Why is it that, even when you’ve heard and memorized hundreds of them, you can’t think of a Joke when asked to tell one?

Question

Virtually every other kind of knowledge is often much more easily recalled when asked about, why not jokes?

In: Biology

Answer 1

There are two overarching types of memory: recall and recognition.

Many things are never encoded into recall memory, that’s typically reserved for super important things. Most things go into recognition, especially if only seen once or twice way in the past.

So, when you try to think of a joke, you can RECALL the basic premise maybe but not the actual structure. That said, if someone then told it to you, you would RECOGNIZE the joke as one you’ve heard before.

Memory is way more complex than this, such as how cascading can cause recall in something that you previously only recognized, but that’s the basic idea.

EDIT: a word