Geoffrey MillerVerified account

Overall, more than 5,000 subjects from 36 samples met our criteria. They cover more than 40 years of research from various countries. Two third of the subjects were women. Most of the data was never published before in a peer-reviewed journal. 5/10

We found a small to moderate effect size of d=0.32. Put in less technical terms, this means that 63% percent of men have higher humor ability than the average woman. We tested for various moderators, such as sex of first author, or sex of the judges. 6/10

Age of the participants, year of published study, whether the sample included students or not - none of those made any difference. There was also no evidence of publication bias, so the results are robust. 7/10

To be clear, this is not about the stereotypical view that women are not funny. This is about average differences. Many women are funny, some like @sarapascoe or @SarahKSilverman are funnier that 99.9% of all men. Still, a differences on average seems to exists. 8/10

What explains the differences? Best evidence for the signaling hypothesis proposed by @primalpoly . Choosier women use humor as a cue to intelligence when selecting a mate. Men compete with other men to be funnier. Plenty of evidence to support this (e.g. from dating sites). 9/10

why are you so keen on evolutionary explanation? culture suppresses humor in women and encourages it in men in a million ways and you totally dismiss this in your analysis. this is shoddy thinking.

I think the evolutionary explanation is much more consistent with the evidence (which I review in the paper), but am open to see any research supporting the cultural suppression hypothesis.

send me the full text of section 4.1 of your study if you are able: my full name @ gmail dot com