Being funny is one of man’s most sought after characteristics. I say “man’s” for a reason. Christopher Hitchens stated the obvious in his essay Why Women Aren’t Funny:
Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.
While we certainly can appreciate funny women – the same way we can appreciate beautiful men – humor seems to be a less potent competitive advantage in women when it comes to the cut-throat mating marketplace.
Why is this so? Firstly we should ask, why are humor so powerful in generating attraction in the first place?
I defer to Geoffrey Miller in virtually all things, and this is not one of the exceptions. Miller suggests that humor works as an honest mental fitness indicator. An honest fitness indicator is an indicator that is hard to fake: a bright peacock’s tail that is costly to grow and attracts predators for example. An inferior peacock will not be able to fake this, because to sport such a tail requires expert hunting skills to obtain all the necessary nutrients, and surviving with it demands the strength and speed to escape predators.
Humans do not grow tails of course. As a social specie, we put a high premium on social skills and intelligence, not plumage. Miller thinks that since humor often is cognitively complex to produce and is easy to get wrong – who of us haven’t experienced a joke bombing – a sense of humor displays high intelligence.
If so, you’d expect smart people to be funnier. According to this fascinating article entitled Humor as a Mental Fitness Indicator by Daniel P. Howrigan at University of Chicago at Boulder, this is indeed the case.
To explain the pervasive role of humor in human social interaction and among mating partner preferences, Miller (2000a) proposed that intentional humor evolved as an indicator of intelligence. To test this, we looked at the relationships among rater-judged humor, general intelligence, and the Big Five personality traits in a sample of 185 college age students (115 women, 70 men). General intelligence positively predicted rater-judged humor, independent of the Big Five personality traits. Extraversion also predicted raterjudged humor, although to a lesser extent than general intelligence. General intelligence did not interact with the sex of the participant in predicting rating scores on the humor production tasks. The current study lends support to the prediction that effective humor production acts as an honest indicator of intelligence in humans.
Homer Simpson got it right people: Be more funny.
The funniness gender gap is readily explained in this light. Sense of humor indicates intelligence which is strongly correlated with social status. Women place a high premium on social status in a mate, because historically their own social status – and thus their safety and access to resources – is to a large extent determined by that of their partner. Men’s status are on the other hand wholly dependent on their own efforts and relationships to other MEN of high status, so these attributes are less important in their mate choices.
