Why men and women don’t always laugh at the same jokes… Men enjoy visual jokes and slapstick while women find political jokes funnier, study suggests

Men really may be from Mars and women from Venus – at least when it comes to their different senses of humour.

Men like visual jokes and slapstick pratfalls, enjoying these more than women, a study suggests.

Meanwhile women rate jokes about political issues and domestic relationships more highly than men.

The finding comes from 3,380 people who attended an exhibition of cartoons published in British newspapers and magazines between 1930 and 2010.

Presented with 19 pairs of cartoons, and asked to pick their favourite, gender differences emerged.

Overall, men significantly preferred visual jokes, when compared to women.

Men rated slapstick cartoons, like paint cans falling on well-dressed people in the street, more highly than women did.

But they rated jokes about domestic dynamics, like marriage, and political issues less highly.

Professor Robin Dunbar, the psychologist who analysed the data, from the University of Oxford, said: ‘We found that men are more amused than women by visual, immediate jokes like slapstick – jokes like someone slipping over on a banana skin, or, most likely, the classic scene from Only Fools and Horses where Del Boy falls through the bar.

‘It seems women may be deeper and prefer more subtle jokes about relationships and how people interact.

‘These results make some sense as women typically spend more time discussing social relationships, while men bond more over banter and trying to make each other laugh.

‘Slapstick and visual jokes are quick, witty, and tend to get a laugh, so might fit the way men interact better.’

Men like visual jokes and slapstick pratfalls, enjoying these more than women, a study suggests (Stock photo) 

Cartoons published in newspapers and magazines are a good way to measure sense of humour, as they typically deliver a quick joke through a single image and minimal words – usually a speech bubble or caption.

The study at the Cartoon Museum included six types of cartoon – those dealing with social or political commentary, those with verbal jokes like puns and wordplay, those with visual jokes, those containing funny situations like slapstick, and those poking fun at domestic themes.

Both men and women preferred more recent cartoons and found verbal jokes, social commentary and jokes about domestic situations funniest, based on the cartoons they said they liked best out of the pairs presented.

But women were slightly more keen on domestic jokes, like those focusing on how husbands and wives behave and romantic relationships in general, as well as cartoons about political events and politicians in the public eye.

Perhaps controversially, researchers, writing in the journal Humor, suggest this might be because women engage with the world more ‘reflectively’ and men do so in a ‘more superficial, humour-based way’.

The findings suggest a maximum of two characters in a cartoon is best to get a laugh without people having to wrk too hard to understand the motivations of too many people in the scenario.