Most people would like a good sense of humor in their partner but I’ve heard it much more from straight women than from other demographic groups. Is it just confirmation bias? Something else? Is there something to this?
If it’s true that straight women put more emphasis on a sense of humor in their partner than other groups, who comes second?
What might be the reasons for this?
NB: Yeah, yeah, not everyone is the same, people vary, you or people you know are special snowflake exceptions, yada yada yada. I’m asking about distribution patterns and possible underlying causes that have statistical effects, not absolute categorical labels.
You say you’ve heard it the most from straight women, but I’m assuming that’s because perhaps they just mention/emphasize it more. That doesn’t mean others don’t, and talk isn’t the same as actual behavior. Ex: I’m sure most people would say a personality trait matters more than looks or something labelled as superficial but that doesn’t mean it’s true.
According to some research, both men and women tend to assume that men are funnier than women, although the difference in perceived funniness nearly vanishes when the gender of the person-being-funny is not revealed.
This suggests that as a society, we tend to expect that men will be funny, and men tend to think of themselves as funny, since that’s a “natural trait” for a man to have. So a straight woman saying that she wants a man to be funny appeals to men, because they think “Yeah, I got that!”
TL;DR: Men place a high value on being funny and tend to assume that they are funny, so women consciously or unconsciously flatter men by likewise placing a high value on men’s being funny.
I like this thought process. Makes a lot of sense. I personally do not value humor in my partner aside from that his humor isn’t offensive to me. However, thinking further about it, I consider that maybe what women mean when they say they want a man that makes them laugh, is actually that they’re saying they want a non-aggressive/non-threatening man. Because if a man is in good humor and ready to put a smile on someone’s face, they’re not here to beat you. I can see why, if the two opposites are funny/threatening, women will say in coded language that they always want a guy who makes them laugh (rather than makes them scream). It might not be the conscious thought process, but I can see some women being scared by serious men because they seem threatening or controlling, so the default is asking for a funny guy instead.
Also, men expect a woman to laugh at their jokes and assume that if she does, that means she finds them attractive (1). Uh, no, sometimes we just liked the joke.
1: for a certain subsection of the male population, if she doesn’t she’s a bitch, because of course they were funny! Never mind that the majority of other guys also didn’t find it funny, the jokester wasn’t interested in the reactions of guys.
“Has a sense of humor” or “makes me laugh” is not necessarily the opposite of “serious” or of “threatening”. It usually means “we have similar senses of humor”: senses of humor are like accents in that everybody has one, but some people like practical jokes and others loathe them; some people like deadpan humor and others don’t get it, etc.
If you look at the actual study and methodology, it doesn’t really support this claim, and it appears to have been misinterpreted (possibly even by the study authors themselves) based on the nature of the statistical underpinnings.
The main issue is the assumption - as a casual observer or someone unfamiliar with stats might well assume - that a difference in averages of 0.11 on a 0-5 scale is a very small difference. But the way the scores were allocated was not linear. Instead, the captions were ranked against each other in an elimination-style tournament, with only “winners” advancing to the next round and scores allocated based on the number of rounds “won”. In this setup, the average score is less than 1.0, and a difference of 0.11 is far more significant. (In addition, there’s a lot of randomness in the scores as well - as an extreme example, if the second funniest caption happened to come up against the funniest caption in the first round, it would be scored a zero. This would additionally tend to depress average score differentials of any two categories.)
Of note from a stat perspective: the study authors put in some statistical measures of the 0.11 (and the 0.16 and 0.06 for males and females, respectively) but those are measures of the statistical strength of the test itself, I.e. the likelihood that these results are random variation and the true score is zero. They don’t measure the question of “how much funnier, on average, produces a 0.11 score?” which is how it’s apparently being misinterpreted.
[Of further note, the authors - and article writer - appear to contrast the small 0.11 “actual” number with a much bigger difference in how men and women projected they would rank (2.3 and 1.5, respectively). But there is no basis at all for any comparison, since the projection numbers were apparently done on a simple linear scale.]
Again, humor is conventionally viewed as a positive trait in men, and men tend to perceive themselves as possessing that trait. So I’m not sure we need to look any farther than that for the explanation of why straight women seeking male partners tend to say that they find humor an attractive trait in a man.
That’s a valid point, but it’s important not to overstate it. Because culture/societal influence and inherent qualities are not uncorrelated. To the contrary, something which is ultimately based on a genuine inherent quality will generally translate into a cultural aspect as well, which will tend to magnify that quality. So if men and women have genuine differences as regards to humor, there will naturally develop an additional layer of societal role expectations.
Point being that you can’t point to the fact that something has a demonstrable cultural component and use it to undermine the notion that there’s more to it than that, since one big reason for the cultural component to exist to begin with would be that underlying inherent component.
IOW, if men have a natural tendency to be funnier, then that itself would cause humor to be seen as a masculine quality, which would in turn cause people to perceive humor differently - and more favorably - from men as compared to from women.
[Note that for purposes of this discussion there are really 3 possibilities. 1) that men are (on average) funnier due to some inherent aspect of male brains, 2) that men are (on average) funnier due to societal expectation pressuring them to develop their brains and personalities along those lines, and 3) that men aren’t funnier at all for any reason, but people tend to perceive them as funnier (or pretend to). For purposes of the point you raised, the distinction between 1) and 2) does not seem significant.]
