You laugh! Men think they’re funnier than their partner and happier in a relationship when their other half makes them think they’re the weird boss, a study shows
- The researchers asked 149 couples about the role of humor in their relationship
- The results showed that men told more jokes and thought they were funnier
- Men were also happier when their partner rated the quality of their own jokes as lower but their partner’s quality as better
It’s a debate many couples regularly engage in: Are men or women funnier?
Now a new study has confirmed what many women already know – men think they are the funniest ones in a relationship.
Furthermore, researchers at Silesian University in Katowice, Poland, say men are happier in their relationship when their other half makes them think they’re the weird boss.
Men are happier in their relationships when their other half makes them think they’re the weird boss (stock image)
The study found that men tend to tell more jokes and think they’re funnier than their partner. Pictured: Graphs show participants’ ratings of the quality of their jokes and their partner’s jokes
In the study, the team wanted to understand the role humor plays in long-term relationships.
“People appreciate a good sense of humor in their potential partners,” the researchers write in their study, published in Personality and Individual Differences.
“In advertising, humor can be an indicator of psychological traits, romantic interest, and related values and life goals.
“However, less attention has been paid to the function of humor in established couples.”
The researchers recruited 149 heterosexual couples who had been together for an average of seven years.
Participants were asked about humor in their relationships, including how often they joked with their partner, how often their partner joked, and how often they found their partner’s jokes funny.
The results showed that the men told more jokes than the women and rated their jokes better.
However, there were no gender differences in the frequency of laughing at a partner’s jokes.
“Men produced more jokes than women, but the sexes did not differ in how often they responded to their partner’s jokes,” the researchers wrote.
“Men also rated their jokes as funnier than their partners’ jokes.”
In terms of humor style, men used more aggressive and self-reinforcing humor styles than women.
“Both sexes can similarly use affiliation styles to build social relationships and coalitions; However, men may more frequently employ aggressive and self-reinforcing styles in intrasexual competition,” the researchers wrote.
Meanwhile, men were happier in their relationship when their partner rated their own jokes as poorer but their partner’s quality as better.
Overall, the results underscore the key role humor plays in long-term relationships.
“Jokes, laughter and humor are still part of the mechanisms involved in building relationships between partners in long-term relationships,” the researchers concluded.
The study comes shortly after researchers claimed that men are, on average, funnier than women.
Psychologists assessed the participants’ sense of humor, for example by asking them to write an amusing caption for a cartoon.
The researchers caution that the results don’t suggest that all men are funnier than all women — with many female comedians being funnier than 1999 percent of men.
However, the results have caused some comedians to lose their sense of humor.
Danish comedian Sofie Hagen, for example, tweeted that the study was “f**king ignorant”, while Scotswoman Eleanor Morton called it “another boring ‘study'”.
CAN LAUGHING AT YOURSELF IMPROVE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH?
A new study by researchers in Spain has found that laughing at yourself might be good for you. (file photo)
Researchers in Spain have found that laughing at yourself isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
A new study has shown that self-destructive humor can affect how angry you are.
But the report explained how some people use humor to cover up negative thoughts.
The study states, “Researchers are quick to point out that certain styles of humor can be employed to mask negative intentions and feelings.”
Explaining the potential dark side of the tactic, one of the researchers said that the “results suggest that humor, even when presented as benign or well-intentioned, can also represent a strategy for masking negative intentions.
“Humor enables people with low honesty scores to build trust, closeness, etc. with other people and thereby use important information to manipulate them or gain advantage in the future.”
