Men must be funny or at least amusing to a woman to get laid.
Women only need to have a vagina.
So you're not a "10" in every which way. But you're probably pretty spectacular in some way, and definitely good enough in most areas of life. If ever there were a time to stop beating yourself up for being human, it is now.
Verified by Psychology Today
Think about someone you know who has a great sense of humor. Are you thinking of a man or a woman? Most people, when asked this question, imagine a man. There is a prevalent stereotype that men are funnier than women. This stereotype is shared by both men and women—but of course, just because it exists does not mean it is true.
A new study I conducted with Paul Silvia and Emily Nusbaum from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro put the stereotype to the test. We systematically reviewed all available studies that looked at sex differences in humor ability, and using the statistical tool called meta-analysis, we calculated the difference. Before I reveal the results, let me explain what we did.
Humor is a complex phenomenon that involves social, emotional, physiological, cognitive, cultural and evolutionary influences, to name a few. One important aspect is the ability to make others laugh. Humor production ability is a distinct cognitive ability that is largely uncorrelated with appreciation and enjoyment of humor. When looking at who is the funnier sex, we focus then on humor production ability.
To do so, we conducted a systematic review known as meta-analysis, a method in which researchers collect all available data on a given topic that meets certain criteria defined by the researchers. In our case, we only included studies that objectively evaluated humor ability. We excluded studies where people evaluated their own humor ability, as most people believe they have an above-average sense of humor. We also did not include studies where the sex of the person was known to the evaluator. For example, the sex of a teacher may have an effect on how funny he or she is perceived.
We focused then on studies where men's and women's humor ability was evaluated objectively. What does this mean? In a typical study that met our inclusion criteria, subjects were introduced with a stimulus, often a cartoon without a caption. Then the subjects were asked to write a funny caption. Later, independent judges rated the responses for funniness on a scale (e.g., 1-5). The key for such tasks is that the raters do not know anything about the humor producers, including their sex. Such comparisons are more reliable and valid, and raised our confidence that we are measuring true humor ability with little stereotypical influence.
We were able to find 28 studies with 36 independent samples that met our criteria. The combined sample included 5,057 participants (67 percent women). Studies were from various countries (U.S., U.K., Hungary, Germany, Israel and more). Most of the data (60 percent) came from data that was never published before in a peer-reviewed journal, which helps to minimize the effect of publication bias.
We then calculated sex differences on the combined sample and found that men were, overall, rated as funnier than women. How big was the difference? In statistical technical terms, the effect size was 0.32, or roughly one-third of the standard deviation. In plain English, this means that 63 percent of men score above the mean humor ability of women. This is considered a small to medium difference.
We also looked for a long list of possible confounding variables that might explain the difference. The countries where the data come from, the sex of the authors doing the research, age of participants, whether there were more men or women judging the humor—none of it made a difference in our analysis.
What does it all mean? It means that to the best of our knowledge, on average, men appear to have higher humor production ability than women. Note that I emphasized the word average because the study does not mean, as Christopher Hitchens famously proclaimed, that women are not funny. The fact that men, on average, appear to be funnier than women, does not imply that every single man is funnier than every single woman. There are many great female comedians such as Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Ali Wong and historically, Lucille Ball, Joan Rivers, and many, many more. All these great comedians are funnier than 99.9 percent of all men.
Why would men have higher humor ability than women on average? It is possible that the view that women are less funny is so pervasive that societal forces discourage girls and women from developing and expressing their humor, making a woman less likely to be perceived as funny. There is, however, minimal evidence to support the view that our society suppresses women from producing and exhibiting humor.
On the other hand, the evidence does suggest that humor plays a major role in mating, with a strong evolutionary basis. As I have explained in previous posts, women, who undertake the heavier costs of reproduction (pregnancy, breastfeeding) are choosier than men when selecting a mate. Women tend to look for various signal indicators of mate quality, and a great sense of humor is one of them. Humor is strongly correlated with intelligence, which explains why women value men with a great sense of humor, as intelligence was crucial for survival throughout our evolutionary history when we mostly lived in hunter-gatherer groups.
