Can you really inherit your parents’ sense of humor, the same way you inherit eye color or height? Nothing is less certain, according to a study carried out by British, Finnish and American researchers, published on July 7 in the scientific journal Twin Research and Human Genetics and relayed by the British online media IFLScience. Led by Gil Greengross from the University of Aberystwyth (Wales), the team of scientists affirms that the ability to make people laugh is not written in our genes, contrary to what previous research on cognitive skills, such as creativity or intelligence, suggested.
How did the researchers arrive at this conclusion? Is it even possible to quantify the humor displayed by an individual? Assessing a sense of humor is no easy task: what makes one person laugh can leave another unmoved. To get around subjectivity, the scientists therefore resorted to an original method: asking more than 1,300 pairs of twins to write funny captions for two cartoons.
Participants then had to rate their own humor, then that of their twin, while the researchers analyzed all possible correlations between creativity, health, cognitive abilities and humor.
An evolutionary asset, but not a genetic one?
The conclusions are clear: the best correlation observed concerns the way in which the twins evaluate each other, much more than the adequacy between one’s perception of one’s humor and reality. Importantly, researchers have found no evidence that the ability to be funny is passed down genetically. This result raises questions, since a sense of humor is often associated with verbal intelligence and creativity, two traits known to be hereditary.
The study challenges a widely accepted idea that humor has an evolutionary function, facilitating cooperation, seduction or conflict resolution. If such an ability promotes survival, it should logically be transmissible. However, this is not what the results of this research suggest, which suggest that the environment, education or social context play a much more determining role than genetics.
The authors, however, call for caution. Their method – writing captions for drawings – only covers a very specific facet of humor. Other studies, with different methods and profiles, will be necessary to resolve the question of the inheritance of the sense of humor. So you can’t blame your parents if you don’t make anyone laugh, we really feel sorry for you.
