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