Men, on the other hand, prefer women who laugh at their humor. That means that over our evolutionary history, men likely had to compete harder with other men to impress women with their sense of humor. Plenty of evidence supports this view, showing how important it is for women to find a man with a great sense of humor, while men generally do not place a high value on women's humor production ability.
Regardless of the source of the difference, which is still open for debate, our analysis provides the first comprehensive and systematic review of sex differences in humor ability. Hopefully, more research will follow.
Facebook image: byswat/Shutterstock
Men must be funny or at least amusing to a woman to get laid.
Women only need to have a vagina.
That's way exaggerated. You know better
Oh no, it was spot on. Sometimes short and brutal is the kindest of truths.
You're assuming men and women are different when gender is in fact a spectrum! Imagine assuming in 2019. Me and my other SJW friends will boycott this site indefinitely until an apology is made!
This thread seems to be an argument about whether you agree with the worldview of the comedian. Saying that Amy Schumer is not funny because you disagree with her point of view is pretty lame. She is so obviously funny, even if you don't like her act.
I'll concede that Andrew Dice Clay was very funny back in his heyday. I would never pay to see his show, but his humor was good. The same goes for guys like Dennis Miller. He was very funny before he decided to become a mouthpiece for Fox News. If Clay or Miller ever show-up on my TV screen now I'm reaching for the remote.
I've you haven't watched Bridgesmaids and you think women aren't funny the problem might be the shows you're choosing to watch. Bridesmaids if a prefect example of women being very funny. It was written by Kristen Wiig and all of the main cast were very funny women. The film was nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Melissa McCarthy and Best Original Screenplay for Wiig.
If you do watch it be sure to watch the stuff that was edited out at the end while the credits roll. Melissa McCarthy is hilarious.
If an effect is 0.32 of the standard deviation, then the t-statistic is 0.32, and, if you are computing sample averages and testing the null hypothesis that the true difference is zero... then it is not rejected! You can test the hypothesis that the effect size is −0.1, and it will still not be rejected. Even in economics, they say that the effect with a t-statistic less than 1.64 (10% significance level) is deemed insignificant. In order to make a conclusion, how about using a robust Mann—Whitney statistic in order to get a clean interpretation?
because what you say is untrue. If people are interested in the stats behind meta-analysis I suggest reading about it,
P.S. I removed a comment that used cursing. People are free to be wrong in their comments but please, keep your comments civil.
This article is clearly biased into suggesting that all women are in fact funny. This is false. Some women are funny yes, but currently they aren't funnier than men. Imagine suggesting Sarah Silverman is funnier than 99% of all men. This author is clearly reaching and his PhD was probably forged.
Whose funnier than Sarah Silverman? No one! Except men.
Gil is insecure and is now realizing his Ph.D in psychology is worthless! And literally Ali Wong is just as bad if not worse than Sarah at standup
Did you ever stop and think there's something wrong with you? Look at all of the success Sarah Silverman has had. She's brilliant. She's been at it for 29 years and is still killing it. Maybe it's over your head. She can't be expected to dumb it down to reach the slower people. It would bore her core fans.
Anonymous wrote:Did you ever stop and think there's something wrong with you? Look at all of the success Sarah Silverman has had. She's brilliant. She's been at it for 29 years and is still killing it. Maybe it's over your head. She can't be expected to dumb it down to reach the slower people. It would bore her core fans.
Viciously denigrating people for shock value/attention simply isn't funny and if you can't understand that, then the "slow" person here is you. Once a person gets old enough that jumping up and down while shouting racial slurs just isn't funny anymore, Sarah Silverman stops being funny.
For people whose sense of humor is not based on "punching down" any time they think they can get away with it, this happens somewhere around the age of 3.
No wonder psychology is considered to be the joke of academics. If studies like these are published and accepted then maybe it really is.
There are plenty of female comedians that I used to enjoy a lot, but no longer amuse me much. Ellen DeGeneres, Janeane Garofalo, Chelsea Handler and Paula Poundstone are some names that come to mind. It's not that their skills have changed, it's that their material has a different perspective or maybe I already know their shtick.
The material matters a lot.
Where is the actual results besides the .3 number? This is terrible data reporting and as far as I’m concerned no real statistical analysis was conducted if there is nothing detailing the methods or even the numbers of interest.
