Men laugh more at visual jokes, while women prefer those involving political commentary or related to the complexities of romantic relationships.
- Complex jokes with more punchlines, or punchy phrases intended to make an impression, are considered funnier up to a certain limit.
- Men laughed more at visual jokes using puns and women preferred “political humor.”
- Both sexes appreciated drawings depicting the complexities of romantic relationships.
There is male humor and female humor. This was recently revealed by researchers at the University of Oxford (England). In order to achieve this discovery, they conducted a study published in the journal Humor. “Cartoons feature regularly in most contemporary newspapers and magazines. As such, they represent a means of conveying complex social and political commentary in a simple visual form. Appreciation of jokes depends on the number of references and punchlines (i.e. punchy formulas intended to make an impression). We wonder if the same is true for visual caricatures”the scientists wrote.
Visual jokes made men laugh more than women
For the purposes of their work, they recruited 3,380 people who attended an exhibition of humorous drawings published in the written press by renowned cartoonists from 1930 to 2010. The drawings often use a verbal caption to add context and , in many cases, the fall. Participants had to rate which joke in the drawings was the funniest. The responses were then analyzed according to the “mental” content of the drawings, the age and gender of the adults, as well as the date of publication of the drawing.
More complex jokes with more punchlines were rated funnier than those that relied on simpler humor. However, they were appreciated up to a certain limit. The team also found that the preferred topics in the jokes varied depending on the age and gender of the participants. According to the results, both sexes laughed when seeing the drawings which addressed the complexity of romantic relationships. However, men liked visual jokes using puns more than women, while women preferred jokes related to politics or romantic relationship dynamics.
Different humor due to distinctions in the social habits of the two sexes
According to the researchers, these differences in humor may reflect the way men and women manage their social relationships. “This explanation has been neglected until now because psychologists and others have focused on IQ type differences, which are small,” they concluded.
