What would you do if someone told you, «Be funny, right now»? Will you instantly come up with a golden comic joke or hilarious story?
Funny on demand is not so easy. You may be funny when you’re with your friends, but you’re embarrassed to joke around with strangers. Are you someone who appreciates humor more when someone else is the source of the fun, rather than being the one making the laughs yourself?
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Being funny and being able to appreciate humor are signs of a above average intelligence.
In one study, researchers Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller, both of the University of New Mexico, and Rod. A. Martin of the University of Western Ontario studied a group of college students and asked them to perform a fun task by creating made-up profiles of people based on basic information.
The study participants then rated how funny were the answers from the other participants and asked them to complete tests of general intelligence, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, sociability, and neuroticism.
The researchers found that general intelligence was a strong predictor of mood, regardless of the other variables. The researchers concluded that humor is a sign of underlying aptitude and cognitive ability.
In another study by William E. Hauck and John W. Thomas of Bucknell University, researchers studied 3 variables: creativity, intelligence and sense of humor. They found that while creativity and intelligence were independent each, humor was related to both creativity and intelligence.
There are many different types of humor: slapstick, deadpan, dirty, topical, dark, satire, parody and surreal. some need a higher degree of intelligence to appreciate than others, such as satire. Satire is one of the types of humor more difficult because it is based on intelligence to have success.
Amy Schumer, who is funny in so many different ways, is extremely talented at satire. Her parody sketch «12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer» was one of the funniest sketches on television all year. Obviously, it was necessary to have intelligence both to write it as to enjoy itsince there was many elements necessary to fully appreciate it.
It was a takeoff from a black-and-white televised play of 1957which discussed how actresses are judged on their looks or their «explosiveness,» and highlighted the misogyny that tends to underscore Hollywood.
Did you have to understand all those things to find it funny? No, but having the intelligence to recognize these things made the humor it was even more fun.
You can’t make fun of something if you don’t understand it first, and it takes creativity to use the right kind of platform to make it fun.
Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s brightest and most intelligent scientists, was also known for his sharp sense of humor. Coincidence? I do not think so! Funny people are more likely to simply be smarter.