Sex differences in humor appreciation

Obwohl Humor immer im Zentrum wissenschaftlichen Interesses stand, haben bisher nur wenige Forscher Humor mittels Verhaltensbeobachtung untersucht. Empirische Arbeiten, die Fragebögen als einziges Untersuchungswerkzeug verwenden, sind äußerst anfällig dafür, Ergebnisse zu generieren, die einer gewissen sozialen Erwünschtheit entspringen. Daher führte ich eine Studie über den Sinn für Humor durch, die gänzlich auf Verhaltensbeobachtungen beruht. Laut Weisfeld (1993) kann Lachen als Maß für den Grad an gefühltem Humor dienen. Unsere männlichen und weiblichen Vorfahren unterlagen unterschiedlichen Selektionsdrücken, die mögliche Erklärungen für Geschlechtsunterschiede im Sinn für Humor darstellen. So führt uns das asymmetrische elterliche Investment zu einer Gesellschaft geprägt von weiblicher Wahl und männlicher Konkurrenz. Eine Konsequenz des intrasexuellen Konkurrenzkampfes unter Männern ist das so genannte “young male syndrome”, das besagt, dass junge Männer im Vergleich zu Frauen eher dazu tendieren Risiken einzugehen, also Szenarien provozieren, in denen sie beweisen können, dass sie auf dem Partnermarkt die bessere Wahl sind. Aufgrund der patrilokalen Lebensweise unserer Vorfahren war es für Frauen notwendig, sich in einer fremden Gruppe sozial zu integrieren. Das beste Werkzeug dazu ist Kommunikation. Daher haben Frauen im Vergleich zu Männern ausgeprägtere verbale Fähigkeiten entwickelt. Dies lässt darauf schließen, dass Männer bzw. Frauen verstärkt über Humor lachen, der geschlechtsspezifisch evolutionär relevante Themen einschliesst. Frühere Studien über den Sinn für Humor ergaben, dass Männer dazu tendieren über aggressive oder anzügliche Themen zu lachen, wohingegen sich Frauen bevorzugt über nicht-tendenziösen Humor amüsieren. Zweck dieser Studie war es herauszufinden, ob Frauen eher auf Kommunikations-bezogenen Humor reagieren und Männer eher auf aggressiven Humor und ob dieses in deren expressivem Verhalten beobachtet werden kann. In einer Vorstudie konnten mittels Hauptkomponentenanalyse drei basale Humorfaktoren erarbeitet werden: Schadenfreude (Schadenfreude bei einem Missgeschick, Schadenfreude bei Gefahr), Unkonventionell (Normverletzung sozialer Regeln, Sexismus) und Kommunikation (Kognitive Inkongruenz, Wortspiel, Missverständnis). 84 männliche und 83 weibliche Versuchspersonen wurden mittels Kamera aufgenommen, während sie sich 18 mehr oder weniger lustige Werbefilme ansahen. Die Probanden sahen die Werbefilme jeweils in Paaren, jedoch ohne sich vorher oder während der Vorführung zu sehen. Diese Stimmulus-Filme wurden auf der Basis der drei definierten Humorfaktoren ausgewählt (jeweils die drei Werbefilme, die am höchsten bzw. am niedrigsten auf den drei Humor-Dimensionen laden). Es war zu erwarten, dass Männer eher bei Werbefilmen lachen, die ein hohes Mass an Schadenfreude beinhalten, während Frauen eher auf Werbefilme ansprechen, die einen hohen Kommunikationsanteil aufweisen. Beide Geschlechter sollten laut Hypothese gleichermassen über unkonventionellen Humor lachen. Die Probanden füllten ausserdem Fragebögen zur Kontrolle der momentanen Befindlichkeit, sowie für andere Störvariablen aus. Ausserdem mussten sie zu jedem Film angeben, wie lustig sie diesen empfunden haben. Die Videoaufnahmen von den Probanden wurden anschliessend verwendet, um das gezeigte Verhalten zu kodieren. Es konnten keine Geschlechterunterschiede bezüglich des Humor-korrespondierenden Verhaltens (z.B. lachen und lächeln) gefunden werden. Es wurden auch keine Geschlechtsunterschiede bezüglich der Humorkomponenten gefunden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der momentane Gefühlszustand expressives Verhalten in hohem Maße beeinflusst. Ausserdem,trägt diese Studie dazu bei, eine neue Methode zur Messung vom Ausmass an gefühltem Humor über Verhaltensbeobachtung zu entwickeln. Eine ethologische Herangehensweise macht das Messen von Humor sehr viel objektiver. Mit dieser Studie konnten zusätzliche empirische Hinweise dargelegt werden, dass Gesichtsausdrücke ambivalente Signale sind, deren Bedeutung durch andere Kommunikations-Kanäle moduliert werden kann.Whilst humor has always captured scientific interest, few researchers have investigated humor through observational studies so far. Empirical works employing questionnaire instruments only, are most vulnerable to generate results based on social desirability. Therefore I carried out a study on humor appreciation based on behavior observation. According to Weisfeld (1993) laughter could serve as a useful measure of the amount of humor appreciation. Possible reasons for sex differences in humor appreciation could be sought in different selection pressures for our male and female ancestors. Asymmetric investment leads to female choice and male competition. One consequence of intrasexual competition is the so-called young male syndrome, i.e. men tend to seek risky situations to a higher extent than women, thus creating a setting in which they can prove that they are the better choice. Due to patrilocality women must seek for social integration into a foreign group. The most important tool to pursue this goal is communication. Therefore women have developed more sophisticated verbal skills. Consequently, men and women should appreciate humor that touches the evolutionary relevant topics. Studies of humor appreciation generally indicate that men are more likely to enjoy humor based on aggressive and sexual themes, whereas women are more likely to enjoy nontendentious humor. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether women respond more to humor associated with communication, and men respond more strongly to aggressive humor, and whether this can be observed in their expressive behavior. In a pre-study we determined three basic dimensions of humor: Schadenfreude (schadenfreude for misfortune, schadenfreude for hurtful actions), Unconventional (violation of social norms, sexism) and Communication (incongruity, wordplay, misunderstandings). Subjects (84 male and 83 female students) were videotaped while watching 18 more or less funny commercials in pairs, but without visual contact. The stimulus movies were selected based on the humor factors (the three top and lowest ranked for each dimension). I expected men to laugh more about movies conveying schadenfreude, women should laugh more about communication related humor. I did not expect any sex difference concerning the Unconventional humor factor. Subjects filled out questionnaires controlling for emotional state as well as other intervening variables, and indicated how humorous they found the respective movie. Video recordings were used for behavior coding, such as smiles and laughter. There was no significant sex difference in the total amount of behavioural correspondents (i.e. facial expressions) of humor. Our results suggest that current emotional state strongly affects expressive behavior. Additionally, the study contributes to a new method of humor measurement by behavioral observation, and could therefore serve for measuring humor more objectively. These findings underline that the expression of smiles and laughter is not limited to humor perception, but will only occur if the emotional state provides some basic readiness for humor appreciation. With this study we provide additional empirical evidence that facial expressions are ambiguous signals, whose meaning is modulated by other communication channels

