowly at a rate of 0.22% per year to 68.1% at age 50. There also is a small peak of 68.6% at age 58. It drops at 0.3% per year from age 58 to age 83 The minimum is 61% at age 83, and then it rises again to 72% at age 100.

 

A Toastmasters International web page about Visual Aids and Props warns us that:

 

“Diagrams, graphs and charts should always coincide with what is being said in the speech.” 

 

We should first look at the data, and then look at the words to see that they match.