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A sense of humor came from male aggressiveness
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Psychologists believe that the sense of humor comes from male aggressiveness, which, in turn, develops in men thanks to testosterone.
In search of motivations for human behavior, psychologists sometimes turn to completely exotic sources. Professor Sam Schuster from Newcastle University (UK) decided to analyze how a sense of humor manifests itself in men and women and how it develops in humans with age. The scientist based his conclusions on very specific material: he asked people riding unicycles about how they were received by spectators.
Many of us see a unicycle as a clown accessory. A little man rides out onto the arena on a strange device and starts making people laugh: falling off the bike, letting water out of his eyes, getting tangled up in his own shoes, etc. Other artists also use unicycles, but the association with a clown is so strong that even an ordinary person riding one in the park risks becoming a “clown for an hour.” Professor Schuster interviewed several dozen unicyclists of both sexes around the world, aged 15 to 69, with 2 to 40 years of unicycling experience. In an article published in the Journal of Psychology Research and Behaviour Management, he writes that he was able to identify several patterns in the behavior of people watching a person on a unicycle, and these patterns do not depend on the social status or cultural background of the viewer.
Women, according to the psychologist, comment on the spectacle kindly, they are disposed towards the person making an amazing ride on an amazing device. Children show genuine interest at the sight of a unicycle - which is also understandable. But there is a problem with growing boys and men. Boys' innocent childish interest in what is happening becomes more and more aggressive, they begin to laugh and insult the person riding the unicycle, shout at him to fall faster and even make some efforts to do so, literally putting spokes in the wheels. Adult men, of course, behave more decently, but aggression still breaks through the socially hypocritical mask, and they try in every way to joke about the unicycle and the unicyclist.
According to the scientist, the aggressive reaction of boys is connected with the work of male sex hormones, and humor is just a form in which aggression is cast, unable to find an outlet. While the boy does not have social skills, his attitude to the "clown" is expressed in the most direct way, but as he grows up, he has to sharpen his sense of humor. In general, it can be said that every man really hates a clown.
However, the connection between humor and aggression is not as dubious as you may have thought. The most spontaneous laughter is connected with tickling, and there are theories that derive a sense of humor from this situation, but Professor Schuster points out that from a neurophysiological point of view, tickling is akin to pain. The cause of pain can be eliminated by attacking - here is a bridge for aggression. According to the scientist, the aggressive origin of humor is also indicated by verbal skirmishes, squabbles, sprinkled with jokes about the personality and ideas of the opponent: there is no way to sort things out directly, but you can symbolically defeat the enemy by ridiculing him. Aggression, we recall, begins to develop under the influence of hormonal changes in the male body. Therefore, we can conclude that humanity has learned to laugh thanks to the aggressiveness of its males.
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