"Two Guys Walk Into A Bar, and..."

Is it working yet?


I have had only a few teachers in my life who were female (many of them were nuns), only one wife, one daughter, and no sisters, so I'm not sure I can be the best judge of this, but it seems like an interesting proposition: men are funnier than women. Actually, it's not that we are funnier...it's that we are perceived to be funnier. Maybe it's because men are more likely to tell jokes in mixed company or when trying to attract a female (not MY theory, but a theory, nonetheless) while women tend to be less likely to want the spotlight or don't enjoy humor...whatever; according to Laura Mickes, a postdoctoral psychology researcher at the university of California-SanDiego, men are definitely perceived by both sexes as being funnier. Here was her research:
32 undergraduate men and women were given the task of writing funny captions for 20 cartoons...and they were given 45 minutes to complete the task. At that point, 34 undergraduate men and 37 co-eds were asked to rate the comments, not knowing which caption was written by males and which were written by the distaff set.
Captions written by men were judged to be funnier, though the difference was only .11
Mickes found that, while men tended to use sexual humor and profanity more frequently, they only did so by the slightest margin!
Part two of the analysis dealt with memory bias and humor. While all of the respondents remembered the captions they thought were funny, most identified their favorites as being written by men...whether they had been or not! Finally, Mickes asked the respondents how funny they thought THEY were on a scale of one to five.
The men averaged 2.3 while the women ranked themselves on average at 1.5 on the five-point scale.
Thus, one might postulate from Mickes research that while men aren't necessarily funnier than women, they ARE cockier!
Hey, whatever, as long as women laugh and pretend to think we're funny or attempts at humor catch a young lady's ear and eye...it's all good.
Better than smashing beer cans on the forehead.