Women perceive the ability for a man to produce humor as a good quality for a potential mate. This is because humor producing abilities go hand in hand with being perceived as physically fit and all around healthier according to Christopher Wilbur and Lorne Campbell. Humor and perceived level of humor are both important components to the start of romantic relationships as was found in this particular study. It was also pretty evident that how humorous a woman thought a man was could be not only based on how funny he actually was but also based on his other traits as well. this is due to the fact that by a man being funny he is also showing a woman that he has other likable traits as well like intelligence, for example which is linked to a good sense of humor (Campbell & Wilbur 2011). I found the findings of this article to be interesting, however I would have liked to see the reverse side of this, how men respond to women’s humor producing abilities. Also, in this study they used all different age groups, ranging from kids in high school all the way up to adults in their 60s. I think the findings may have been more concrete if the difference in ages of participants wasn’t so great.

            An article published in Vanity Fair titled “Women aren’t Funny” explains this claim by attributing it to biology, evolution, and science. Women already appeal to men, because their physically desirable while men can’t rely merely on their looks to get by. They need something more, something funny. In this article, the author interviews some female comedians to see if his theories on humor right. Fran Lebowitz a famous female comedian said on the matter, "The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what's more male than that?" Also in this article it is speculated that “the reason women aren’t funny” has to do with the fact that humor is a sign of intelligence and for many, many years young girls were told not to appear too smart because men didn’t like that in a wife and that men “simply want women as their audience and not their rivals.” Although I disagree with the pretty bold title of this article, I did see how humor may be perceived as a male dominated field, also, it’s not necessarily that women aren’t funny, but it’s just men don’t want them to be.

Wilbur, C., & Campbell, L. (2011). Humor in romantic contexts: Do men participate and women evaluate?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(7), 918-929.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701

Women seek men who are funny as mates because it signals intelligence. This is what Geoffrey Miller’s theory states. This particular study was put to the test by looking at the role humor plays in marriage cross-culturally (Butovskaya et al. 2011). In this particular study, 3,024 married couples from The Unites States, The United Kingdom, China, Turkey and Russia were given a questionnaire which focused on questions like “How often does your spouse make you laugh?” This study was also interested in looking at the level of general satisfaction participants felt in their marriage along with perceived spousal intelligence, kindness, understanding and dependability in a crisis. In all societies except Russia, husbands were reported as making their wives laugh more often than vice versa. In Russia however, the wives were perceived to be funnier than their husbands. This study attributes this to the fact that Russia is going through tough economic times and the women are having an easier time dealing with the stress than the men are and are able to look at the economic situation in a more optimistic way. The findings in this research showed that spousal humor was positively associated with marital satisfaction as well as correlated with high levels of intelligence. Humor relates not only to positive interactions in marriage, but also positive interactions in social contexts which may weigh in on the marital satisfaction. If a spouse is well liked at work or the life of the party, this will make them, in turn, more desirable to the other spouse. I thought this study did a really good job of avoiding biases. The researchers even made sure questions were phrased so all participants would understand what was being asked. For example, The questionnaire avoided asking questions about specific types of humor like sarcasm and joking around on purpose because those vary from culture to culture.

            An article published in the Los Angeles Times last week titled, “Don't Make Us Laugh” focused on a study conducted at the University of California at San Diego in which they took 16 male and 16 female college students and had them write captions for 20 cartoons from the New Yorker magazine. Later they had a group of separate college students, who weren’t told if a male or female wrote the caption, come in and rate which one they found to be the funniest. The captions written by men scored higher than those written by women, but just barely. In this article, the illusion that men are funnier than women is explained through the theory that men are under the impression that women will choose funny, average looking men over handsome, unfunny men. Having this in consciousness makes men work considerably harder at being funny than women do. I thought this theory was an interesting way to look at gender differences in humor, it coincides with both studies where it was found that women were much more attracted to the humor trait then men were.

Butovskaya, M., Imamoglu, O., Lucas , T., Nowak, N., Parkhill Last, M., & Shen, J. (2011). Do women seek humorousness in men because it signals intelligence? A cross-cultural test. International Journal of Humor Research, 24(4), 435.

Editorial. (2011, October 25). Don’t Make Us Laugh. Los Angeles Times, p. 14.

Jessica Abrams and Amy Bippus found in their study that both men and women find jokes at the expense of the opposite gender funnier than jokes made about their own. Participants were given jokes to read about both their own and the opposite gender and asked to rate the overall funniness of the joke as well as their perceived level of self-esteem. While the overall study found that men and women both found jokes about the opposite sex funnier, they found that women rated the jokes targeted men much funnier than the men rated the female targeted jokes. The researchers found this may be contributed to lower self-esteem in women than in men. To me, this makes sense. Even in class lectures we discussed that women, in general, have a lower confidence levels than their male counterparts do so the fact that they would want to make fun of men unconsciously harsher is a valid finding.