Read the article I linked to an have all the stats you want.
Yes I do understand, and I followed the link and nothing was there except the abstract and definitely NOT enough actual results unless the webpage is broken. My own professors demand higher quality than this.
If you go to my personal university website in a week or so you will be able to download the final version of the paper.
You can tell by these comments that the Reddit crowd has shown up.
...further demonstrate women have no sense of humour. Or is that feminists? ;)
My wife thinks I’m hilarious. Every time I get undressed for bed she starts laughing hysterically.
Feminists are not only not funny, but outright scary, Their latest thing is to want to see that "consent modules" are installed in sex robots.
...feminists are defined by their politics not their sex or gender. Look up my guest post on Lee Jussim's Rabble Rouser Psychology Today blog.
Did you control for the sex of the independent judges? I skimmed the article but saw no mention of controlling for the sex of the judges, which would be important considering that men and women (indeed, any groups of people who have considerably different social experiences) find different things humorous.
If you have access to the full article you can see that there is a moderator called male to female judge ratio. It had not effect on the results.
As a psychologist I am disgusted by interpretations of research like this one. I’m glad you’ve done a meta analysis, now you can compile all of the correlational studies into one. Does that mean you suddenly have insight into the cause of a relationship? No. Because it’s. Still. Correlational. This is the kind of research write up that makes people think psychology is a joke, and tbh I don’t blame them. The fact that you brought up a very likely contribution to the relationship (societal norms) and then dismissed it as having “minimal evidence” is silly. Are you saying that many many studies with sound methodology have tested this relationship and found it to be “minimal” or that there have been few to no studies (with sound methodology)? In fact, your very next argument that there is “a strong evolutionary basis” for men being funnier is completely untestable in terms of falsifiability. You cannot separate societal influence on the appreciation of humor from what is considered attractive. In fact there is quite a bit of historical evidence that suggests what is attractive is largely driven by societal norms that are changing-e.g., the shifting appreciation from girthier to thinner bodies within European cultures (and now potentially back to a healthy medium, ala “dad bods”). So your implicit suggestion in your write up that males have been given a greater ABILITY to be funny because of evolution is completely unfounded. Sure, perhaps men are currently considered to be funnier on average than women, that doesn’t mean their base ability is somehow different. Correlation does not imply causation, not without sound methodological backing.
If you read the article you will see a thorough discussion on the possible explanations for such differences, rooted in both evolutionary and social theories. This is just a short summary of the results and stating my views on the possible explanations based on my reading of the literature.
I assume you don't dismiss every correlational analysis as irrelevant. It is evidence that can be incorporated into theories, which we did in the article.
I am not critiquing the article, but the write up of the article. It is our responsibility as scientists to accurately write up our research in ways that reflect the evidence our studies provide. This write up makes claims that are not supported by evidence and mislead readers into thinking that the opinions being stated were founded on scientific evidence - which may be partially true, but I might suggest that partial truths are more harmful that complete falsifications. We live in a time when people read only the headlines of articles, let alone the full articles, forget them taking the time to get past a paywall to read a meta analysis that they likely do not have the training to fully understand. It is our responsibility to represent our research accurately, injected with explicit indications of uncertainty where we implicitly already understand the limitations.
So no, I don’t dismiss all correlational studies, in fact I myself conduct many. But I also am sure that in discussing and writing about those studies that I inject the proper level of skepticism in their interpretation until we have better evidence. So not only are the findings overstated (e.g., innate ability was not tested but is implied as being greater for males), but the correlational foundation of these findings is not acknowledged.
We already have enough trouble with non-psychologists misinterpreting and misrepresenting our research in lay-reporting. It is shameful when we misrepresent our own research with click-bait titles and overstated generalizations.
of the results, doesn't make the write up wrong. The blog post reflect 100% of the actual article and what I think about the topic. I understand that you have a different opinion and this is fine. That's how science works. But you can't expect me to write something I believe is wrong just because you think it's wright. I do think that there is much stronger evidence in support of the evolutionary explanation, and little support to social role theory in regard to humor ability (note, I did not comment on social role theory in general). Nothing is of course 100% set in stone, but I thoroughly covered the evidence in this article and elsewhere. If you have studies showing otherwise, I will be happy to see them.
