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Are men funnier than women, or do we just think they are?
Hooper, Jade Sharpe, Donald Roberts, Sam G. B.
Hooper, Jade
Sharpe, Donald
Roberts, Sam G. B.
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Publication Date
2016-03
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Abstract
Despite the widely held view that men are funnier than women, research supporting
this view is inconsistent. Instead, the view that men are funnier than women may be a
stereotype rather than a reflection of real differences in humor. Considering a
previously found source memory bias in the attribution of funnier captions to men and
less funny captions to women, this stereotype may be working to further perpetuate
this mistaken belief. The current study aims to investigate this possible stereotype and
further investigate an attribution bias arising from this stereotype. Two-hundred and
twenty-eight participants from three countries (Britain, Canada, and Australia) rated the
funniness of male and female-authored cartoon captions while blind to the gender of
the caption authors. Participants were then asked to guess the gender of the caption
authors and were also asked which gender they believe to be the funniest. Participants
both male and female believed men are the funniest gender. However, this belief was
not reflected in their ratings of the funniness of the cartoon captions. Support was
found for a bias in attributing male authorship to the funniest cartoon captions, and
female authorship to the least funny cartoon captions. This bias cannot not be
attributed to source memory. It was suggested this stereotype may be self-fulfilling in
nature and additional mechanisms maintaining this stereotype are proposed.
Citation
Hooper, J., Sharpe, D., & Roberts, S. G. B. (2016). Are men funnier than women, or do we just think they are? Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 2(1): 54-62. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000064
Publisher
Journal
Translational Issues in Psychological Science
Research Unit
DOI
10.1037/tps0000064
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PubMed Central ID
Type
Article
Language
en
Description
This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record
Series/Report no.
ISSN
EISSN
2332-2179