How Progressive Hijacked My Brain

Everyone fears that someday they will.... inevitably turn into their parents. As a 28-year-old, I catch myself acting out some of these "parental oddities" we all cringe at, and honestly, I am fearful for what's to come. 

The progressive commercial below tackles this exact phenomenon.... how to know when you are turning into your parents?

I think this ad is genius because, as it turns out.... my parents aren't the only ones who do these embarrassing things; it seems to plague parents worldwide!

We can all agree that this commercial is supposed to be funny, which is my favorite way to be sold something.  Now there are a lot of areas in the brain to help us experience the true joy of this commercial, so break the joke down to the point where it might not even be funny anymore.....

The frontal lobe is the first defense against bad jokes. It helps us process what we hear and determine if it is funny before sending the information to other parts of the nervous system. The left hemisphere analyzes the structure and words of the jokes in question, while the right side determines whether or not we "get it" (we all know how tragic it is when this part fails us). 

But jokes aren't all about auditory cues; there are some very funny mimes out there who have made a whole career on physical humor... This is where the occipital lobe comes in. The occipital lobe is where we determine if the visual information we see in the commercial is indeed funny, including body language, props, and maybe even some outfits. 

After these two regions have done their filtering, the motor cortex comes into play, allowing us to express our delight in these hilarious jokes by laughing, smiling, or annoyingly slapping our knee lots of times (I still don't get why this is our way of expressing humor.... but that research is for another time) 

These are amazing, but they are missing the heart of why these commercials are so funny. The words in and of themselves are sort of funny, "blue hair!" and the body language has some real moments (they just really nail the whole dad stance in the hardware store) but the real reason this commercial is so creative is that we all know a version of these characters. We REMEMBER our parents or grandparents doing something scarily similar to embarrass us! The connection to our own memories and emotions is a vital piece of this puzzle, thanks to the limbic system! 

Now here's where Progressive is really on to something; remember, they aren't making commercials to lighten up our true-crime series binging; they are trying to get you to remember them and therefore buy something from them. 

So we already covered that the limbic system and hippocampus specifically help us recall past experiences. This helps us better connect with a joke; it also just so happens to be the central reward system in our brains. Humor has been shown to activate and increase dopamine release as a reward, which also has been shown to improve longer-term retention. 
So basically... Progressive has bamboozled our brains into remembering them by hijacking our verbal processing, visual processing, motor areas,  reward pathways, and memories. And the truth is, we never stood a chance; Progressive hooked us without us even knowing, and the worse part is I am truly happy about it (darn dopamine)!

References:

Christing, A. (2021, September 15). What part of the brain processes humor? Clean Comedians ®. Retrieved May 31, 2022, from https://cleancomedians.com/what-part-of-the-brain-processes-humor/ 

Henderson, S. (2015, March 31). Laughter and learning: Humor boosts retention. Edutopia. Retrieved May 31, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/laughter-learning-humor-boosts-retention-sarah-henderson