Effects of humor on sentence memory.

Schmidt, Stephen R.

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.20.4.953

Cited by 107 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…Our findings replicate the humor effect (Kaplan & Pascoe, 1977;Schmidt, 1994Schmidt, , 2002Schmidt & Williams, 2001;Takahashi & Inoue, 2009), with the funny captions not only remembered better, but also with the gender of their authors remembered better. The analyses also provide evidence for a humor-based retrieval bias; individuals of both genders tend to misattribute humorous captions to male writers.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Who’s funny: Gender stereotypes, humor production, and memory bias

et al. 2011

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It has often been asserted, by both men and women, that men are funnier. We explored two possible explanations for such a view, first testing whether men, when instructed to be as funny as possible, write funnier cartoon captions than do women, and second examining whether there is a tendency to falsely remember funny things as having been produced by men. A total of 32 participants, half from each gender, wrote captions for 20 cartoons. Raters then indicated the humor success of these captions. Raters of both genders found the captions written by males funnier, though this preference was significantly stronger among the male raters. In the second experiment, male and female participants were presented with the funniest and least funny captions from the first experiment, along with the caption author's gender. On a memory test, both females and males disproportionately misattributed the humorous captions to males and the nonhumorous captions to females. Men might think men are funnier because they actually find them so, but though women rated the captions written by males slightly higher, our data suggest that they may regard men as funnier more because they falsely attribute funny things to them.Keywords Humor effect . Humor . Stereotype . Gender . Source memory It seems a truth-while perhaps not universally acknowledged, at least widely shared-that men are funnier than women (see, e.g., Lewis, 2000). Such a view has been expressed by men and women, and often in conjunction with firm assertions that men's humor advantage, if such it be, is not part of any general intellectual superiority (Greer, 2009;Hitchens, 2007). Presuming a reliable gender difference in humor production, various theories have been offered, including suggestions that humor, like the head butting of elk, is done to impress potential mates (Bressler, Martin, & Balshine, 2006). Consistent with such a notion, females indicate a preference for mates who makes them laugh, whereas males prefer a mate who laughs at their humor (Li, Griskevicius, Durante, Jonason, Pasisz & Aumer, 2009). There is also evidence that both genders comply, with women laughing more, and men making people laugh more (Provine, 2000, p.27; but see Kothoff, 2006). However, this evidence does not require that men actually be more capable of being funny, but could be due to some combination of emotional responsivity, differential effort, and pity. There are no direct tests of assertions about gender differences in the ability to be funny.In this article, we explore explanations for the impression that men are funnier than women. It could be that the stereotype exists because it is true, and people have correctly observed the world. The impression could also exist without the stereotype's being true, if people's view of the world is systematically biased. In two studies, we explore these two possibilities. In the first, male and female participants wrote, or at least tried to write, funny captions to accompany cartoon images, and raters, also male and female, evaluated ...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Who’s funny: Gender stereotypes, humor production, and memory bias

et al. 2011

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“…Sixty-six students enrolled in the following summer term participated in Experiment 1B. Previous researchers have argued that, for equivalent power, between-subjects contrasts should include approximately twice the number of participants as within-subjects contrasts (Erlebacher, 1978;McDaniel & Einstein, 1986;Schmidt, 1994). The participants received extra credit in their classes for participating in the research.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, mixed lists are required for the observation of the effects of orthographic distinctiveness (Hunt & Mitchell, 1982), the bizarreness effect (McDaniel & Einstein, 1986), the humor effect (Schmidt, 1994;Schmidt & Williams, 2001), and the greater recall of lowthan of high-infrequency words (DeLosh & McDaniel, 1996). If emotional words are better remembered than neutral words only in mixed lists, it is tempting to attribute the putative effects of emotion to item distinctiveness (Dewhurst & Parry, 2000).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The emotional memory effect: Differential processing or item distinctiveness?

Schmidt

Saari

2007

Mem Cogn

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A color-naming task was followed by incidental free recall to investigate how emotional words affect attention and memory. We compared taboo, nonthreatening negative-affect, and neutral words across three experiments. As compared with neutral words, taboo words led to longer color-naming times and better memory in both within-and between-subjects designs. Color naming of negative-emotion nontaboo words was slower than color naming of neutral words only during block presentation and at relatively short interstimulus intervals (ISIs). The nontaboo emotion words were remembered better than neutral words following blocked and random presentation and at both long and short ISIs, but only in mixed-list designs. Our results support multifactor theories of the effects of emotion on attention and memory. As compared with neutral words, threatening stimuli received increased attention, poststimulus elaboration, and benefit from item distinctiveness, whereas nonthreatening emotional stimuli benefited only from increased item distinctiveness.

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“…Although early work (e.g., Schmidt, 2002) seemed to suggest that humor effects were only present in mixed list designs, where funny material could stand out from the context of unfunny material, more recent work has shown mnemonic benefits to humor with both mixed and unmixed lists (Takahashi & Inoue, 2009). That said, the standard design exploring humor and memory employs an incidental learning task with mixed lists (e.g., Schmidt, 1994;Schmidt, 2002).…”

Section: "My Memory's Not All That Bad" Says the Husband "No Problementioning

confidence: 99%