Men think they’re funnier – and are happier if partner agrees, study reveals

It’s a debate that many couples regulary have: are men or women funnier? 

Now, a new study has confirmed what many women already know – men think they’re the funny one in a relationship. 

What’s more, researchers from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, say that men are happier in their relationship if their other half lets them think they are the comic superior. 

The study revealed 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 set out to understand the role humour plays in long-term relationships.

‘People value a good sense of humour in their potential partners,’ the researchers wrote in their study, published in Personality and Individual Differences.

‘In courtship, humour can be an indicator of psychological traits, romantic interest, and similar values and life goals.

‘However, less attention has been given to the function of humour in established couples.’

The researchers recruited 149 heterosexual couples who had been together for an average of seven years.

Participants were surveyed on the humour in their relationships, including how often they joked with their partner, how often their partner joked, and how often they thought their partner’s jokes were funny.

The results revealed that the men told more jokes than the women and rated their jokes as better.

However, there was no sex 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 partners’ jokes,’ the researchers wrote.

‘Men also rated their jokes as funnier than the jokes of their partners.’

In terms of style of humour, men used more aggressive and self-enhancing humour styles than women.

‘Both sexes may similarly use affiliative styles to build social relations and coalitions; however, men may more often use aggressive and self-enhancing styles in intrasexual competition,’ the researchers wrote.

Meanwhile, men were happier in their relationship if their partner evaluated the quality of their own jokes as worse but the quality of their partner’s as better. 

Overall, the findings highlight the key role that humour plays in long-term relationships. 

‘Jokes, laughter, and humour 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 judged participants’ senses of humour, for example by asking them to write an amusing caption to go with a cartoon.

The researchers caution that the findings do not suggest all men are funnier than all women — with many women comedians being funnier than ’99. per cent’ of men.  

However, the findings have left some women comedians feeling put out of humour.

Danish comedian Sofie Hagen, for example, tweeted that the study was ‘f**king ignorant’, while Scotland’s Eleanor Morton called it ‘another boring ‘study’ ‘. 

CAN LAUGHING AT YOURSELF IMPROVE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH?

A new study from researchers in Spain has found that laughing at oneself might be good for you. (file photo)

Researchers in Spain have discovered that laughing at oneself is not necessarily a bad thing.

A new study revealed that self-defeating humor might have an effect on how angry you are.

But the report explained how some people use humor to cover up negative thoughts.

The study said: ‘The researchers are quick to point out that certain styles of humor may be employed to conceal negative intentions and feelings.’

One of the researchers explained the potential dark sides of the tactic, saying 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 individuals with low scores in honesty to build trust, closeness, etc. with other people and thereby use important information in order to manipulate them or obtain advantages in the future.’