oppn parties Men Overestimate Their Ability To Tickle The Funny Bone

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
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Men Overestimate Their Ability To Tickle The Funny Bone

By Linus Garg

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.

Laughter, they say, is the best medicine. But the recent study published in Psychology Today that says that men are funnier than women is not going to make many laugh. It is insolent to pass judgment on such matters because being funny is a subjective thing. The listener to a joke has to be intelligent enough to understand it to consider it funny. If men do their 'bro' thing before a largely male audience, they would definitely invite more laughter than if the same jokes were presented before a predominantly female audience.

Being funny and inducing laughter is no one's exclusive preserve. It is only subject to the ability of the person to connect with his audience. Hence, a joke about Donald Trump might not get any laughs in rural India while a Haryanvi joke would fall flat before an audience in London that has few Indians in attendance. To be funny, a person needs to understand the intelligence level and social and cultural preferences of his or her audience. After that, it does not matter if the joke is uttered by a male or a female.

Ample evidence that men are funnier is not true is provided in family gatherings in India. It is often seen that while the men nurse their drinks and indulge in business gossip, it is the women who provide the laughs. One has seen tais, kakis, mamis, bhuas and bhabhis bring the house down with their witty responses to situations and their timely one-liners. They are second to none when it comes to being funny. Only, they get lesser opportunities in a patriarchal society.

The other evidence is the increasing number of female stand-up comedians. In what was till recently an exclusive male preserve, women are breaking in and grabbing the spotlight in large numbers worldwide. In cinema too, although backed by the script and dialogues, female actors are proving their mettle as fine comedians with unparalleled comic timing. Men, like the author of the above study, Dr. Gil Greengross, perhaps overestimate their ability to tickle the funny bone.