Ha-Ha Funny vs. Ha-Ha Weird

In the wake of the “historic change” on Tuesday, the question “who has a better sense of humor – liberals or conservatives?” may become a pivotal one.

And the answers? Well, they’ll surprise…

…well, anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, or who is driven entirely by media meme and dogma. You know who I’m talking about.

Psychology Today notes:

To look into this question we approached 285 individuals in public places in Boston, asking them to answer a few questions about their political beliefs, and most importantly to rate how funny they found 22 jokes (see all jokes below). Some of the jokes we used were more funny, some were less funny, and in general they fell into seven categories: race, religion, golf, employment, Jack Handey’s deep thoughts, marriage, and family. Participants were asked to rate each joke on a scale from 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious).

At the end we had 140 self declared liberals and 145 self declared conservatives, and the results were not at all what we expected. As it turned out conservatives gave significantly higher rating to the jokes in each of the seven categories (see table below)!

So, is the stereotype of liberals as being funnier completely off? When we asked our respondents to self-report how funny they are, liberals indicated that they were funnier. This means that liberals are not finding life to be funnier, but they think they are.

If you’ve comparison-shopped a MOB party and “Drinking Liberally”, or gone to both Nihilist In Golf Pants and Clicking Spot for entertainment, this comes as no surprise.

This piece in the NYTimes analyzes the “issue” further, and draws more – and similar – conclusions:

“Conservatives tend to be happier than liberals in general,” said Dr. Martin, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario. “A conservative outlook rationalizes social inequality, accepting the world as it is, and making it less of a threat to one’s well-being, whereas a liberal outlook leads to dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and a sense that things need to change before one can be really happy.”

And of course, there’s a certain amount of Pauline Kael Effect going on, too:

Another possible explanation is that conservatives, or at least the ones in Boston, really aren’t the stiffs they’re made out to be by social scientists. When these scientists analyze conservatives, they can sound like Victorians describing headhunters in Borneo. They try to be objective, but it’s an alien culture.

The studies hailing liberals’ nonconformity and “openness to ideas” have been done by social scientists working in a culture that’s remarkably homogenous politically. Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one on social science and humanities faculties, according to studies by Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University. If you’re a professor who truly “seeks new experiences,” try going into a faculty club today and passing out McCain-Palin buttons.

Could it be that the image of conservatives as humorless, dogmatic neurotics is based more on political bias than sound social science? Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who reviews the evidence of cognitive differences in his 2005 book, “Expert Political Judgment,” said that while there were valid differences, “liberals and conservatives are roughly equally closed-minded in dealing with dissonant real-world evidence.”

A friggin’ commie professor would say that.

(Via Sanden Totten @ MPR’s LoopHole)

4 thoughts on “Ha-Ha Funny vs. Ha-Ha Weird

  1. I don’t know about that. Mitch is the only one of you guys who can joke his way out of a paper bag.

  2. AC is an example of a liberal who thinks that he is funnier than he really is.
    As for me –
    I’m not worried about the change Obama wants, it’s the folding money! Har!

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