Men are funnier than women, research suggests

Researchers, who look at studies which asked people to rate men and women’s humour, have concluded that men are funnier than women.

The study found that 63% of men were funnier than the average woman.

It studied normal people, rather than professional comedians to come up with the results.

Some women comedians have hit back at the claim, though, claiming that research could put women off pursuing a career in comedy.

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Pritti Moore, who studies stand-up improv, told Yahoo: “Our classes are already disproportionately male, I don’t think anybody was asking for this study and it’ll just act as another barrier for women in comedy.”

Aberystwyth University and the University of North Carolina conducted the study, which looked at how funny 5,000 people were.

The researchers wanted to find out whether the stereotype that men were funnier than women was true.

In a number of the studies, men and women were asked to conjure up a witty caption to sit alongside a cartoon. Independent judges then rated the joke without knowing the gender of the caption writer.

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Lead researcher, Dr Gil Greengross, defended criticism of the study saying that it wasn’t conducted to prove “women aren’t funny”.

“Sara Pascoe, for example, she's a great comedian and she's probably funnier than 99% of all males in the world... it's just that on average we find there's a difference.” He told Radio 1’s Newsbeat.

He went on to say that there was evidence to suggest “humour plays a major role in mating”.

“Women look for a sense of humour in a man. Men, on the other hand, prefer women who laugh at their humour.”

“That means that over our evolutionary history, men likely had to compete harder with other men to impress women with their sense of humour.”

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