Women and men react differently to jokes, especially those with a sexist connotation. This conclusion was reached by German psychologists, experimentally showingthat men are more comfortable with such jokes, no matter who tells them.
Many women are annoyed by sexist “blonde gas station” jokes told by men, which are based on gender stereotypes. However, psychologist Sylvana Weber from Julius and Maximilian University in Würzburg (Germany) decided to find out experimentally how men relate to such jokes. “We were particularly interested in whether jokes that denigrate men pose a threat to masculinity,” Weber explained. She suggested that this threat is closely related to the theory (theory of precarious masculinity) that it is difficult for men to maintain and easily lose masculinity, and therefore must constantly be proven.
Priscilla DuPreez/AP
The study involved 198 people, including 74 women. The jokes proposed to the participants were divided into neutral (“How to put an elephant in the refrigerator? – Open the refrigerator, put the elephant, close the refrigerator”), belittling men, referring to gender stereotypes (“Why do boys do they whine? – Preparing to be a man”), simply belittling men (“What do you call a man with half a brain? – Gifted”), and similar jokes about women.
All jokes were told by six professional announcers, the recordings were processed in such a way that the jokes differed only in the gender of the narrator. In the first experiment, each participant was given 20 jokes from different categories to listen to in random order, and the scientists rated the reaction to them. “The results supported our hypothesis that women generally perceive jokes to be less funny than men,” Weber explained. Additionally, women rated jokes that put them down as less funny than jokes that put them down and were neutral, although this effect was not seen in men. Finally, sexist jokes, unlike men, are less well perceived by women if they are spoken by speakers of the opposite sex.
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In the second experiment, in which only 226 men, while assessing the response, the researchers wanted to know if the volunteers felt threatened by their masculinity, which needs to be confirmed. It turned out that none of the hypotheses put forward were confirmed – neither the sexist character of the jokes, nor the gender of the narrator had any particular effect on their appreciation. “It indicates that men don’t react to sexist humor the same way women do,” Weber said.
The results of the experiments showed that women perceive misogynistic jokes as threatening, especially when told by men. Apparently, jokes that put men down aren’t a threat to them, no matter who tells them. As the authors suggest, this is because men, in principle, have a higher status in society and therefore this status cannot be damaged by jokes.
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