Global study of social odor awareness

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10,794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics

Preferred interpersonal distances: a global comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reasons for facebook usage: Data from 46 countries

Seventy-nine percent of internet users use Facebook, and on average they access Facebook eight times a day (Greenwood et al., 2016). To put these numbers into perspective, according to Clement (2019), around 30% of the world\u2019s population uses this Online Social Network (OSN) site. Despite the constantly growing body of academic research on Facebook (Chou et al., 2009; Back et al., 2010; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; McAndrew and Jeong, 2012; Wilson et al., 2012; Krasnova et al., 2017), there remains limited research regarding the motivation behind Facebook use across different cultures. Our main goal was to collect data from a large cross-cultural sample of Facebook users to examine the roles of sex, age, and, most importantly, cultural differences underlying Facebook use

Affective interpersonal touch in close relationships: a cross-cultural perspective

Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors. Our results indicate that affective touch was most prevalent in relationships with partners and children, and its diversity was relatively higher in warmer, less conservative, and religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. This research allows for a broad and integrated view of the bases of cross-cultural variability in affective touch

Sex differences in mate preferences across 45 countries: A large-scale replication

Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the literature is fraught with conflicting methods, analyses, results, and conclusions. Using a new 45-country sample (N = 14,399), we attempted to replicate classic studies and test both the evolutionary and biosocial role perspectives. Support for universal sex differences in preferences remains robust: Men, more than women, prefer attractive, young mates, and women, more than men, prefer older mates with financial prospects. Cross-culturally, both sexes have mates closer to their own ages as gender equality increases. Beyond age of partner, neither pathogen prevalence nor gender equality robustly predicted sex differences or preferences across countries

Preferred Interpersonal Distances: A Global Comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies

Contrasting Computational Models of Mate Preference Integration Across 45 Countries

Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across these many preference dimensions into summaries of the overall mate value of their potential mates. Here we explore the computational design of this mate preference integration process using a large sample of n = 14,487 people from 45 countries around the world. We combine this large cross-cultural sample with agent-based models to compare eight hypothesized models of human mating markets. Across cultures, people higher in mate value appear to experience greater power of choice on the mating market in that they set higher ideal standards, better fulfill their preferences in choice, and pair with higher mate value partners. Furthermore, we find that this cross-culturally universal pattern of mate choice is most consistent with a Euclidean model of mate preference integration