Sunday, October 30, 2011

Are Men Funnier Than Women?

Nope:
Scientists had 16 male and 16 female subjects write funny captions for 20 New Yorker magazine cartoons in 45 minutes. Then the captions were rated by a different group of 34 male and 47 female subjects. Men’s captions rated higher on average than women’s captions. But only by a mere 0.11 points out of perfect score of 5.0.
Unless you count this:
Maybe men just make more attempts at humor. For example, fewer women win the New Yorker caption contests, but fewer enter. When women do enter, however, they tend to win with fewer attempts compared to men.
Did I mention I teach comedy classes? Men and women accepted of course.

1 comment:

You are the reason why I do not write privately. I would love to hear your thoughts, whether you agree or not.