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Funny Science

Study proves that men really are funnier than women

Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women (Studies in Humor and Gender)
Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers,
and the New Generation of Funny Women
(Studies in Humor and Gender)

Web Watch has heard from many entertainment professionals that men are always going to be funnier than women.

 Jerry Lewis said it, others have as well.

Heck, we’ve seen this play out in real life — with women-based comedies often getting short-changed at the movie theater (until Bridesmaids came along to prove everyone wrong).  TV is a different story, with female-lead comedies often leading the ratings, until something Horribly Wrong happens to have those shows suddenly and mysteriously cancelled.

Rosanne?  Laverne & Shirley?  The Lucy Show?   All written by men, we’ll guess.

Even Tina Fey, when she was head writer at SNL, said that it was tough to be a woman working in a man’s world.

So Web Watch shouldn’t be surprised at the recent news about a study that PROVES MEN ARE FUNNIER THAN WOMEN, at least perceptually.

That’s what the University of California San Diego, found out when they asked students to fill out their funniest captions for New Yorker cartoons.  Those 640 captions were then used in a “best of the best” bracket challenge, with each winning caption getting points in the competition.

Captions that were written by men edged out captions that were written by women.  Web Watch would be remiss if we didn’t point out that the men who were rating the captions often found jokes from other men funnier than they did the women’s jokes.  This caused one researcher to comment that “…guys who think that by being funny they will impress the ladies, really just impress other men who want to impress the ladies.”

Ha.

 At least the latest research supports an earlier study entitled Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males.   In this study — which also proved that men are funnier than women — they concluded that “a good sense of humor is sexually attractive”, in part because humor often requires intelligence and creativity, things that are considered good traits for a potential mate to have.

So that’s your in, fellas — make ’em laugh, and you’ve got a golden ticket.