Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Men, Women, Laughter, and Love
Made you laugh.
I like to make people laugh. I’m especially funny (I think) when women are around. So, what’s with that?
Frankly, I don’t know why I like to make women laugh. Surprisingly, the neuroscience community seems mildly confused as well. I’ve been reading up on humor as a window into how our brains work. One aspect is that men and women view and use humor differently. But not, perhaps, in the ways you expect.
Here’s what I’ve discovered so far. (Unless noted otherwise, these little gems come from Scott Weems’ book, Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why).
Quantity – women laugh more than men. Weems estimates that women laugh roughly 125 percent more than men.
Aging – women tend to laugh less as they get older. Men not so much. Does it ever even out? We need another study to find out.
Time of day – both men and women laugh more in the afternoon and evening than they do in the morning. This could be related to Immoral Afternoons.
Humor appreciation (1) – men enjoy put-down humor more than women. But this assertion is disputed. Women don’t like put-down jokes about women. When you take these out the mix, men and women are roughly the same.
Humor appreciation (2) – men like dirty jokes more than women. Again, this is disputed. Many dirty jokes make fun of women. When you factor these out, the differences evaporate.
Shared values – people tend to bond (romantically and otherwise) with other people who have similar values. How do you know if someone shares your values? Humor may be the fastest way. Men and women both use humor as a way to gauge values and degree of fit.
Humor and mateability – men and women both value humor in a mate in America, at least. American women rated intelligence as the most desirable trait in a mate; humor finished a close second. (The two are highly related). For American men, the top three traits were intelligence, good looks, and humor. But, as Weems points out, it’s different in Siberia. There, the most desired traits revolve around dependability – including faithfulness and reliability. It’s almost like Maslow’s hierarchy – if your mate is not dependable, it doesn’t much matter if he or she is funny.
Mate selection – if you ask happily married couples why they were attracted to each other, the women often say, “He made me laugh”. The men often say, “She laughed at my jokes”. In other words, men’s humor is essentially the same as a peacock’s display. Apparently, these differences exist even in young children. Perhaps this is why so many class clowns are boys.
Laughers and listeners – in general, “… people tend to laugh more when they are speaking as opposed to listening.” The lone exception? “… when a man is talking to a woman, the woman laughs more than the man.” Perhaps she’s responding to the peacock display.
Humor production – while men and women seem similar in humor appreciation, they differ in humor production. In a study cited by Christie Nicholson, women preferred men “…who could make them laugh twice as often as they returned the favor. Men, on the other hand, offered humor about a third more than they requested it.” It’s all about mate selection. (Isn’t everything?)
Relationship maintenance – it’s not just mate selection, its also mate maintenance. According to Weems, “Nine out of ten couples say that humor is an important part of their relationship. …. laughing together is essential for marital success.”
So, what’s it all mean? Perhaps Christie Nicholson sums it up best, “A genuine laugh is one of the most honest ways to convey: I’m with you.”
Laughter, Love, and Longevity
Strong willed.
My mother was a strong-willed woman. My older sister is a strong-willed woman. My wife is a strong-willed woman. I have a very good sense of humor.
Are these phenomena related? I think they are. Psychologists classify humor as a Level 4 defense mechanism. Like other Level 4 mechanisms (altruism, gratitude, tolerance, mercy, etc.), humor is “…found among emotionally healthy adults … and [has] been adapted through the years to optimize success in human relationships and society”. More specifically, humor “is an overt expression of ideas and feelings … that give pleasure to others”.
So, if you find yourself surrounded by powerful people, humor is a good way to express your feelings, give pleasure to others, and build successful relationships. It may even help you get your way.
But wait, there’s more. According to the neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, laughter may signal that an apparently dangerous situation isn’t really so awful. He writes, “…laughter evolved to inform our kin … : don’t waste your precious resources on this situation; it’s a false alarm”. Nervous laughter may be a signal to ourselves that what we’re experiencing is not as terrible as it seems. That would explain audience laughter during Quentin Tarrantino movies (which seem like pumped up, colorized, vaguely delusional versions of The Three Stooges).
Laughter may also help us endure traumas, both physical and psychological. How long can you hold your hand in a bucket of ice cold water? Not long. As Scott Weems points out, however, if someone makes you laugh before you submerge your hand, you can keep it there longer. Laughter, in other words, can help us endure. By laughing at our trauma, we show ourselves that it’s really not so bad. We survived, didn’t we?
