Humor and sex differences

This is no laughing matter. Men and women are different in many ways. A recent study from Stanford has shown that gender actually affects how our brains respond to humor.
[ Sex differences in brain activation elicited by humor -- Azim et al. 102 (45): 16496 -- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ]

The study used a special type of MRI for the imaging and it revealed that women activate the certain parts of the brain involved in language processing and working memory more than men when viewing funny cartoons. Women were also more likely to activate with greater intensity the part of the brain that generates rewarding feelings in response to new experiences.

These results help explain the results of other studies that also suggest women and men differ in how humor is used and appreciated.

Previous researchers have shown that a certain area of the brain called the mesolimbic reward center is activated by events such as financial successes and cocaine use leading to the rewarding feelings of these events is also activated by humor.

In this study, 20 healthy adults (10 men and 10 women) viewed 70 black-and-white cartoons and then rated the cartoons on a one-to-10 “funniness scale.” During the screenings, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor participants’ brain function.

The results showed that men and women share much of the same areas in the brain for humor but the women’s brains were activated more in certain areas corresponding to emphasis on language and executive processing and the nucleus accumbens that is part of the mesolimbic reward center.

The researchers were reportedly caught off guard by this. They theorized that because the women in this study used more analytical machinery when deciphering humorous material, it signaled that they weren’t necessarily expecting the cartoons to be as rewarding as did the men. When a woman’s brain encountered the punch line, her reward center lit up. According to the researchers, “the activation of this center not only signals the presence of something pleasant, but that the pleasure was unexpected.”

“Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon,” said Reiss (one of the researchers). “So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.” Although it could be that they have lived with men long enough that they are used to being disappointed and therefore have fewer expectations at the onset.

The researchers also found that the funnier the cartoon, the more the reward center was activated in women. That was not the case in men who seemed to “expect” the cartoons to be funny from the start.

In a related study, researchers also found that personality traits, such as extroversion and introversion, affect how humor is processed and most women find men who are humorous to be more desirable.

So guys, keep it humorous. The women won’t expect it and it will stimulate their reward center more intensely.