In a 2007 Vanity Fair article Christopher Hitchens asked: Why are men, taken on ___1___ and as a whole, funnier than women?

Well a recent study finds that men might have a tiny edge over women in producing humor but the gap is too small to account for the ___2___.


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 ___3___ 0.11 points out of perfect score of 5.0. The study is published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

The researchers also found that unfunny captions were more often wrongly attributed to women and funny ones ___4___ to men.

Given the tiny edge men held, why does the stereotype have a strong hold? 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, which may give women the last laugh.

【視聽版科學(xué)小組榮譽(yù)出品】
average stereotype mere misattributed
在2007年《名利場》雜志的一篇文章中，克里斯多弗?希欽斯提出一個(gè)問題:為什么男人無論是平均而言還是總體上都比女人更有幽默感？ 最近的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，男人在制造幽默方面或許超過女人一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)，但差距如此細(xì)微，不能證明這一成見。 科學(xué)家讓16位男士和16位女士在45分鐘之內(nèi)，為20張《紐約客》雜志上的卡通畫寫出幽默的配圖文字。然后這些配圖文字被送到另外一組34位男士和47位女士來打分。 男士對配圖文字打分的平均值比女士高，但是僅僅高出0.11分(滿分為5.0)。這項(xiàng)研究的結(jié)果發(fā)表在期刊《心理規(guī)律學(xué)報(bào)與評論》上。 研究人員也發(fā)現(xiàn)，不幽默的配圖文字通常被錯(cuò)認(rèn)為是女士所寫，而有趣的通常被錯(cuò)認(rèn)為是男士所寫。 拋開男人在幽默感上的細(xì)微差距不看，那為什么很多人還是有成見呢？也許男人只是在幽默上有更多的嘗試。例如,極少數(shù)女士在《紐約客》配圖文字競賽中勝出,因?yàn)楹苌偃藚⒓舆@一活動(dòng)。當(dāng)女士積極參加時(shí)，那她們會(huì)憑借著比男士少的嘗試去贏得比賽——這個(gè)消息讓女人笑到了最后。