雙語聽力材料：話説男女的幽默感

我們都讚賞具有幽默感的人，在對幽默感認可方面，通常認為男人比女人更有幽默感。但是事實真的是這樣的嗎?我們一起來從以下這則英語聽力材料裏尋找答案。

In a 2007 Vanity Fair article Christopher Hitchens asked: Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women?

在2007年《名利場》雜誌的一篇文章中，克里斯多弗•希欽斯提出一個問題:為什麼男人無論是平均而言還是總體上都比女人更有幽默感?

Well a recent study finds that men might have a tiny edge over women in producing humor but the gap is too small to account for the stereotype.

最近的一項研究發現，男人在製造幽默方面或許超過女人一點點，但差距如此細微，不能證明這一成見。

Scientists had 16 male and 16 female subjects write funny captions for 20 New Yorker magazine cartoons in 45 minutes. Then the captions were rated by a different group of 34 male and 47 female subjects.

科學家讓16位男士和16位女士在45分鐘之內，為20張《紐約客》雜誌上的卡通畫寫出幽默的配圖文字。然後這些配圖文字被送到另外一組34位男士和47位女士來打分。

Men’s captions rated higher on average than women’s captions. But only by a mere 0.11 points out of perfect score of 5.0. The study is published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

男士對配圖文字打分的平均值比女士高，但是僅僅高出0.11分(滿分為5.0)。這項研究的結果發表在期刊《心理規律學報與評論》上。

The researchers also found that unfunny captions were more often wrongly attributed to women and funny ones misattributed to men.

研究人員也發現，不幽默的配圖文字通常被錯認為是女士所寫，而有趣的'通常被錯認為是男士所寫。

Given the tiny edge men held, why does the stereotype have a strong hold? Maybe men just make more attempts at humor. For example, fewer women win the New Yorker caption contests, but fewer enter. When women do enter, however, they tend to win with fewer attempts compared to men.

拋開男人在幽默感上的細微差距不看，那為什麼很多人還是有成見呢?也許男人只是在幽默上有更多的嘗試。例如,極少數女士在《紐約客》配圖文字競賽中勝出,因為很少人蔘加這一活動。當女士積極參加時，那她們會憑藉着比男士少的嘗試去贏得比賽。

Which may give women the last laugh?

這才是女性笑到最後的砝碼。