The effects of relationship context and modality on ratings of funniness

Cowan, Mary Louise; Little, Anthony C.

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.020

Cited by 21 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 229 publications

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“…On a similar note, as men tend not to find funniness as attractive as women do (BRESSLER, MARTIN and BALSHINE 2006;COWAN and LITTLE 2013), we may have expected men to find descriptions of funny women generally less appealing than women found descriptions of funny men. Therefore, it is interesting to note that there were no overall significant differences in the attractiveness ratings between men and women across the advertisements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…As men did not find the advertisements less attractive than women found them, it could be speculated that funniness was signalling another quality that is attractive to men, such as flirtatiousness. Previous research has demonstrated the similarity between funniness and flirtatiousness (KELTNER et al 2001;COWAN and LITTLE 2013) and, to consider the manifestation of aggressive humour as teasing directed at one individual, it could be that aggressive humour appears to be flirtatious. Humour use may be a signal to men or women rating the advertisement that the subject is proceptive to advances, which may make them sound more appealing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst humour may indeed be an honest signal of gene quality, this is not the only function it has as evidence demonstrates that producing humour is an effective way of indicating interest to a potential mate (LI et al 2009). This may be due to the similarity between humour and flirtatiousness (COWAN and LITTLE 2013), which may in turn increase how attractive the humour production is perceived to be. However, humour can be expressed in different ways and most theories concerning the sexual selection of humour or the interest indicator theory do not specify what type of humour is most attractive in different relationship contexts or whether different types of humour are more or less related to the advertisement of gene quality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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“…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.…”

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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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“…4 men and women rate more physically attractive men as funnier than their relatively less-attractive peers (Cowan and Little, 2013a) demonstrating that humor produced by attractive men is appreciated more than humor produced by less attractive men.…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s the way he tells them (and who is listening): men’s dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men

Cowan

Watkins

Fraccaro

et al. 2016

Evolution and Human Behavior

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It's the way he tells them (and who is listening): Men's dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men AbstractWhile much research has explored humorous exchange in relation to mate choice, recent perspectives have emphasized the importance of humor for monitoring interest within social partnerships more generally. Indeed, given that similarity is thought to be important in the maintenance of social partnerships, we may expect humor appreciation to vary according to the degree of similarity between humor producers and recipients. In the current study we report evidence for such variation that is specific to men"s judgments of other men"s humor. Here we manipulated voice pitch in a set of "one-liner" jokes to create low-pitched and high-pitched versions of men and women telling jokes. A composite measure of men"s own dominance was positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by other men with lowered voice pitch (a vocal cue to dominance). A follow-up study demonstrated that selfreported dominance was positively related to men"s choice of low-pitch men as friends when judging humorous audio clips but not when judging neutral control audio clips, suggesting that humour may be important in mediating the effect of dominance on friendship choice. These studies indicate systematic variation in humor appreciation related to friendship choices which may function to promote cohesion within male partnerships based on status.

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The effects of relationship context and modality on ratings of funniness

Abstract: Chapter 2 The attractiveness of humour use; the effects of relationship context and modality on ratings of funniness. .

Cited by 21 publications

References 229 publications

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

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

It’s the way he tells them (and who is listening): men’s dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men

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