Posted on 11/08/2005 8:13:15 PM PST by neverdem
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The difference between the sexes has long been a rich source of humor. Now, it turns out, humor is one of the differences.
A new study concludes that women seem more likely than men to enjoy a good joke, mainly because they don't always expect it to be funny.
"The long trip to Mars or Venus is hardly necessary to see that men and women often perceive the world differently," a research team led by Dr. Allan Reiss of the Stanford University School of Medicine reports in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But they were surprised when their studies of how male and female brains react to humor showed that women were more analytical in their response and felt more pleasure when they decided something really was funny.
"Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon," Reiss said. "So when they got to the joke's punch line, they were more pleased about it."
Women were subjecting humor to more analysis with the aim of determining if it was indeed funny, Reiss said in a telephone interview. Men are using the same network in the brain, but less so, he said; men are less discriminating.
"It doesn't take a lot of analytical machinery to think someone getting poked in the eye is funny," he commented when asked about humor like the Three Stooges.
Although there is a lot of overlap between how men and women process humor, the differences can help account for the fact that men gravitate more to one-liners and slapstick while women tend to use humor more in narrative form and stories, Reiss said.
The funnier the cartoon the more the reward center in the women's brains responded — unlike men, who seemed to expect the cartoons to be funny from the beginning, the researchers said.
The new insight could improve understanding of such conditions as depression.
Reiss' team studied the response of 10 women and 10 men to 70 black-and-white cartoons, asking them to rate the jokes for how funny they were. While the volunteers were looking at the cartoons, their brains were being studied with an MRI to determine what parts of the brain were responding.
In large part, men and women had similar responses to humor, using parts of the brain responsible for the structure and context of language and for understanding juxtaposition.
In women, however, some areas were more active than in men. These included the left prefrontal cortex, which the researchers said suggests a greater emphasis on language and executive processing, and the nucleus accumbens, or NAcc, which is part of the reward center.
Reiss was surprised at the NAcc finding. The researchers theorized that because women were being more analytical they weren't necessarily expecting the cartoons to be as funny as did the men. Then, when they saw the punch line, the reward center lit up, indicating something pleasant and unexpected.
Arnie Cann, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, said: "Given the findings in the current study, that women appear to use more executive functions, it could be that they are more engaged in scrutinizing the humor to decide if it fits their views on what is acceptable humor. Once they decide the humor is OK, they could be experiencing a relieflike response."
That would fit in with the finding that women experience more reward from the joke, said Cann, who was not part of Reiss' research team.
Reiss' research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
But does it make you tremble and quiver??? (and thrash about)
Is that consider a redundant statement?
Is that considered a sentence?
"Reiss' research was funded by the National Institutes of Health"
...now, about that $36 billion proposed spending cut...
I just don't "get it". It doesn't seem funny. Not to say it's not either.
My dad and brother think "The Stooges" are hilarious but they can't seem to find the humor in "Seinfeld" like the women in my family do.
We need a government test on this :)
So neither your ex wife or her girlfriend had a sense of humor?
JMO. At least for me it's true.
Don't forget Elaine had to put in extra money for being the girl of the group! Because apparently we do as often as we shave our legs.
GEORGE: Alright, look, you want to be in?
ELAINE: Yeah!
GEORGE: You gotta give us odds. At least two to one - you gotta put up two-hundred dollars.
KRAMER: No, a thousand!
ELAINE: No, I'll - I'll put up one-fifty.
GEORGE: Alright, you're in for one-fifty.
JERRY: (Nodding) Okay, one-fifty.
I got Seinfelded out though and found Raymond, why didn't someone tell me Raymond was that funny.
If yhis is true, why does almost every female comedian seem like an angry jilted former lover turned pissed off lesbian?
Saying Curly Joe sucked leaves no way to describe Joe Besser
Actually, she's going out with a much older gentleman. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with his money. (SAR)
I don't think her other boyfriends had much of a sense of humor either.
Ok, we know you all fake it during, you know, so please don't tell us that you fake laugh at our humor.
Boy, I opened a can of worms with the "fake it" stuff, huh? LOL
WE only fake it if the man doesn't know how to do the job properly!
You are so FUNNY
I fake nothing...ever.
Not sure if that is good or bad.
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