This research can be applied to the stereotype that men are funnier than women because maybe those who find men to be funnier are taking into consideration not only the quality of their jokes and the comedic timing but also the (possibly higher) confidence level while on stage, in a movie or on paper than that of a women. A limitation that could be observed in this study is the fact that maybe the jokes that the women were given to read just happened to be funnier jokes than the ones the men were given. Maybe the group of women had a better sense of humor than the group of men did. These both could be possible factors as to why the women thought some of the jokes were funnier than the group of men. Also, maybe the attribution to the women’s low self-esteem could have been due to a bad day or maybe other personal problems going on and their self-esteem wasn’t as low as they reported it to be and similarly, the men’s level of self-esteem could have been exaggerated. I think a good example of this from pop culture would be The Simpsons in this show Homer Simpson is the stupid man and his wife Marge knows this and is often times irritated at his antics and what he says. Even more irritated than Marge at Homer’s behavior is Marge’s sisters Selma and Patty. Every time they all get together Selma and Patty never fail to mention what an idiot Homer is and what a mistake Marge made by marring him. I know I personally find Homer’s relationship with his two sister-in-laws to be hilarious.

Abrams, J., & Bippus, A. (2011). An intergroup investigation of disparaging humor. Journal of Language & Social Psychology;, 30(2), 193-201

I think the best way to addressing the stereotype that men are funnier than women would be to first look at how humor is perceived and what traits may be associated with having a good sense of humor. Greengross and Miller found in their study that humor is found to be sexually attractive. Miller and Greengross believe that intelligence should be a good predictor of humor which in turn should predict how successful someone is with a member of the opposite sex, or “mating success” as it’s defined in the article. In this experiment, 400 college students of which half were male and half female took various tasks to determine the correlation between humor, intelligence and mating success. To measure intelligence, participants were tested on their verbal vocabulary skills. Next to determine mating success, these participants were rated on the answer they provided to the Sexual Behaviors and Beliefs Questionnaire. Finally, participants were measured on humor producing ability where they were asked to make up captions for cartoons. According to this study, men rated higher in all three categories than women. 

I personally think there are a few problems with this article. For starters, a person’s “mating success” is based on how many sexual partners you have in a life time. I think this is the opposite of success in terms of mating. I think the more sexual partners you have means the less stable relationships you’re in. Also, both the authors and conductors of this research are men. This could be a potential bias, especially if they knew exactly who wrote what captions for what cartoon. Even if that information was kept confidential, it is a very real possibility that they thought the nature of the captions was funnier than those of the women’s. Men aren’t necessarily funnier than women, however, men and women do have different views and opinions of what is funny and what is not. I would be interested in this study done with maybe an additional two female researchers also scoring the cartoon captions as well as replacing the defined definition of “successful mating” with something a little more solid such as overall agreeableness or how well the participant typically gets along with others. I think it is fair to say that having a good sense of humor can be a good predictor of certain types of intelligence; however intelligence isn’t necessarily a solid predictor of humor. I would also be interested in seeing how other measures of intelligence compare to students senses of humor. This study focused solely on verbal intelligence which tested students on vocabulary words. I would be curious to see if the same results were obtained if they just compared GPAs.

References:

Greengross, G., & Miller, G. (2011). Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males. Journal of Intelligence, 39(39), 188-192

I am curious at looking at the stereotype that men are funnier than women, or that women aren’t funny at all. I have always loved laughing and making other people around me laugh, so much so that I was voted Class Clown of my high school graduating class. So I find it absolutely ridiculous when I hear someone say that women aren’t funny especially when I think about some of my favorite comedians like Tina Fey, Lucille Ball, and Gilda Radner. Anyone who has seen these ladies in action can surely attest that women ARE funny. Just as funny as any male comedian out there.  

            Humor is a hard thing to measure because it is subjective. Everyone’s sense of humor and what they find funny are unique. However, I plan to investigate how this stereotype that women aren’t funny got started and to analyze the accuracy of this stereotype by reviewing research articles on the subject, making observations in my life and looking at how society may view comedy as a man’s field. I’m curious in finding the answers for questions like: do women have to work harder than men to get noticed in the comedy world? Do male comedians get more respect? Make more money? Why do people think women can’t be just as funny, if not funnier than their male counterparts? 

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live.