I wonder if this is why we tell grim jokes about tragic events. When the Challenger exploded in 1986, I remember hearing jokes within just a few days. I was shocked and numbed by the disaster, but I laughed out loud at the jokes. I was surprised at my own fecklessness but, apparently, my laughter was a “soothing balm”.
Weems notes that laughter – like chocolate – releases dopamine in our brains. It makes us feel good. It’s not just a feeling. Laughter can also lower our blood pressure, improve blood flow, and stimulate the immune system. Apparently, it can even help us recover from surgery. Indeed, Weems claims that, “Humor is also a form of exercise, keeping your minds healthy the same way that physical exertion helps our bodies.”
With all its health benefits, you might assume that people with a good sense of humor would live longer. But you’d be wrong. Weems cites two different studies that suggest that humor can make you healthier and happier but not older. In fact, the reverse may be true.
One longitudinal study sought to correlate personality traits, health, and longevity. The personality trait that promoted longevity best was conscientiousness, which “reflects how prudent and thoughtful a person is when dealing with others….”
Unlike conscientiousness, humor was negatively correlated with longevity. Why? No one really knows, but it may be that humorous people don’t take very good care of themselves. They’d rather be laughing than dieting or exercising. In fact, as we’ve seen before, people who are laughing just want to go on laughing. That’s not a bad thing unless you’re trying to motivate them to action.
Humor can help lubricate social mechanisms. It can help soothe and smooth. It can help us defend our interests and build successful relationships. It may not help us live longer but it helps us live better. If applied conscientiously, it can even help you live with talented, intelligent, strong-willed women.
Bitcoin and Permissionless Innovation
It’s a platform.
When I started this website, I didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission. An enabling platform was already in place. The platform consisted of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and many pieces of open source software. All I needed to do was download the latest version of WordPress, rent some space on a web server, and I was off to the races.
The key element, of course, is an open, accessible platform that facilitates innovation. In my case, the platform is a collection of Internet-based technologies. Other permissionless innovation platforms include the interstate highway system, the human genome project, and the public school system. The trick is to provide a platform that anyone can use without prior permission.
I thought about this as I was reading up on Bitcoin. I’ve written about Bitcoin as a currency (here and here). One of my intrepid readers, John Ball, suggested that I’m probably missing the essence of what Bitcoin is all about. John, who understands the technology better than I do, suggests that Bitcoin is a permissionless innovation platform. Here’s what he has to say:
“… Bitcoin has little to do with currency, and everything to do with a protocol and trusted ledger. I suspect we may see multiple ‘digital currencies’ just as we see multiple email systems. However, the concept of peer to peer transactions freed from the tolls of large intermediaries like Visa, Western Union, and First Data, is here to stay and will continue to grow.” (John’s entire comment is here. Just scroll down.)
With Visa, Western Union, or First Data, we have to ask permission and pay fees to use their proprietary system. Similarly, in the early days of software, developers had to ask permission and pay fees to run their programs on proprietary computers. With the advent of open operating systems like Unix, software developers no longer had to ask permission. They simply wrote to the open software platform. As a result, software blossomed and hardware became a commodity.
As John suggests, the same thing seems to be happening in the world of crypto-currencies. John predicts that we’ll see multiple digital currencies. He’s right. In fact, it’s already happening. You can use another permissionless innovation platform called Google to find: Peercoin, Dogecoin, Namecoin, and others. As far as I can tell, all of these are built on the Bitcoin platform. If I had better programming skills, I could create my own currency. Let’s call it Travis Tender.
While Bitcoin (the currency) has certainly had some PR mishaps lately, Bitcoin (the platform) is just starting to blossom. In fact, we might say that Bitcoin is to currency as Unix is to proprietary computing. If so, we’re about to see a wave of innovation that will make the original Bitcoin seem quaint.
Thanks, John.
Don’t Beat Yourself Up (Too Much)
Compared to this guy, I’m a great driver.
I’m a pretty good driver. How do I know? I can observe other drivers and compare their skills to mine. I see them making silly mistakes. I (usually) avoid those mistakes myself. QED: I must be a better-than-average driver. I’d like to stay that way and that motivates me to practice my driving skills.
Using observation and comparison, I can also conclude that I’m not a very good basketball player. I can observe what other players do and compare their skills to mine. They’re better than I am. That may give me the motivation to practice my hoops skills.
Using observation and comparison I can conclude that I’m better at driving the highway than at driving the lane. But how do I know if I’m a good thinker or not? I can’t observe other people thinking. Indeed, according to many neuroscientists, I can’t even observe myself thinking. System 1 thinking happens below the level of conscious awareness. So I can’t observe and compare.
