Most people can recall a moment when their father tried to be funny and failed badly. (Picture a joke like this: Two guys walk into a bar. The other ducks.) Dad jokes are loosely defined as plays on words or corny one-liners delivered to offspring, often greeted with a chorus of groans.

But is there something in dads’ biology that makes them slip into cheesy comedy once they have children? Robert Pierce is a professor at the University Counseling Center at the University of Rochester in New York and a psychologist in private...