Men Who Fail To Make Others Laugh With Their Jokes Are Judged More Harshly Than Women: Study

Men who try to crack a joke but fail to make people laugh are judged more negatively than women who fail at the same act.

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This is according to a new study conducted by researchers from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who were trying to better understand how people are judged every day.

The study (published in Science Direct) involved 5,400 American volunteers who were split into groups and were asked to read the story of a man or a woman who were on their first date. In one scenario, the jokes were failing to land as their partner wasn¡¯t finding them funny.

Volunteers were asked to rate the person who was attempting to crack the jokes based on how likeable, funny and competent they thought they were.

The results revealed that when the man failed to crack a joke good enough to impress his partner he was perceived as less attractive, likeable or competent compared to the woman who failed at the very same activity.

According to the researchers, perceived intentions played a crucial role in this perception, as women were often perceived to use humour to connect with others; however, for men, it was seen as a tool to make them look better.

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But this was not just restricted to a date-like setting; failure to perfectly land a joke in a workplace made the volunteers judge the man just as harshly as before, with the woman not getting the same treatment.

This means women are given more freedom to make mistakes than men when it comes to humour, although the main emphasis here is on perception rather than gender.

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Study author Taly Reich said in a statement, ¡°These aren't hard-set gender differences. It's more about why others think that the mistake was made in the first place.¡±

Researchers urge that people usually assume men are trying to show off and women have more noble intentions while making jokes. Keeping this in mind, researchers asked men to counter this perception and not be judged harshly when they fail to crack a joke, instead, it should be seen as an honest attempt to connect.