Sense of humour varies enormously from person to person, but while much is learned and culturally influenced, there is no evidence of systematic differences in the things that men and women find funny (). Neither does recent research back an early finding that women laugh more than men overall.
There is one scenario, though, in which differences between women and men begin to show 鈥� in their interactions with each other. Right from the start, boys are the laugh-getters, the buffoons and the school clowns who entertain the giggling girls, according to laughter researcher . He has found this same pattern in lonely hearts columns, where men tend to advertise their sense of humour and women seek a funny man. Provine believes this shows the behaviours have evolved by sexual selection and has controversially suggested that female laughter in the presence of men is a signal of submission.
Another possibility is that this difference is culturally rather than biologically determined. Many studies have shown that dominant individuals, from tribal elders to workplace bosses, are more likely to orchestrate laughter than their subordinates, using it as a means of wielding power either to bond their followers or to divide and rule. The excess of female laughter in mixed-gender gatherings might simply reflect the fact that men generally hold more power in society than women.
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Or perhaps women are manipulating men in this case, as , a psychologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta and his colleague from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, believe. They find that laughter influences listeners in two ways. First, like any sudden, loud, rising sound, it is stimulating and puts us on high alert. Secondly, laughter also makes listeners feel better by association with positive emotions from earliest childhood. 鈥淢en and women can take advantage of these effects in different circumstances,鈥� Owren says. Women, he notes, are likely to be vigilant and wary with an unfamiliar man, but by laughing nervously they can influence his mood and put the encounter on a more positive footing. The same trick doesn鈥檛 work for men, according to Owren, because laughter would increase the woman鈥檚 already heightened state of alertness and make the situation tenser.
Read more: The secrets of laughter
