According to a study by the University of California, San Diego Division of Social Sciences, men are a teensy bit funnier than women are--but mostly only to to other men.
The stereotype
Men have long been defended as the funnier sex; a sense of humor attracts women (just ask women) and the thinking was that an inherent funniness was a biological adaptation akin to a peacock's tail or an elaborate preening ritual in animals come mating season. Christopher Hitchens argued this point in his 2007 Vanity Fair article, "Why Women Aren't Funny." In his words, men "had damn well better be" funnier. "Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men," he says with an unhumorous textual wink. In response, a 2008 article titled "Who Says Women Aren't Funny?" contends that women are in fact quite funny, and that women--especially on television--are more responsible for their own writing than before. It makes no mention of women in typical social situations, however, which is precisely where Hitchens claims men excel.
The study: Round 1
The U of C study set out to determine whether this social bias (backed up by the results of the Stanford University School of Medicine study referenced in the Vanity Fair article) is legitimate, or if we're thinking about this humor thing in the right way.
This was the level-playing-field portion of the show--without the pressure of social interaction, men and women could access the full depth of their humor, rewrite if necessary, and the resulting captions could be presented to test subjects without indicating the sex of their author. To test men against women, a cartoon was diplayed with one caption written by a man and the other by a woman, then subjects chose the funnier of the two.
Looks like the guys are preening for each other. Biology can't explain that!
The study: Round 2
Are men's jokes more memorable than women's, and can the author of a funny caption be correctly perceived as male or female given the humorousness of its contents? Enter the memory bias portion of the program:
So men do win in the analytic breakdown of perceived humor and the ability to be funny on command... but only very barely, and by margins "so small that they can't account for the strength of the belief in the stereotype," according to Laura Mickes, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology.
Well?
Well. The conclusion seems to be that there is no conclusion. By and large, men may be funnier than women, and women may be funnier than men, but there's no way to standardize humor in a real-life scenario (or, at least, not one which has been studied). So we'll leave the question to you:
As a whole, do you think men really are funnier than women?
Sources:
The stereotype
Men have long been defended as the funnier sex; a sense of humor attracts women (just ask women) and the thinking was that an inherent funniness was a biological adaptation akin to a peacock's tail or an elaborate preening ritual in animals come mating season. Christopher Hitchens argued this point in his 2007 Vanity Fair article, "Why Women Aren't Funny." In his words, men "had damn well better be" funnier. "Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men," he says with an unhumorous textual wink. In response, a 2008 article titled "Who Says Women Aren't Funny?" contends that women are in fact quite funny, and that women--especially on television--are more responsible for their own writing than before. It makes no mention of women in typical social situations, however, which is precisely where Hitchens claims men excel.
The study: Round 1
The U of C study set out to determine whether this social bias (backed up by the results of the Stanford University School of Medicine study referenced in the Vanity Fair article) is legitimate, or if we're thinking about this humor thing in the right way.
The study team ran two separate but related experiments. The first experiment had 16 undergraduate males and 16 undergraduate females writing captions alone in a quiet room for 20 New Yorker cartoons in 45 minutes, for a total of 640 captions. All were instructed to be as funny as they could be.
This was the level-playing-field portion of the show--without the pressure of social interaction, men and women could access the full depth of their humor, rewrite if necessary, and the resulting captions could be presented to test subjects without indicating the sex of their author. To test men against women, a cartoon was diplayed with one caption written by a man and the other by a woman, then subjects chose the funnier of the two.
The number of rounds, from zero to five, that captions survived before being knocked out determined the writers' average scores.
True to the conventional wisdom, men did better than women, but not by much: Male writers earned an average 0.11 more points than female writers. But what's even more interesting, the researchers say, and what runs contrary to the standard explanations of why men might be funnier, is that men did better with other men: Female raters allocated only an average 0.06 more points to the male writers, while the male raters gave them a significantly higher average of 0.16 more points.
