Funny Finding: Men Win Humor Test (by a Hair)

Funny Finding: - Men Win Humor Test (by a Hair) - UC San Diego Researchers Used New Yorker Cartoons to Explore Gender Stereotype October 19, 2011 By Inga Kiderra Huffington Post ABC News and - "Good Morning America" TIME Slate Scientific American Men are funnier than women, but only just barely and mostly to other men. So says a psychology study from the University of California, San Diego Division of Social Sciences. While the findings lend some support to the stereotype on gender differences and humor - perhaps most vociferously and provocatively argued in recent memory by author Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 Vanity Fair article "Why Women Aren't Funny" - they also undermine the standard explanations as to why. The standard explanations are usually variations on an evolutionary sexual-selection argument that likens a man's humor to a peacock's fancy tail or a deer's rack of antlers, useful primarily for showing off and impressing potential mates. Besides, said the study's first author Laura Mickes, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology and a Ph.D. graduate of the same department, "The differences we find between men's and women's ability to be funny are so small that they can't account for the strength of the belief in the stereotype." Men edged out women by 0.11 points out of a theoretically possible perfect score of 5.0, while about 90 percent of both male and female study participants agreed with the stereotype that men are funnier.