Use of humor can have positive or negative outcomes for anyone, but the literature suggests that the negative are typically more common for females than for males, especially in the classroom. The present study found, however, that in naturalistic settings, female professor s with high teaching evaluations also had significantly higher perceived-use-of-humor ratings than their male counterparts. Furthermore, while teaching effectiveness was significantly related to friendliness andhelpfulness, humor ratings were not. Perhaps Professional women become adept at developing leadership skills and interpersonal rapport and thus overcome or are not affected by stereotypes which are more often displayed when the students are in an artificial Situation andjor unfamiliar with the individual who is teaching.
Using an autobiographical/everyday memory approach, ninety-three undergraduates each anonymously reported a personal humorous incident which was due to situational factors and not to prepared humor such äs ajoke, a movie, or a cartoon. Subjects subsequently identified the incident's major theme, the degree offunniness, where the event happened, how manypeople were involved, who was the butt-of-the-incident and whether the butt was present or absent. Contrary to expectation from laboratory-based studies onjokes, stories with women äs victims were not rated by either gender äs funnier than stories with male victims. In addition it was found that the majority of remembered incidents were not focused on sex or aggression for males or females but revolved around the foolishness of someone who was present at the time he or she was being laughed at by others.
122 male and female undergraduates were presented with 12 written jokes, half during an examination (moderate arousal) and half during a lecture (low arousal). Two weeks after each presentation the students were asked to recall as many jokes and characteristics of the jokes as possible. Across the conditions there was better memory for meaning than for literal wording of these jokes which were used to illustrate a concept. Furthermore, this difference was enhanced by moderate arousal, especially for women.
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