Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/26440
Appears in Collections:Psychology Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: It’s the way he tells them (and who is listening): men’s dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men
Author(s): Cowan, Mary Louise
Watkins, Christopher D
Fraccaro, Paul J
Feinberg, David R
Little, Anthony
Keywords: Humor
Homophily
Friendship
Alliances
Dominance
Pitch
Issue Date: Mar-2016
Date Deposited: 21-Dec-2017
Citation: Cowan ML, Watkins CD, Fraccaro PJ, Feinberg DR & Little A (2016) It’s the way he tells them (and who is listening): men’s dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37 (2), pp. 97-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.09.002
Abstract: While much research has explored humorous exchange in relation to mate choice, recent perspectives have emphasized the importance of humor for monitoring interest within social partnerships more generally. Indeed, given that similarity is thought to be important in the maintenance of social partnerships, we may expect humor appreciation to vary according to the degree of similarity between humor producers and recipients. In the current study we report evidence for such variation that is specific to men’s judgments of other men’s humor. Here we manipulated voice pitch in a set of ‘one-liner’ jokes to create low-pitched and high-pitched versions of men and women telling jokes. A composite measure of men’s own dominance was positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by other men with lowered voice pitch (a vocal cue to dominance). A follow-up study demonstrated that self-reported dominance was positively related to men’s choice of low-pitch men as friends when judging humorous audio clips but not when judging neutral control audio clips, suggesting that humor may be important in mediating the effect of dominance on friendship choice. These studies indicate systematic variation in humor appreciation related to friendship choices which may function to promote cohesion within male partnerships based on status.
DOI Link: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.09.002
Rights: Accepted refereed manuscript of:Cowan ML, Watkins CD, Fraccaro PJ, Feinberg DR & Little A (2016) It’s the way he tells them (and who is listening): men’s dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men, Evolution and Human Behavior, 37 (2), pp. 97-104. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.09.002 © 2015, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
8563667.pdfFulltext - Accepted Version650.05 kBAdobe PDFView/Open



This item is protected by original copyright



A file in this item is licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons

Items in the Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

The metadata of the records in the Repository are available under the CC0 public domain dedication: No Rights Reserved https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

If you believe that any material held in STORRE infringes copyright, please contact library@stir.ac.uk providing details and we will remove the Work from public display in STORRE and investigate your claim.