I think scientists should write what they believe is true and not try to sugarcoat their opinions just so all views will be representative. I am open to other opinions and debate them, but I do find it reprehensible that you call my review horrible and you being disgusted. If you want to encourage lay people to appreciate science, perhaps it's better not call other colleagues names and engage in a civil discussion, especially when you are a guest on this blog.
First off, I don’t believe I ever called you names. I do believe, however, that I have been rightly criticizing the mix of opinion with what is supported by evidence with no distinction between the two. I want readers to see that there are potential problems and for them to think critically and skeptically about what the read because you did not provide that within the write up. I understand that this is considered a blog post, but as a scientist who is discussing their research it is important to distinguish between what is your opinion and other scientists might disagree with and what your study supports. My students are continually confused by research write ups, believing that the study provides conclusive proof that whatever is said is true. And to be honest I don’t blame them when we don’t provide context and limitations explicitly in our explanations. I am writing this publicly because I think transparent scientific writing is crucial to our field. It is 100% fine to have your own opinion on what the findings of your study seem to suggest, but it should be tempered with a statement that it is your opinion that they can be interpreted as such. I agree that we should not sugarcoat our findings or even our opinions on those findings-but we should clearly delineate between the two. Misrepresenting our opinions as facts is, in my opinion, a horrible error that not only might lead a lay person to misunderstand the research, but also undermines what a lay audience believes science to be. So yes, I am greatly disturbed by the way this writeup was presented. I am not at all stating your research is without merit or a great jumping point for further research. I would, however, suggest that you delineate what is your opinion and what research has stated, with limitations to those opinions and the research itself clearly noted. Critical, skeptical, thought is a huge part of what makes a science. It is wonderful that you are sharing your research with the public, which I believe to be our duty as social scientists. I hope you continue to do so, but with greater clarity of what is your belief vs the actual results of research.
Cheers.
I will be happy to see any research supporting your interpretation of the results, but so far I have seen none and i stand by my reading of the literature (and I link to previous discussions on the topic).
Obviously, blog post represent the authors opinions on the topic, and I think readers understand that. I don't think that blog posts should be filled with endless qualifiers as this makes for a terrible reading. Nonetheless, I gave a quite thorough review of the methodological issues in our paper. Yes, post simplify the science but the curious reader and students could read the full article if interested. I think you don't give readers enough credit and most don't take a post as the ultimate truth.
In some, I don't think I misrepresented anything crucial of the state of the science on this topic. You and others might disagree, but so far I didn't see any good evidence against it.
"There is, however, minimal evidence to support the view that our society suppresses women from producing and exhibiting humor." but in the full article state several times that society does not value or even suppresses women's expression of humor. For example, you state, "Specifically, women were prevented from using humor in the public sphere, not allowed to tell jokes and perform comedy routines, and confined to tell jokes only in private, while men were free to exhibit their humor in any form and platform they wished. These expectations, especially if indoctrinated from early ages, may contribute to observed sex differences in HPA."
Again, while I agree that your evidence does suggest that men are judged as producing more humorous content, the cause of that difference is entirely unclear. However, you state in your blog post that "the evidence does suggest that humor plays a major role in mating, with a strong evolutionary basis." Do you have empirical evidence that compares the effect of mating imperative vs societal pressures on the production of humor? From my knowledge of the literature, any evidence that there are evolutionary roots for behavior is extremely hard to disentangle in terms of root causes for behavior because we cannot experimentally test these hypotheses.
I have several issues with the research article itself, such as the use of the term "ability" when what was measured is temporal perceptions of humor, but those are issues that can be debated within the field. My main concern is that your language on this post does not differentiate between findings and opinions. Even if this is a blog post, it should be clarified when discussing research what is based on evidence and what is inferred. I do not think that all readers of these blog posts believe what is said is ultimate truth, as evidenced by the other comments, but I do have quite a bit of evidence from my own students that distinguishing opinion from fact is difficult and mistakes are easily made. We will have to agree to disagree, but I believe that small changes in the way you describe your research could make it much more conducive for all readers to understand not only the findings but the potential implications, along with the need for further research.
