According to science...

It is not research that is likely to be especially well-received – but scientists have found that men are better at writing jokes than women.

Studies asking more than 5,000 volunteers to judge gags found that those created by blokes were, on average, perceived to be funnier than those penned by women.

Two-thirds of the subjects were female – and they were unaware of the gender of who had written each joke.

Psychologists suggest the reason for their findings is that men develop a sense of humour to be more attractive to women, as it’s seen as a sign of intelligence that gives them an edge in the evolutionary battle to find a mate.

However, they also acknowledge the role of historic norms that mean women have not traditionally been expected, nor even allowed, to be amusing in public. And they were keen to emphasise that their research does not mean women aren’t funny.

The analysis compiled previous studies undertaken between 1976 and 2018 – not all of them previously published – to create the first repository of all the data into the subject.  

Overall, more than 5,000 subjects from 36 samples were analysed, and, in typical academic style, the scientists call the ability to come up with a joke ‘humour production ability’.

They found that 63 per cent of men have higher ability than the average woman, which they described as a ‘small to moderate effect’. But they ruled out various biases in the research, so say: ‘The results are robust. ‘

Summarising the results on Twitter, lead researcher Gil Greengross from Aberystwyth University, said: ‘To be clear, this is not about the stereotypical view that women are not funny. This is about average differences. Many women are funny, some like @sarapascoe or @SarahKSilverman are funnier than 99.9 per cent of all men. Still, differences on average seem to exists.’

Dr Greengross added that the best evidence to explain the difference is that ‘choosier women use humour as a cue to intelligence when selecting a mate. Men compete with other men to be funnier. Plenty of evidence to support this (e.g. from dating sites).

‘The study is part of the more general discussion on sex differences in cognitive abilities. We hope to stimulate more informed research and discussions on [the] topic.’

His paper, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, was also keen to state that it was not making broad assumptions about whether men are funnier than women.

It said: ‘The topic of sex differences is often reduced to blunt assertions such as that "Women are not funny." 

‘We hope that our meta-analysis will help advance a more nuanced discussion on the topic based on a systematic evaluation of the available scientific data.

‘Examination of such data suggest that regardless of the underlying source of variability, men exhibit higher humour ability than women on the kinds of verbal tasks included in our sample of studies. 

‘It is important to remember that though robust, these differences… do not reflect individual abilities, as both men and women vary largely in their abilities to produce humour. 

‘We tried to illuminate possible sources for the differences in humour production activity, what they might mean, theoretical implications, considerations for future research, and limitations.’

Other findings quoted in their paper included that:

• 62 per cent of people thought men were funnier than women, but only 4 per cent thought women were funnier. The rest saw no difference;
• 94 per cent of men and 89 per cent of women agreed to the stereotype that men are funnier than women;
• Despite some expectations, women are just as likely as men to use sexual and aggressive themes in jokes as men;
• Although both men and women say they like a good sense of humour in partners, each gender means a vastly different thing by that statement: women want someone who will make them laugh, but men seek someone who will appreciate their jokes.
• The use of humour in courtship conforms to traditional gender roles of men as the pursuer and women the appreciator.

The researchers excluded from their analysis any research in which people judged their own skills at comedy, as ‘most people believe they have above average humour ability.’

Studies they looked at required one group of people to come up with jokes, such as by captioning a cartoon, supplying punchlines to set-ups, or answering nonsensical questions in a funny way. Then another group judged the gags, without knowing any details about who had written them.

The researchers admit some limitations to their data, such as the fact most of it comes from so-called WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic) countries – and that the age range of subjects was 15 to 35 –  peak reproductive age but unrepresentative of the whole population.

Another is that some research suggests that men are more likely to tell jokes, while women prefer telling funny stories and anecdotes. But most studies look for ‘a crisp, focused response’ to analyse, rather than longer narrative structures.

The full report is available here.

Published: 29 Oct 2019