A study has come to the conclusion that men are funnier than women.
The researchers looked at the results of a variety of other studies in which subjects were asked to rate both men and women’s humor – without knowing their sex.
The study found that 63 percent of males were funnier than the average female.
The research looked at regular people rather than established comedians. However, Marina Bye of the comedy duo Siblings says such studies feel “unnecessary”.
“With comedy that’s the last thing you want,” she said, speaking to Radio 1 Newsbeat.
She is concerned it could put off women from trying their hand at professional comedy.
“You want the worst and the best comedians to try because you never know. This study will cripple bravery.
“I really think it’s unnecessary to do this study. They could’ve done something progressive.”
Researchers from the University of North Carolina and Aberyswyth University looked into 28 studies that measured how funny around 5000 people were.
They wanted to test whether the “men are funnier than women” claim was in fact valid.
Doctor Gil Greengross wrote the following for Psychology Today:
“This stereotype is shared by both men and women – but of course, just because it exists does not mean it is true.”
In the large number of the studies they went through, men and women were asked to write a humorous caption to accompany a cartoon, after which judges rater their comic prowess without being aware of their gender.
Dr. Gil said the results discovered that,
“to the best of our knowledge, on average, men appear to have higher humor production ability than women”.
In an interview for Radio 1 Newsbeat he said:
“To clarify, the whole thing is not about ‘women are not funny’… obviously there are some very funny stand-up comedians and I know many female comedians, some personally.
“Sara Pascoe, for example, she’s a great comedian and she’s probably funnier than 99% of all males in the world… it’s just that on average we find there’s a difference.”
He notes that evidence shows humor plays a “major role in mating”.
The lecturer explained that women tend to want a sense of humor in a partner as it is “strongly correlated with intelligence”.
“Men, on the other hand, prefer women who laugh at their humour.
That means that over our evolutionary history, men likely had to compete harder with other men to impress women with their sense of humour.”
Maddy Bye of Siblings, says she finds the research “frustrating but also funny”.
“Being in the comedy world I don’t think we’ve done a gig in the last three years where there wasn’t an equal amount of men and women on the bill.
There are so many amazing male and female comedy shows. I don’t know why they’re trying to make it a scientific fact that women aren’t funny.”
Maddy believes being a woman in comedy is “better than it was before” but it is still a “man’s world”.
She remembers giving out fliers for their show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a woman told her it looked alright but her partner does not “think women are funny”.
“The stereotype does exist but our way of dealing with it is to just do comedy.”
Take a look at the late Christopher Hitchens’ 2 cents on the matter in the video below.
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