For instance, do males and females truly differ in their humor production ability at birth, or is this something trained by society? This is an interesting question that cannot be answered by your research but is hinted at in your inferences. It would be wonderful to state that we do not currently have the evidence to answer this question, but that your opinion is _______.
Anyways, I hope in future you at least consider qualifying your statements as being opinion when they are not directly supported by evidence. I truly believe this will give more credibility to your actual findings and encourage readers to critically think about your arguments and perhaps agree with your conclusions.
but an understanding I gathered over many years of researching in the field. You make it sound like it is an arbitrary opinion that has no connection to reality and there is nothing as far from the truth from that. By your own admission you don't enough about the topic. There is plenty of evidence in support of the evolutionary explanation that I covered both in my academic work and in this blog, I suggest you read it.
The blog is not an opinion peace but a scientific research that gather new evidence and evaluate it against different theories. I think people can easily distinguish between the data and the theory. It seems that you are trying to undermine a theory you don't like or understand fully in favor of a theory that you think is right with no supporting evidence.
And regarding the quote you brought from our paper, note that it refers to the past and is based mostly on anecdotal evidence. Do you know of any research showing that humor is suppressed today, and moreover has a real influence on the ability of women to produce humor? So far, you haven't show any.
I completely disagree with the way you framed our research and find it quite insolent to suggest to me how to write my blog posts. I write what I believe is the truth to the best of my understanding of the literature and theory. I think it is well supported and reflect the reality. If you don't agree with me you can try to refute any of the points by showing evidence that contradicts it, or write your own summary of the study elsewhere.
I definitely do not have a strong foundation in the field of evolutionary psychology and the bases of humor, but I do have an extremely good foundation in methodology and interpretation of statistics. It is a foundation of good science to state things in ways that are in line with the level of confidence that can be attributed to them. Perhaps you truly believe that the statements you’ve made can be made with immense confidence, while you dismiss statements you also appear to disagree with without adequate presentation of evidence. As I stated, I am not an evolutionary psychologist, but I have enough knowledge to understand that it is extremely hard to disentangle the influences of society from other potential causal sources because experimental manipulation is essentially impossible. There is nothing wrong with suggesting that your writing be clear in intention and meaning. For instance “minimal evidence” is extremely vague and could be interpreted in a number of ways. Perhaps you have not adequately researched the prohibitionary influence of society on female expressions of humor, or perhaps there is conflicting evidence, or perhaps there is a multitude of evidence but the effect sizes are extremely low. It is unclear from “minimal evidence” which option you want readers to take away.
I’m done arguing, but I stand firm in the belief that it is our responsibility as scientists to report our findings accurately and clearly, as much a possible eliminating the chances of misinterpretation or overgeneralization. Perhaps this comes from my research having wide implications for parenting, and it is crucial that we communicate in ways that will not be misused—which, unfortunately, has happened in the past to the detriment of children. Research suggesting interactions between parental behavior and knowledge has been inaccurately used to create nationwide campaigns based solely on parental behavior, when our studies clearly showed that parental behaviors were only effective in the context of parents being informed on the topic. Perhaps this field is intuitive enough that a lay reader will not misunderstand and will clearly see the difference between inference and empiricism. I simply choose to avoid the potential pitfalls by being explicitly clear.
But the disagreements should be based on concrete research. If you really don't trust my interpretation of the results than you are welcome to make a case for a counter interpretation supported by research and evidence. You made none of that here. As a firm believer in the scientific method I find it a little disturbing that you are willing doubt my writing and demand that I put qualifiers in the name of some fake fairness, without being familiar with the literature and the relevant theories. You just seem not like evolutionary psychology in general, which is fine, but that is not a scientific argument.
I also find it quite interesting that as someone demanding clarity and transparency you chose to remain anonymous. It makes it easier to criticize others without any cost to you, doesn't it?
