A Different Focus

A long-time friend and neighbor — her children and mine were and are still buddies — passed away last Thursday. I'm on my way to the memorial service in Arizona. Three people, none whom I know well, reminded me of truths. The first one said, "This is life." Trite, but a gentle nudge back to reality. Of course.

When I mentioned all the things I had to not get done with my unexpected trip, a man quoted a tombstone marker. "He didn't get everything done. He died anyway." Or maybe it was instead, "He got everything done. He died anyway."

A third person told me that she has realized that very little in life is more important than spending time with old friends, neighbors, and family — in a crisis, in ordinary days, at the drop of a hat, or  with long-term planning.

So I'm focusing on here and now and not the usual blogging topics for the next few days.

Men, Women, and Humor by Ellie Marek and Judith C. Tingley

Men and Women Respond to Humor

This is an article I wrote with an expert on humor — about a decade ago! Does it still apply? I think so. Do you? 

I apologize in advance for the blank space and rectangle in the middle of the post. After 30 minutes I can't figure out how to get rid of it! Sorry.

The war between the sexes has been going on forever. They were duking it out on Mount Olympus. It was certainly one of Shakespeare's favorite themes. The antagonism shows up often in humor. Many learned men (before learned women were recognized) — among them Plato, Aristotle, and Charles Darwin — believed that the basis of humor is assault. According to Victor Raskin, Ph.D. " . . . It's a civilized replacement for physical hostility. ... It's is a way to establish superiority."


We, the authors, (both learned women), thought so too as we reacted to a wave of humor on our e-mail which seemed to be definitely hostile — both male-bashing and female-bashing.


We thought the plethora of Internet gender jokes might well be examples of the "blason populaire" described by folklorist Alan Dundes. The term is used to describe humorous slurs against any group: ethnic, religious, or gender — a much more elegant term than "politically incorrect offensive jokes". Experts in cross cultural communication see this "blason populaire" as here to stay, so we decided to investigate!


We conducted a survey of 114 respondents, ages 20 to 70, equally divided between men and women. We asked them to respond to 21 jokes (half put-downs of each gender) with an adjective (funny, hostile, amusing, annoying, enjoyable, stupid or other) and an intensity: 1-10. 

Here's what we found out.
•	Men generally find this type of humor funny or amusing much more frequently than women do. They weren't offended by male or female put-down humor. They even thought this joke was funny: Q. Why is it difficult to find men who are sensitive, caring, and good looking? A. They all already have boyfriends.
•	Women were much more frequently offended by both male-bashing and female-bashing humor than were men who were rarely offended. Female humor is traditionally keyed to stories and anecdotes, self-deprecating humor; not put-down jokes which are the favorite of many men. Men saw almost none of the jokes as hostile (about either men or women).
•	Women saw more hostility in jokes than did men and saw them as stupid more frequently.
•	Neither men nor women saw an increase in this type of humor, but both gave many varied reasons for the increase that they didn't think existed! Increased anger, threatened males, backlash, ignorance etc.
The lessons to be learned?
•	Women are more readily offended by jokes that slur either themselves or others.
•	If you want to use humor to influence women positively, eliminate this kind of humor.
•	They don't like it and probably won't learn to like it.
We also learned that neither men nor women read directions!

David Brooks Knows Similarity Increases Bonding. If You and I Both Like Brooks, We May Like Each Other.

Heard David Brooks, NYTimes columnist speak last night. He has an interesting book out, The Social Animal, which discussed research-based discoveries about emotions and logic, our conscious and unconscious brain processes, the human condition and social psychological systems. I haven't read it yet although I bought it, but his talk was thought provoking as well as funny and entertaining. Here's a column that covers a few of his thinking/talking/writing points.

The New Humanism

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: March 7, 2011

Over the course of my career, I’ve covered a number of policy failures. When the Soviet Union fell, we sent in teams of economists, oblivious to the lack of social trust that marred that society. While invading Iraq, the nation’s leaders were unprepared for the cultural complexities of the place and the psychological aftershocks of Saddam’s terror.

We had a financial regime based on the notion that bankers are rational creatures who wouldn’t do anything stupid en masse. For the past 30 years we’ve tried many different ways to restructure our educational system — trying big schools and little schools, charters and vouchers — that, for years, skirted the core issue: the relationship between a teacher and a student.

I’ve come to believe that these failures spring from a single failure: reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature. We have a prevailing view in our society — not only in the policy world, but in many spheres — that we are divided creatures. Reason, which is trustworthy, is separate from the emotions, which are suspect. Society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions.

This has created a distortion in our culture. We emphasize things that are rational and conscious and are inarticulate about the processes down below. We are really good at talking about material things but bad at talking about emotion.

When we raise our kids, we focus on the traits measured by grades and SAT scores. But when it comes to the most important things like character and how to build relationships, we often have nothing to say. Many of our public policies are proposed by experts who are comfortable only with correlations that can be measured, appropriated and quantified, and ignore everything else.

Yet while we are trapped within this amputated view of human nature, a richer and deeper view is coming back into view. It is being brought to us by researchers across an array of diverse fields: neuroscience, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics and so on.

This growing, dispersed body of research reminds us of a few key insights. First, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind, where many of the most impressive feats of thinking take place. Second, emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason. Finally, we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships.

This body of research suggests the French enlightenment view of human nature, which emphasized individualism and reason, was wrong. The British enlightenment, which emphasized social sentiments, was more accurate about who we are. It suggests we are not divided creatures. We don’t only progress as reason dominates the passions. We also thrive as we educate our emotions.

When you synthesize this research, you get different perspectives on everything from business to family to politics. You pay less attention to how people analyze the world but more to how they perceive and organize it in their minds. You pay a bit less attention to individual traits and more to the quality of relationships between people.

You get a different view of, say, human capital. Over the past few decades, we have tended to define human capital in the narrow way, emphasizing I.Q., degrees, and professional skills. Those are all important, obviously, but this research illuminates a range of deeper talents, which span reason and emotion and make a hash of both categories:

Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.

Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.

Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.

Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.

Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.

When Sigmund Freud came up with his view of the unconscious, it had a huge effect on society and literature. Now hundreds of thousands of researchers are coming up with a more accurate view of who we are. Their work is scientific, but it directs our attention toward a new humanism. It’s beginning to show how the emotional and the rational are intertwined.

I suspect their work will have a giant effect on the culture. It’ll change how we see ourselves. Who knows, it may even someday transform the way our policy makers see the world.