Men find ‘booty’ funny, women not so much
Research into what people find funny shows that men and women are likely to laugh at different words. Men prefer booty, booby and tit while women fall for giggle, beast and circus.
New research into the funniest words in the English language shows that the words booty, tit and booby tickle people’s funny bones the most. In an online survey 821 participants were shown 4997 randomly selected words and asked to rate the words on a scale from 1 t o 5 on how humorous they thought each word was.
The participants did not necessarily reflect Indian sensibilities because they were entirely recruited through the Amazon Turk website.
Noticeably there was a difference in the set of words that male and female participants rated as most humorous. Men thought words like orgy and bondage both references to sexual activities were funny. While for women giggle, beast and circus were likely to get the most laughs.
Among the participants 58% were female and the rest male.
There was also a shade of difference of opinion among older and younger people. The participants were between 18-78 years of age with an average age of 35 years. Folks aged 32 years and below found words like goatee, joint and gangster funny, possibly reflecting their familiarity with the words while older people were likely to find words like squint, jingle, burlesque and pong hilarious.
Things that people found completely mirthless: rape, torture, torment, gunshot and death.
The study was conducted by Tomas Engelthaler and Thomas Hills in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick and published in Behavior Research Method.
The Top Twelve
Booty
Tit
Booby
Hooter
Nitwit
Twit
Waddle
Tinkle
Bebop
Egghead
Ass
Twerp
The Bottom Twelve
Rape
Torture
Torment
Gunshot
Death
Nightmare
War
Trauma
Rapist
Distrust
Deathbed
Pain