The Humor Gap Summary

“The Humor Gap,” by Christie Nicholson, explains the roles between men and women concerning humor in various stages in a relationship. Nicholson includes various sources such as studies, “humor expert” involvement and research experiments to display the portrayal of humor among the unalike genders. Because of recent humor studies, importance of humor in relationships, women’s decision process during ‘her time of the month’ and how stressors can affect a relationship. Humor between genders was first looked at in the 1990’s. The first experiments to be produced looked at humor production. During these experiments, subjects would come up with jokes or examiners would study how individuals would amuse one another in the real world. Robert R. Provine took this basic study to the next level. In 1996 Provine examined 3,745 men and women. His study concluded women pursued a man who could make her laugh twice as much as she made him laugh. On the contrary, men offered humor to women three times as much, which was more than needed. About 10 years later Eric R. Bressler, preformed another study by looking at yet another gender difference. During this study, psychologists showed 200 participants photographs of men and women that were paired with either a funny or straight comment. …show more content…
According to Provine, “both men and women laugh at men than at women.” Although women laugh more often, men and women are equally funny. Psychiatrist Allan, concluded people laugh at banal phrases. His research also proved that people tend to laugh more when they are speaking opposed to listening. In fact, in groups of pairs, the speaker laughed 46 percent more and when a woman was in conversation with a man she produced 126 percent more laugher, again proving women laugh more than men. In 1990 a study by a psychologist showed the amount of female laughter actually predicts how much attraction is between the two