Men Are Funnier Than Women, New Research Claims

New research has found men to be better than women, in terms of humor. The research team who sought to analyze the humor of men and women asked people to rate the humor of men and women without revealing their gender. The results suggested that 63% of men were funnier than the average women. The research included normal people and not professional comedians.

Various comedians, especially the female ones find the study to be unnecessary and feel that such a statement would be discouraging to women comedians and also that it could put women off from comedy.

"With comedy that's the last thing you want,” said Marina Bye (One of the comedy duo siblings) to Radio 1 Newsbeat. "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," she added.

Researchers from Aberystwyth University and the University of North Carolina reviewed around 28 researches that analyzed how funny around 5000 individuals were. They wanted to find out if the stereotype about men being funnier than women was true.

The lead researcher told Psychology Today that such stereotyping is shared by both genders but just because it exists it doesn’t mean it is true.

In the majority of the researches they looked at, both the genders were asked to write a funny caption to accompany a cartoon and then judges were asked to rate their funniness without revealing the gender.

“To the best of our knowledge, on average, men appear to have higher humor production ability than women," Dr. Gil Greengross said. He also clarified that this study is not meant to prove that women weren’t funny. He also mentions that there are exceptional women comedians whom he even knows and admires 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 added.

He also comments that humor plays a major role in mating and also that women tend to seek humor in a partner as it is related to intelligence. And men usually preferred women who would laugh at their jokes. He concludes that throughout evolution, men had to compete harder with other women to impress women with their sense of humor.