To my mind, you HAVE to have a great sense of humor to be a conservative in New England. And this article certainly seems to lend some credence to my assertion.

I don’t know what I like most about this article; that the study it talks about was conducted in Boston (there are still some conservatives left there?), that conservatives liked absurdist humor – all humor – even more than liberals, or the exposure of what borders on elitist bigotry among social scientists. This article has it all!!

When defining two types of humor – incongruity-resolution humor (your standard joke) and nonsense humor (think Far Side and Monty Python), Willibald Ruch came to some conclusions, apparently without much actual…what is that thing scientists claim to always be hunting for… oh yeah, evidence. On the former type:

Dr. Ruch and other researchers reported that this humor, with its orderly structure and reinforcement of stereotypes, appealed most to conservatives who shunned ambiguity and complicated new ideas, and who were more repressed and conformist than liberals.

Well, we’re off to a rollicking start, aren’t we? And on nonsense humor?

This humor was reported to appeal to liberals because of their “openness to ideas” and their tendency to “seek new experiences.”

So far everything checks out just as we’re usually told it does. It would seem like a pretty safe bet to run a study on these reports. And hey, whaddaya know, there’s a presidential election going on! This would be a great time to reinforce who’s against “openness to ideas” and “seeking new experiences”. But, of course, as with the best laid plans of mice and social scientists…

They expected conservatives to like traditional jokes…that reinforce racial and gender stereotypes. And because liberals had previously been reported to be more flexible and open to new ideas, the researchers expected them to get a bigger laugh out of unconventional humor…

Indeed, the conservatives did rate the traditional golf and marriage jokes as significantly funnier than the liberals did. But they also gave higher ratings to the absurdist “Deep Thoughts.” In fact, they enjoyed all kinds of humor more.

HUH! I’m as shocked as you! Even better, though:

When we asked our respondents to self-report how funny they are, liberals indicated that they were funnier. This means that liberals are not finding life to be funnier, but they think they are.

I must admit: even as I write this, I’m having trouble supressing titters (a conservative having trouble with supression? The surprises just keep coming!). Helpfully, the article offers a couple of explanations for this…

“Conservatives tend to be happier than liberals in general,” said Dr. Martin, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario. “A conservative outlook rationalizes social inequality, accepting the world as it is, and making it less of a threat to one’s well-being, whereas a liberal outlook leads to dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and a sense that things need to change before one can be really happy.”

This is what Bill Buckley, that happy warrior, God rest his soul, summarized with “Don’t Immanentize the Eschaton”. Loosely translated, don’t try to create heaven on earth. It doesn’t work and just leaves you -  and everyone affected by your decisions, however well-intentioned – disappointed. It’s not that we don’t see problems in the world, we just know that there are tradeoffs to every solution, which are sometimes worse than the problems.

Another possible explanation is that conservatives, or at least the ones in Boston, really aren’t the stiffs they’re made out to be by social scientists. When these scientists analyze conservatives, they can sound like Victorians describing headhunters in Borneo. They try to be objective, but it’s an alien culture.

And this is what I really came here to say. I have liberal friends and family who are gasping-for-air, fall-down-a-manhole-and-die riots and, charitably, insist I am, too. This study is just a snapshot of 300 folks on the streets of Boston. While it may show some indicators about worldviews and humor, it says much more, I think, about the researchers. And, helpfully, here’s what it says!

Could it be that the image of conservatives as humorless, dogmatic neurotics is based more on political bias than sound social science?

Maybe the stereotype of the dour, rigid conservative has more to do with social scientists’ groupthink and wariness of outsiders…

Conservatives often get pegged as being “anti-science” for their skepticism of reports that proffer explanations for data at odds with traditional understanding. But, while seemingly open with their findings, the above researchers, their assumptions, and their bafflement at their own results, are a perfect and glorious example of one of my favorite forms of humor…

Irony.

You just have to laugh!!