Production and appreciation of humor as sexually selected traits

Bressler, Eric R.; Martin, Rod A.; Balshine, Sigal

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.09.001

Cited by 144 publications

(141 citation statements)

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“…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).…”

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confidence: 94%

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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confidence: 94%

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

et al. 2011

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“…Whilst women seek men who are higher in status (TRIVERS 1972), and a partner who can produce humour well (BRESSLER, MARTIN and BALSHINE 2006), men place greater importance on appearance, tending to seek out cues for attractiveness and youth (BUSS 1989). As such, a potential partner producing humour well, or producing a particular type of humour, may be generally less appealing to men than it is to women.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on both status and humour tends to focus on men as producers and women as appreciators, and it follows that there is some evidence to suggest that both status and humour production are more important qualities in a mate to women than they are to men (BROWN and LEWIS 2004;BRESSLER, MARTIN and BALSHINE 2006). Whilst women seek men who are higher in status (TRIVERS 1972), and a partner who can produce humour well (BRESSLER, MARTIN and BALSHINE 2006), men place greater importance on appearance, tending to seek out cues for attractiveness and youth (BUSS 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The attractiveness of humour types in personal advertisements: Affiliative and aggressive humour are differentially preferred in long-term versus short-term partners

Cowan

Little²

2013

Journal of Evolutionary Psychology

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Abstract:A good sense of humour is commonly offered in written dating advertisements demonstrating that humour is an important quality to have when attracting a mate, but not all humour is the same. This study used vignettes in the style of a personal advertisement to measure the attractiveness of affiliative and aggressive humour in different relationship contexts. The results demonstrated that affiliative humour was more attractive than aggressive humour in both relationship contexts but especially for long-term relationships. The results follow the pattern expected of affiliative humour styles being more attractive for long-term relationships due to being linked to qualities that may be important in long-term relationships such as likelihood of cooperation, and aggressive humour styles not being favoured for long-term relationships due to being linked to qualities that may be detrimental in long-term relationships. A follow-up study confirmed that different humour styles were associated with different perceived personality traits. Together these findings suggest that humour may be used to indicate an individual's personality and that the attractiveness of a good sense of humour depends on both the type of humour and the type of relationship being sought.

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“…More recently, however, there has been growing interest in the ultimate functions of laughter and humor. Laughter and humor may play a number of different (not always mutually exclusive) roles in human communication, including expediting courtship, facilitating the flow of an interaction/conversation, synchronizing emotional states, and social bonding (Bachorowski and Owren 2001;Bressler et al 2006;Cowan and Little 2012;Curry and Dunbar 2013;Dunbar et al 2012;Flamson and Barrett 2008;Gervais and Wilson 2005;Grammer 1990;Grammer and Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1990;Hurley et al 2011;Li et al 2009;Mehu and Dunbar 2008;Owren and Bachorowski 2003). However, the underlying cognitive mechanisms that both enable these effects to work and determine the maximum complexity of jokes are much less well understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Complexity of Jokes Is Limited by Cognitive Constraints on Mentalizing

Dunbar

Launay

Curry

2015

Hum Nat

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Although laughter is probably of deep evolutionary origin, the telling of jokes, being languagebased, is likely to be of more recent origin within the human lineage. In language-based communication, speaker and listener are engaged in a process of mutually understanding each other's intentions (mindstates), with a conversation minimally requiring three orders of intentionality. Mentalizing is cognitively more demanding than non-mentalizing cognition, and there is a well-attested limit at five orders in the levels of intentionality at which normal adult humans can work. Verbal jokes commonly involve commentary on the mindstates of third parties, and each such mindstate adds an additional level of intentionality and its corresponding cognitive load. We determined the number of mentalizing levels in a sample of jokes told by well-known professional comedians and show that most jokes involve either three or five orders of intentionality on the part of the comedian, depending on whether or not the joke involves other individuals' mindstates. Within this limit there is a positive correlation between increasing levels of intentionality and subjective ratings of how funny the jokes are. The quality of jokes appears to peak when they include five to six levels of intentionality, which suggest that audiences appreciate higher mentalizing complexity whilst working within their natural cognitive constraints. KeywordsMentalizing; Jokes; Intentionality; Cognitive demand Correspondence to: R.I.M. Dunbar. Robin Dunbar is a professor of evolutionary psychology in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. He is director of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group, which explores the evolutionary, ecological and neuropsychological underpinnings of sociality in primates and humans. Jacques Launay is a postdoctoral researcher in the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group, University of Oxford. He studies the mechanisms of large-scale social bonding. Oliver Scott Curry is a lecturer in cognitive anthropology at the University of Oxford. He works on moral psychology and crosscultural variation in moral values. Laughter and humor are ubiquitous aspects of human behavior (Gervais and Wilson 2005), and laughter at least has a very ancient origin that may even predate the origins of the hominin lineage (Davila Ross et al. 2009;Dunbar et al. 2012). Despite this, laughter itself has been the focus of only limited research (Provine 1996). Although humor has attracted much more attention, this has primarily been the province of philosophers, psychologists, and language scholars rather than evolutionarily oriented researchers. More recently, however, there has been growing interest in the ultimate functions of laughter and humor. Laughter and humor may play a number of different (not always mutually exclusive) roles in human communication, including expediting courtship, facilitating the flow of an interaction/conversation, synchronizing emotional states, and social bonding (Bachorowsk...

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Production and appreciation of humor as sexually selected traits

Cited by 144 publications

References 17 publications

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

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

The attractiveness of humour types in personal advertisements: Affiliative and aggressive humour are differentially preferred in long-term versus short-term partners

The Complexity of Jokes Is Limited by Cognitive Constraints on Mentalizing

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