Looks like the guys are preening for each other. Biology can't explain that!
The study: Round 2
Are men's jokes more memorable than women's, and can the author of a funny caption be correctly perceived as male or female given the humorousness of its contents? Enter the memory bias portion of the program:
In a second, related experiment, the researchers tested memory and memory bias to see if men are credited with being funnier than they really are.
As expected, funny captions were remembered better than unfunny ones. The authors of funny captions were remembered better too. But humor was more often misremembered "as having sprung from men's minds," the researchers write. And, even more telling, Mickes said, when the study participants were guessing at authors' gender, unfunny captions were more often misattributed to women and funny captions were more often misattributed to men.
So men do win in the analytic breakdown of perceived humor and the ability to be funny on command... but only very barely, and by margins "so small that they can't account for the strength of the belief in the stereotype," according to Laura Mickes, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology.
Well?
Well. The conclusion seems to be that there is no conclusion. By and large, men may be funnier than women, and women may be funnier than men, but there's no way to standardize humor in a real-life scenario (or, at least, not one which has been studied). So we'll leave the question to you:
As a whole, do you think men really are funnier than women?
Sources:
- Men Win Humor Test (by a Hair)
- Why Women Aren't Funny
- Who Says Women Aren't Funny?
"Looks like the guys are preening for each other. Biology can’t explain that!" isn't true- the theory would say that the guys are trying to be funny to get status, and that other guys thinking you are funny confers status, and that the girls find guys with status attractive. Again, who knows if it is true.... but this experiment does fit in well with an evo-psych interpretation.
Side note: as far as Dating is concerned, the type that is most successful for getting women into relationships is teasing, playful, smartass stuff.
-Or as David DeAngelo calls it, "Cocky-Funny". (+++ the balance has to be about 50/50)
Goofy-funny is good for standup and Cracked.com, but doesn't do as well with the ladies. -Even Chris Rock said ~almost as much.
Eddie Murphy circa 1984
George Carlin
Richard Pryor
Your move ladies. Lucy? Fair enough.
I don't think evolutionary psychology is the best tool for explaining these things. Because evolutionary psychology in some way assumes that a trait would not exist if it was not evolutionarily adaptive. The brain of human beings changes throughout life, it adapts at much smaller time-scales than genes do. Evolutionary psychology also assumes we have no other mode than selfish. While I would tend to agree that we are selfish, I don't think it is all we are capable of.
Is humor a selfish act? In some cases it seems so. Humor is often used as a defense mechanism to avoid internalizing criticism. Other times it is used to elevate oneself, by laughing at an inferior. Perhaps our favourite thing to laugh at is human stupidity. There is a modicum (or more) of pride involved in such humor.
The subject of a person's joke often depends on them. That is, humor is subjective. It depends, like Saskia suggests on one's own experiences, sense of self, identities and so forth. We will tend to find more humor in domains that we ourselves excel at, because it is easy for us to look-down at situations within those domains.
As a child we find jokes like this funny: Q: What do you get when you cross a blizzard with a witch? A: A cold spell.
This kind of joke loses its humor as we age, the subject matter shifts to domains we derive our adult identity from (Sex, work, family, etc..)
One of my cousins posts a lot of sexist humor to her facebook wall. Pretty much all of it depicts men as useless invalids and I'm much more disturbed than provoked to laughter. She finds it funny because it strokes her ego.
A: That's not funny.
I think men have a stronger inclination towards humour, and tend to look for humour at times that many women would find inappropriate or uncomfortable.
Tina Fey doesn't really strike me as a person who is funny on her own. I haven't seen much of her, though.
Geoduck, those are pretty sweeping generalities.
I don't think one gender is funnier than another (and want to acknowledge here that there are more than two). I don't think comedians are the best gauge. It appears to me that comedy work is much more difficult for women to access for a variety of reasons. There are many women who would be great comics who don't have the opportunity to do so. I don't find stereotypical gender humor funny myself.