Perhaps I could compare the results of thinking rather than thinking itself. People who are good thinkers should be more successful than those who aren’t, right? Well, maybe not. People might be successful because they’re lucky or charismatic, or because they were born to the right parents in the right place. I’m sure that we can all think of successful people who aren’t very good thinkers.
So, how do we know if we’re good thinkers or not? Well, most often we don’t. And, because we can’t observe and compare, we may not have the motivation to improve our thinking skills. Indeed, we may not realize that we can improve our thinking.
I see this among the students in my critical thinking class. Students will have varying opinions about their own thinking skills. But most of them have not thought about their thinking and how to improve it.
Some of my students seem to think they’re below average thinkers. In their papers, they write about the mistakes they’ve made and how they berate themselves for poor thinking. They can’t observe other people making the same mistake so they assume that they’re the only ones. Actually, the mistakes seem fairly commonplace to me and I write a lot of comments along these lines, “Don’t beat yourself over this. Everybody make this mistake.”
Some of my students, of course, think they’re above average thinkers. Some (though not many) think they’re about average. But I think the single largest group – maybe not a majority but certainly a plurality – think they’re below average.
I realized recently that the course aims to build student confidence (and motivation) by making thinking visible. When we can see how people think, then we can observe and compare. So we look at thinking processes and catalog the common mistakes people make. As we discuss these patterns, I often hear students say, “Oh, I thought I was the only one to do that.”
In general, students get the hang of it pretty quickly. Once they can observe external patterns and processes, they’re very perceptive about their own thinking. Once they can make comparisons, they seem highly motivated to practice the arts of critical thinking. It’s like driving or basketball – all it takes is practice.
Keeping An Open Mindset
If you train me, I’ll get smart.
If you don’t, I won’t
In the movie The Four Seasons, Rita Moreno plays Claudia Zimmer, a talkative, outspoken artist who believes she can help others by sharing her insights about their lives. She can be quite blunt. When other characters criticize her candor, she has a stock response: “I can’t help it. I’m Italian!”
According to the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, Claudia has a fixed mindset. Claudia believes that her personality is set; it’s not going to change. Similarly, her impulsiveness is also pre-set. She can’t help it. That’s just the way she is. There’s no point in discussing it.
But are personality traits – like impulse control, willpower, and intelligence –actually fixed? Do you really have to play with the hand you were dealt? And how do all these variables affect life achievement?
There’s an increasing body of research suggesting that personality traits are very malleable. Numerous variables can change them for better or worse. One of the most powerful variables is our own desire to change them.
I used to think that IQ was stable (fixed) and resulted primarily from genetics. Eric Turkheimer, however, suggests that the genetic component of IQ is not a quantity but an upper limit. Your ability to reach that limit depends on an array of variables. In general, children raised in intellectually enriched environments are more likely to reach the limit. Children raised in intellectually impoverished environments are less likely to do so.
I now think of IQ as akin to a car’s top speed. Assume that we have two identical race cars; under ideal conditions, each one could reach a top speed of 200 miles per hour. Then we fill one with jet fuel. We fuel the other with low-grade gasoline. Clearly, the jet-fueled car is more likely to reach the top speed. According to Turkheimer, IQ is similar.
Angela Duckworth has also found that self-discipline (also known as impulse control) plays a key role in success. In fact, in academic environments, self-discipline may well be a better predictor of success than IQ.
Roy Baumeister has found that impulse control, like IQ, is not a fixed quantity. Baumeister writes that “Willpower resembles a muscle … in that it can be strengthened by exercise.” He also notes that willpower requires energy and, as energy is depleted, so is willpower. That’s why we have immoral afternoons.
Carol Dweck takes studies like these (and her own) and describes the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Claudia Zimmer represents the fixed mindset. As Dweck points out, people like Claudia “…believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits.”
People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, “…believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point.”
Basically, it’s nature versus nurture. And which one wins? Well … nurture. If you believe talent is fixed, you won’t learn anything by making mistakes. So, you’ll avoid making mistakes. On the other hand, making mistakes is an excellent strategy if you believe you can grow your talents. Dweck writes, “… people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”
According to New Scientist, Dweck has “…improved the grades and attendance records of thousands of … students across the US simply by teaching them that intelligence isn’t fixed, that hard work can make you smarter ….”
What’s your attitude? Do you think you have to play with the cards you were dealt or can you ask for new cards from time to time?
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