WEATHER
Today’s self-help column is strictly for guys on Valentine’s Day. We’re going to take an in-depth look at what makes women laugh and answer the often-asked question: “Where can I get a good, but inexpensive, sense of humor?”
Fortunately, we have a study done by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine to guide us in this quest for self-knowledge. They have found … drum roll, please … that men and women do not have the same idea about what is funny.
These will come as a shock to you guys.
But I am not making this up. A whole team of doctors funded by the National Institute of Health spent months figuring out that, while men and women use the same part of the brain to judge whether a joke is funny or not, men are less discriminating.
Of course, even if you’re a guy, you don’t need a Stanford University education to figure this out. You just need to remember last Saturday night, when you told that side-splitting joke about the blonde, the brunette and the Rabbi that had — and this is really, really funny — the punch line where you got to scream the word “faaarrrrrrt.”
If you think about it now, you’ll recall that, while all the guys were slapping their thighs, rolling on the floor and possibly even shooting beer out their noses, none of the women were laughing. You might even remember your wife looking at you with cold, penetrating eyes and mouthing the words, “That’s not funny.”
If you’re a guy, you’re probably a living example of what highly educated professors at Stanford needed thousands of dollars to prove. Incidentally, the differences between men’s and women’s senses of humor had already been studied by two Canadian psychologists in 2003 and reported on at the time by the prize-winning investigative reporter Dave Barry, who wrote:
“… Simple, slapstick humor, such as the Three Stooges, appeals to the following two groups of people:
“1. People with brain damage.
“2. Men.
“(At this point, the women readers are thinking, “That’s only one group!”)”
So, this is not really new information. However, the Stanford bunch did explain why this is true. They found that women used “language and executive processing” to scrutinize the joke to see if it fit their views on what is acceptable humor. If it did, then their “reward center” responded more enthusiastically.
Thus, it’s easy to see the differences. Simply ask yourself, “What stimulates a man’s reward center?”
Exactly. Now, to address today’s other topic I must say that I have no idea where to find a sense of humor. I’d like to point out, however, that this has nothing to do with being a man. According to another study done by researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, men and women are equally good navigators.
That’s right. Guys simply use different methods for finding where they’re going, as illustrated by this example:
Woman: I’m lost, so I’ll stop and ask directions.
Man: Whoa, I have no idea where I am, so I better go faster because it’s going to take me longer to get there.
Of course, finding my way in a vehicle does not explain why I can’t see the bag of garbage waiting by the front door. We might need another study to explain that.
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