You are asking for CT's evidence for a social explanation of the findings. I don't hear them making a claim for a social explanation. Instead, they are asking for your evidence for an evolutionary basis and stating that if that evidence doesn't exist and isn't strong enough to establish causation, it is incumbent on your to make it clear that you are using your intuition honed from extensive experience in the field. I do think that the way your post is written, your convey the impression that there is more evidence than your intuition, though your intuition would be impactful to me, given your experience int he field. They read your paper and did not find an evidentiary basis. Personally, I think the burden is now upon you to provide that evidence.
And various other publications I wrote, and I linked to previous posts that covered them in my post. So no, the burden of proof is not on me but who claim otherwise.
That’s the benefit of not being the original author. I am not obligated, nor do I think it ultimately matters, who I am. As Eric stated, the burden of proof lies on you. I am not trying to argue that your opinions are wrong. I’m trying to make it clear that they are, at this point, still opinions. Give links to the other literature, not just your own study, if you want to add support to your opinions. But the meta analysis didn’t test the different contributions of the mating prerogative vs socialization of women. That is my issue with outright dismissing the alternative hypothesis and not providing evidence (in either your write up or the full article) that it can be ruled out. It is entirely possible that you are correct in your interpretation, but at this point it is still an interpretation.
I’m done going back and forth, this is really getting to be a useless disagreement where we both clearly want what the other is not willing to provide.
Good luck with your future research.
You have a choice to do as you wish, but you need to have some knowledge of what you criticize. If you say my arguments do not reflect the research and ask to change a post, no less, to what you think is a better reflection of the truth, you need to provide some evidence or knowledgeable arguments. You did not of this.
And no, they are not just opinions. They are informed theoretical arguments bases on the scientific research. And if you actually looked the the links I provided, you can see I cite other research.
And you are absolutely right, is it useless to tell to other what to write in their own blog. If you think I do not represent my own paper correctly, then you can always write about is your own post.
serious question - do 10 million individual anecdotes rise to the level of significance in your mind? does this level of replication count in your mind - yes or no?
i say this because you strike me as someone who requires a study to determine that water is wet, and even then might claim that the methodology was flawed. i mean, you really believe that the idealized male body type is fluid, and dependent on social norms? really?
ask everyone you know if men or women are funnier. just go and take a poll yourself. should clear it up pretty quick.
the language used to describe the findings of the study, not the actual study. The study did not investigate the different impact of mating choice vs socialization of women, and yet the language used seems to indicate precisely that. Regarding your comment about 10mil anecdotes: this would be great grounds for a hypothesis that could then be tested with a random sample and random assignment to the different conditions. There are several billion people in the world, it is entirely possible that the 10mil in your set of anecdotes are outliers. They probably aren’t, but it is our duty as scientists to try and figure that out rather than blindly assume that we are right because we’ve gotten enough confirmatory evidence. The amount of confirmatory evidence is not what should give confidence to a researcher, it is the continued inability to disprove a hypothesis after using sound methodology to rule out alternative explanations. Although the paper statistically controls for various important factors, e.g. judge sex, participant age, etc, it does not empirically test the role society may have had on socializing women to hold back and let men tell the jokes.
But you do you, and that’s fine by me.
So you think that every paper that has a literature review and discussion are inappropriate because they do not do the studies they refer to? I am appalled that you even may such a claim. No matter that I never claimed that I did all this in the study, nor do I should when writing a blog post. And of course you forgot to mentions all the links I put for the previous studies that support my argument.
And I did not make the claim about the anecdotes, you responds to two different people.
Maybe men are more funny than women because storicaly is the man who has to convince the woman having sex with him... Actually I don't think is so importat enstablish the truth....
How do you quantify something subjective.
Why is every PT article that discusses women so full of folks who think getting laid is the only point to life.
Why doesn't PT just get rid of the comments section all together.
A good chunk of y'all could use the services of a mental health professional.
>How do you quantify something subjective.
Maybe linked studies explain that, try checking them out.
>Why doesn't PT just get rid of the comments section all together.
It's OK that some people have a different opinion. It's not a valid reason to silence them.
I'm not surprised that Maria Bamford wasn't mentioned. She rarely get acknowledged for her comic brilliance. I love her stuff. She's so original and unique. I rather watch her act than most male comics out there. She's been active for 30 years and she still comes up with fresh material.
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