Men win humor test (by a hair)

While the findings lend some support to the stereotype on gender differences and humor – perhaps most vociferously and provocatively argued in recent memory by author Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 Vanity Fair article "Why Women Aren't Funny" – they also undermine the standard explanations as to why. The standard explanations are usually variations on an evolutionary sexual-selection argument that likens a man's humor to a peacock's fancy tail or a deer's rack of antlers, useful primarily for showing off and impressing potential mates.

Men edged out women by 0.11 points out of a theoretically possible perfect score of 5.0, while about 90 percent of both male and female study participants agreed with the stereotype that men are funnier. The study, published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, used a controlled version of The New Yorker cartoon caption contest to reach its conclusions.

So if the study is right and men are just a skosh more funny, why might that be? It could be that they try harder or more often. (Now that's a joke waiting to happen right there!) Nine of the top 10 most devoted entrants, or "überenterers," are men. While fewer women win the actual contest, far fewer of them enter. When they do enter, though, their success rates are pretty impressive. Mankoff writes: "The 22 winning men entered an average of 70.22 contests, but the 10 women averaged 6.4 entries – and four of them won on their first attempt."

In the meanwhile, the current paper had one other finding worth noting: When asked to predict their own performance on a scale of one to five, the men figured they'd get a 2.3, and the women, a more modest 1.5. That is, the difference in self-assessment was greater than the actual difference detected by the contest. "Male confidence, in this domain at least," the researchers write, "does seem to outstrip male competence."